Elena Kutyavina

Zarethan Saralieva

The paper presents the results of 2012–2016 research which focuses on children’s quality of life, their adaptation to learning and school interaction at different levels of learning; conflicts, aggression and violence at school; vocational training of school leavers; family interaction, attitude to family members. It also presents a system of factors that increase risk of children being involved in various situations of school violence (verbal or physical abuse, aggressor or victim) and outlines the most significant risk factors: family troubles, financial distress, death of a loved one, relocation. The paper also identifies problems of schoolchildren adaptation to school at different stages of learning, specific features of schoolchildren motivation at different ages, specific problems of adaptation which schoolchildren from migrants’ families may face. Based on studying value orientations of senior pupils and their parents, the paper works out similarities and differences in how pupils and their parents perceive education and their future professions as well as the preferred, permissible and unacceptable professional choice. The authors highly appreciate standardized methods of collecting information to study schoolchildren, however, they also highlight the problems arising from mass surveys in junior and middle classes. These problems can be partly overcome by a particularly careful control of the survey situation and the use of additional, non-standardized methods of research (observation, interview). The results of the research clearly signal that chidren opinions about both “children” (friendship, school achievement, peer relations) and “adult” problems (poverty, divorce, migration) must be taken into account. The authors have also discovered some organizational problems in conducting surveys at school.