The development of personal atonomy in young schoolchildren. Comparative study: Romanians / Roma

Abstract

From an early age, the formation of personal autonomy begins. Closely related to the child's physical and mental development, to his personal development, autonomy plays an important role in the success or failure of learning, especially, in life in general. The present paper aims to conduct a comparative study between the level of autonomy of Roma and Romanian students as a general objective, and the study hypotheses aim to compare the personal autonomy of 42 children aged 8 to 9 years, 21 of them Roma and 21 Romanians. On the same sample was made the comparison of the personal autonomy of the Roma and Romanian boys, of the boys towards the girls and the purchase of the personal autonomy from the perspective of the teacher and of the parents. The tool used was the Personal Autonomy Screening in the PEDa Questionnaire (SCAP-P and SCAP-E), the age-appropriate variants of the participants. The scores obtained by the students were processed using the SPSS statistical program. The results of the study showed that, among the group of participants, there are no significant differences between the level of personal autonomy in terms of ethnicity or gender. Parents and teachers’ assessments also showed strong correlations, indicating good knowledge of children by both parents and teachers. This may be due to the introduction in the compulsory education of the preparatory class and the discipline Personal development, which, through the learning activities, empowers the child to make certain decisions and to make his own judgments.