The present study aimed to analyze the factors—verbal communication competence, acceptance of social norms and creative ideas—that affect students’ mutual recognition, based on Axel Honneth s recognition theory. For this purpose, data was drawn from the second through fifth surveys of the Korean Education Longitudinal Study of 2013 and multivariate latent growth modeling was employed as the analytic method. First, the result showed that verbal communicative competence had a positive effect on changes in students’ level of recognition. In this regard, it is necessary for schools to provide curriculum and educational activities in a way that enhances verbal communication among students; thus it is needed to expand discussion-based classes that bring intelligence and sensitivity together through further verbal communication. Second, acceptance of social norms and creative ideas have been shown to have positive effects on students’ level of recognition. Efforts are required to allow and facilitate students’ creative ideas to try new ideas and ways to a reasonable extent so that the two contradictory but complementary factors—acceptance of social norms and creative ideas —can interact harmoniously in school education. Third, influences of control variables—gender of student, presence of sibling, family’s socio-economic status, dual income family, and parents’ educational support (academically/emotionally)—on the level of recognition were statistically significant. Therefore, schools need to seek specific measures to help students, who are unable to obtain sufficient recognition, to experience recognition through school life and, by extension, successfully establish their identity.