Društvene i Humanističke Studije (Jun 2020)
Fundamental Factors of Socialization and Socio-emotional Adaptation of Students in Educational Context
Abstract
Educational institutions should be obligated to continually assess an individual’s achievements and potentials. It is important to consider all aspects of children and adolescents functioning in school context. Our education system prioritises school achievement, thus most of planned and realized activities in educational institutions are focused on the cognitive development and fostering academic adjustment. Academic adjustment of students refers to opportunities to successfully carry out tasks and meet the expectations mostly defined by the curricula. It is usually monitored through the students’ performance and is measured by grades. However, social and emotional adjustment is also an important aspect of student functioning in school context, but it is often overlooked considering the education policies in elementary and high schools. Social processes and the child and adolescent functioningdynamics in school context hugely influence their social awareness and social development. Students’ emotional functioning plays an important role in the context of adjusting students in all aspects as well.Emotional difficulties, mostly manifested through psychological distress, anxiety, psychosomatic disorders or depression symptoms, are considered to be one of the most significant issues that obstructthe adjustment and can extensively compromise one’s health.Therefore, education system and its institutions should take more responsibility and enable fostering and monitoring individual’s emotional and social development as well as their personal and social competence. The lack of systemic solutions, which will offer long-term positive effects for improving children’s and adolescent’s mental health, may result in an increasing educational crisis. It is necessary to point out the factors that are potentially jeopardizing emotional and social adjustment of students in school context from the experts’ perspective. Furthermore, it is important to indicate how to prevent and solve the students’ difficulties in all aspects of functioning in school context. Parents, teachers, andpeers represent the fundamental factors of socialization that determine the quality of students’ adjustment in the educational context.
