Abstract
Multicultural adolescents in Korea compose of 2% of the entire student population, with their population additionally accounting for 46.6% of the population within multicultural families. However, 16.1% of multicultural adolescents choose to drop out of school and permanently leave the Korean educational system, indicating the presence of significant difficulties in their adjustments to their schools. Using the 6th year of data in the Multicultural Adolescents Panel Study (MAPS), a survey of 1,278 middle school students, this study examines the effects of acculturative stress and physical appearance satisfaction on students’ school life adjustment, while also testing the mediating effects in the relationships. Our results show that acculturative stress and physical appearance satisfaction have direct and indirect effects via self-esteem on school life adjustment. These results indicate that self-esteem may play an important role in reducing the negative effect of acculturative stress on school life adjustment, while also enhancing the positive effect of physical appearance satisfaction on school life adjustment. Based on these results, we present future intervention strategies for schools to implement in order to improve the quality of education for students of different cultural backgrounds.
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