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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.

This study investigates two types of high schools in South Korea as a social environment for the formation of social capital: selective (foreign language high schools, FLHS) and non-selective (general high schools, GHS). By analyzing in-depth interviews with 22 graduates of FLHS and GHS who attended the same elite university, we found that FLHS generally provide a better social context and students in FLHS are more likely to form ties with their peers than those attending GHS. Furthermore, since FLHS pool the cultural capital owned by individual students, various opportunities for extracurricular activities appear to function as the domain not only for forming social capital but also promoting cultural capital. The results indicate that the friendship ties formed by students from FLHS and GHS have a significant role in organizing their social and academic life at university.

ABSTRACT Background: Influenza virus is still at large and seriously affects social welfare and health. Dianthus superbus is a well-known medicinal plant widely used in Mongolian and Chinese traditional medicine [...]

In many industrialised societies, women remain underrepresented in the sciences, which can be predicted by the gender gap in math achievement at school. Using PISA 2006 data, we explore the role of family background and single-sex schooling in girls' disadvantage in maths in South Korea and Hong Kong. This disadvantage is found to be associated with single-sex schooling, but not with family background. Attending a girls' school confers a benefit only in South Korea, whereas the gendered curriculum counteracts the selectivity advantage of girls' schools in Hong Kong. We find that a gendered social structure prevalent in both societies. (Contains 9 tables.)