A STUDY ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE LEVEL OF CAREER AWARENESS AND SELF-ESTEEM OF CHILDREN IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

초등학교 아동들의 진로인식 수준과 자아존중감과의 관계 연구

Fundamental direction of the seventh education curriculum aims to nurture active and creative Koreans for globalized and information-oriented society of 21 century, and emphasizes the importance of career education identifying its subsections that are practices of student-focused education of aptitude, ability and career. Hence, as a clear targeting of career objective from elementary school through relevant career education enables them to recognize appropriate career for themselves, the basis of self- actualization and social contribution must be settled. This paper seeks to identify the relationship between career awareness and self-esteem by examining and analysing differences of sex, region and level. This study selected 536 samples from 4th and 6th year elementary school students in C city and S town of Chungcheong province. Career awareness test and self-esteem test is used as a measurement, statistical process control (SPC) of career awareness and self-esteem (M, SD, r) is made for each variable, and the significance was tested. The result of this research can be summarized as follows: First, generally there is very significant regional differences of career awareness (F=16.817, p<.001), which contains that urban children has higher career awareness (M=120.22) than that of rural children (M=113.87). In subsections of career awareness, self-esteem of urban children is higher than that of rural children, and the attitude & for career and values of girls is higher than that of boys. In terms of the career planning, urban children and 6th year students are higher than rural children and 4th year students. Second, self-esteem generally has very significant regional difference (F=12.123, p<.01), which contains that the self-esteem of urban children (M=106.50) is higher than that of rural children (M=101.80). In comparison of different forms, a very significant difference is as much as p<.01 level (F=11.046), which contains 4th year students (M=105.63) have higher self-esteem than 6th year students (M=102.05). In subsections of self-esteem, gross self-esteem and social self-esteem of urban children are higher than rural children. In terms of family self-esteem, urban children and 4th year students have higher figure than rural children and 6th year students. In school self-esteem, 4th year students had higher level than the 6th. Third, the career awareness and self-esteem are generally related as r= .50, it was very significant at p<. 001 level. All subsections of career awareness had positive relationships except the school self-esteem. According to the result, rural children had relatively low career awareness and self-esteem. This is presumably due to relatively poor circumstances for rural children, comparing to that of urban children. Therefore rural elementary schools should try to let them have appropriate career awareness by associating with family, school and local society to expand the opportunity of experiences for the self perception of aptitude, nature and interest. In addition, we have to strive for the whole-minded education increasing the self-esteem of rural children and giving them positive thinking through career counselling, personal counselling and group counselling.