The purpose of this study is to improve understanding of students' character and to contribute to policy decision by regressing a set of independent variables on students' character variable. There are many educational issues to be solved urgently. Among them is the concern for students' character. As enrollment and competition-oriented practices continue, the number of students showing well-rounded character is decreasing, which is considered to be related to various social pathologies. The 「Character Education Promotion Act」 was enacted in 2015 to encourage the spread of community values. However, relevant studies have carried out rarely and still remained to be tackled. Under this background, this study examines the factors influencing the development of students' characteristics by applying a longitudinal analytic strategy.
After a thorough review of extant studies, this study identified the sub-factors of character as proprieties, filial piety, honesty, responsibility respect, consideration, communication and cooperation. As the analytic strategy, this study conducted a panel regression drawing on the first three years of data collected from the 「Korean Education Longitudinal Study 2005」.
The results revealed that a set of independent variables such as the degree of students' recognition on school life or self(e.g., body self concept, peer relationship, and class understanding) are associated with the dependent variable. With regard to school experiences, club activities was shown to be associated with the maturity of students' character. In relation to daily life, it was confirmed that reading and private tutoring time had a positive correlation with character. In addition, parents' participation or socio-economic status revealed their negative correlation with character. The study suggests some policy implications based on the results of the analysis.