Social Relations and School Life Satisfaction in South Korea

This study pays special attention to adolescents who are at the critical stage of social, cognitive and emotional development
and their satisfaction with school life which is important for their educational experience and adult life. The purpose of
this study is to examine how students’ relationships with friends, teachers and parents are associated with their school life
satisfaction. We conducted hierarchical linear modeling with nationally representative data on 3,790 high school seniors in
the consideration of different school types (general and vocational high schools) reflecting the contextual characteristics
of South Korean education system. Our findings show that all those relations are associated with school life satisfaction
and that some distinctive dimensions of each relation matter for students’ school life satisfaction. In particular, teacher-student
relationship was found to shape students’ satisfaction with school life both at individual and school level. In spite of several
limitations, the broad investigation of students’ social relations provided a policy implication for improving adolescents’
satisfaction with their school lives.