Students’ characteristics and their social competence

Although social competence has been the subject of numerous works, there are few researches where this phenomenon is discussed as an organized system – by assessment of different levels of social competence and taking into consideration contextual and individual characteristics of children. The aim of the researches was to examine relations of educational and individual characteristics of students with different aspects of their social competence. There were 206 students examined, aged from 12 to 18, out of which 76 students with mild intellectual disabilities (IDs) and 130 of typical development (TD). For examining social skills we used Social Skills Rating System (SSRS) which consists of subscales of cooperativity, responsibility, assertiveness and self control, and for assessment of social functioning we used The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaires (SDQ), subscales of pro-social behaviour, emotional problems, behaviour problems and problems with peers. The results confirmed that intellectual disorder with high percentage of common variance (67%) explains more frequent behaviour problems in students with mild IDs than in students with TD, but there are no statistically significant differences between development of social skills and intellectual status of students. Independent of intellectual status, boys have less developed social skills, with a more rarely pro-social behaviour and they show more behaviour problems than girls, which is associated with their worse academic achievement compared to girls. Of all social skills, self control and cooperativity are connected to better academic achievement and prevention of students’ emotional problems. Theoretical and practical implications of obtained results are discussed