On The Influence And Countermeasures Of The Peer Group Of Vocational Students

Peer Group, also called Pattern Group, is a kind of informal group consisting of people of the same age who have similar social status, interests, hobbies, attitude, values and way of behaviors. Peer group is an important environmental factor and carrier during the process of an individual's socialization. For an individual in a group, the ideas and behavior mode of the peer group nearly have common and covert compulsory power. A young peer group is a basic type of peer group and acts as an important interpersonal environment for growing young men. Those teen-age students in vocational school show diversified characteristics in intelligence, self-conscience, emotions, mental needs and social behaviors because of such factors as physical factors, psychology factors, environmental factors or experience. No sooner the students enter the school than they live with their contemporaries in a peer group, in which people are quite similar to each other and the environment is relatively closed. Compared with systematic and formal school education, peer group gives unsystematic and informal education and exerts a subtle influence on a teen-ager's growth, psychological mature and change, and choice of behaviors. Compared with a class, which is a basic unit of a school, peer group is more acceptable. Members in the group have an equal and relaxing relationship which facilitates teen-agers to eliminate uncertainty and irresolution in thoughts, emotions and behaviors, remove guilty and anxiety, and also helps to figure their social roles. Therefore, peer group has greater impact on young students than a class and plays an indispensable part during the process of socialization.It is an intrinsic need that an individual should belong to a certain group. Without external compulsory force, peer group impacts upon the students in vocational schools in a hidden way, i.e. it mainly works through the system that people act in conformity with the majority. Influenced by such a system, the majority's values and behavior mode often become a main frame of reference for those students to understand themselves, learn about the society and improve themselves. Meanwhile, it acts as an information source for an individual to cognize the world and finally influence values and behavior mode of the students. However, peer group influences students in both subjective and objective ways. In the subjective view, peer group of the youth is a basic need of psychology and emotions for students in vocational schools. Objective factors include many respects, for instance, advance of information society, wearing off of authority of parents and teachers, long time stay in the school, more communication with each other in the peer group, and influence by sense of group ascription in the traditional culture.Characteristics of young peer group are in accordance with characteristics shown by adolescent students, which is beneficial to their sound psychological growth, their independence and socialization. On the other hand, providing a stage where teenagers can act out of the control of adults, peer group often becomes a negative factor by enacting an opposite strength to the adults'control or becoming a support of counter-mainstream culture. Therefore, after confirming that the mainstream of a peer group is positive, teachers should take a variety of measures to exert positive effects and avoid negative impacts of the peer group, for example, peer group in their values and behavior mode by delicate mentality education; to strengthen cultural construction to improve the sub-culture of the peer group; to give psychological instructions to reduce negative impact; or to hold mental consultation to ensure psychological growth of the peer group.