부산대학교 도서관

This study explored the developmental trajectories of students’ sense of community from the first year of middle-school through the second year of high-school and examined how many latent classes would exist according to those trajectories. The study also explored the characteristics of each class and tested the differences in the sense-of-community-related variables among different latent classes. In addition, it explored the longitudinal trends of academic self-efficacy for different latent classes. For those purposes, the present study analyzed the Year 1 through Year 5 data (2,019 students) from the Busan Education Longitudinal Study, using the piecewise multigroup growth model, the t-test, and ANOVA. The primary results are as follows. First, the sense of community showed no significant change during middle school but revealed a decreasing pattern during high school. Second, four latent classes were found in relation to its developmental trajectories. Third, the sense of community was found to closely relate to student, home, and school variables because self-esteem, parent-child communication, school happiness, and discussion participation decreased considerably while depression and anxiety increased during the period when the decrease in the sense of community was the greatest. Fourth, it was found that with the students' change in year in school, their sense of community decreased, and their academic self-efficacy also decreased. These results imply that the sense of community plays an important role in the development of academic self-efficacy and suggest the necessity of home- and school-based efforts to improve students’ sense of community.