The knowledge-based society of the 21st century requires a lot of changes in educational environments. Learners increasingly need to foster their self-regulated learning capability, which refers to planning how to study and implementing it in a self-directed manner and through mutual information sharing and interaction. The purpose of this study was to examine any possible differences among elementary school students in mental health, emotional intelligence, learning motivation and self-directed learning according to background variables and the correlation of the factors in an attempt to determine the impact of mental health, emotional intelligence and learning motivation on self-directed learning.
The subjects in this study were 1,476 students who were in their fourth and sixth grades in elementary schools located in Seoul and Gangwon Province. The findings of the study were as follows:
First, there were mostly significant differences among the elementary school students in mental health, emotional intelligence, learning motivation and self-regulated learning according to their personal background variables. As for mental health, the boys were in better mental health than the girls, and the students who never played games enjoyed the best mental health.
In regard to emotional intelligence, the sixth graders surpassed the fourth graders, and those who were religious and who didn't play any games at all were ahead of their counterparts. The students who were taken care of by their parents after school had the highest emotional intelligence.
Whether there would be any differences among the students in learning motivation according to personal background variables was analyzed, and the boys were more affected by intrinsic motivation thant the girls. As to the influence of religion, the length of game-playing time and the presence or absence of a person who took care of the students after school, intrinsic motivation was more prevalent among the students who were religious, who never played games and who were taken care of by adults after school.
Second, there was a significant correlation among mental health, emotional intelligence, learning motivation and self-regulated learning. To be specific, the students who were generally in better mental health and had a higher emotional intelligence were significantly better at self-regulated learning. Extrinsic motivation had a negative correlation to self-regulated learning, whereas identified motivation and intrinsic motivation were positively correlated to every subfactor of self-regulated learning.
Third, every subfactor of the mental health, emotional intelligence, learning motivation and self-regulated learning of the elementary school students affected their self-regulated learning. Learning persistence had the largest impact on self-regulated learning, and students should learned how to make a proper choice of surrounding environments without being swayed by external elements to boost their learning persistence, and they should reflect on their own learning motivation and make efficient use of behavioral resources available to concentrate their attention on their studies. At the same time, the implementation of mental health education, the development of personality programs and the utilization of self-regulated learning strategy programs are all required to teach elementary school students to attain the best cognitive and affective development.
Fourth, mental health, emotional intelligence and learning motivation were identified in this study as major variables to affect the self-regulated learning of the elementary school students. Therefore efficient teaching-learning methods tailored to the individual variances of elementary school youngsters should be introduced to help students to motivate themselves, and how to bolster intrinsic learning motivation should carefully be devised as well. They should be taught to make efficient use of self-regulated learning strategies. In addition, emotional and mental health education should be revitalized, and the development of relevant programs is necessary.
Fifth, the self-regulated learning of students should be evaluated to gather diagnostic and prescriptive information, and a variety of programs should be prepared and utilized based on the acquired information. As this study has such limitations, more extensive follow-up research should be conducted to help students to do self-regulated learning in an efficient manner, which will make a contribution to the improvement of their academic achievement.