Does the left-behind experience affect the social-emotional competence of primary and secondary school students?

• In Event: Supporting Youth Wellbeing in East Asia

Proposal

Social-emotional competence has a positive effect on adolescent academic achievement and the accumulation of human capital later in life. China is a country with a very rapid urbanization rate, with a huge gap between urban and rural areas, and a large number of rural laborers have concentrated in urban populations, thus producing a large number of left-behind children. Therefore, this study is based on the valid questionnaire data of 1903 Chinese primary and secondary school students, and this paper examines the impact of left-behind experience on the social-emotional ability of primary and secondary school students. The results showed that long-term left-behind experience significantly negatively affected the social and emotional abilities of primary and secondary school students, such as self-awareness, self-management, and interpersonal communication. In order to alleviate the endogeneity caused by selectivity bias, this paper uses the propensity score matching method for verification, and the conclusion is still robust. Through heterogeneity analysis, it was found that the above relationship had significant differences between groups in different characteristic groups such as gender, urban and rural areas, and different school age groups. The mechanism discussion shows that the left-behind experience has obvious cumulative negative effects on students' family and school relationships, and the father-son (female) relationship, mother-child (female) relationship, husband and wife relationship, and peer relationship are the mediating transmission mechanisms of the influence of left-behind experience on the social-emotional ability of primary and secondary school students. In order to achieve common prosperity and high-quality development in the field of education, attention should be paid to the negative impact of early left-behind experience on students' social-emotional ability, and focus on cultivating the social-emotional ability of rural left-behind children. Strengthen family education guidance, raise parents' awareness of parental responsibility, and build good family relationships; Schools should create a close teacher-student relationship, a harmonious and friendly peer relationship atmosphere, and pay attention to cultivating the social and emotional abilities of Chinese primary and secondary school students.

Author

• 恩慈 吴, 华东师范大学