This discussion is rich and fascinating. 

I'm very taken with Anastasiya's research, particularly since her findings resonate with much of my classroom experience. Of course, it is only one study and certainly needs to be replicated with similar and different populations to see how robust the findings are. 

In the meantime, I wonder how tied we are as teachers to the idea that our students have low self esteem. What role does that idea have in our views of ourselves as teachers?
Barb Garner
Editor, Focus on Basics





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From: "Anastasiya A. Lipnevich" <ana at optimaltec.com>
Date: 2006/09/25 Mon PM 09:17:44 CDT
To: The Focus on Basics Discussion List <focusonbasics at nifl.gov>
Subject: [FocusOnBasics 489] Low Self-Esteem: Myth or Reality? Some comments

  
Dear All,
 Thank youfor such a great discussion. Below I will try to address some of yourcomments.
__________________

 Andres,
It lookslike we are coming from different research paradigms, and our views onresearchin general and measurement in particular somewhat diverge. Here is mytake onsome of the issues you raised.
1. I haveto disagree with your conceptualization of self-esteem. I believe thatwhat youdescribe is actually socio-economic status (e.g. possessions, wealth,jobstatus), a construct commonly regarded as conceptually different fromself-esteem. There are studies that show a high correlation betweenself-esteemand SES, therefore, the two are, in fact, closely tied. 
Is itreally possible and/or meaningful to tease them apart? I do think so.Scientific method and characteristics thereof drive us towardsconceptualparsimony when operationalizing and actually measuring constructs ofinterest.It doesn’t mean that self esteem (or motivation, or engagement, etc)stand ontheir own. They are closely related to numerous variables, however, acorpus ofliterature demonstrates that attempts to measure them as separateconstructs doyield meaningful results and help advance our understanding of humannature. 
Additionally,what immediately comes to mind is that some components ofsocio-economic status(i.e. financial well-being) of PhD students may be worse than that ofworkingadult literacy students. So, the findings of the present study do notnecessarily contradict your take on the matter.
 
2. Inpsychological research, self-esteem is typically defined in terms ofhow weevaluate ourselves and our characteristics, the "personal judgment ofworthiness that is expressed in the attitudes the individual holdstoward himself,"in the words of Coopersmith, a pioneering researcher in the field. Itis afuzzy construct but a certain consensus has developed. Many seem toagree thatself esteem can be differentiated into global and specific self esteem.Globalrepresents a general attitude towards oneself, and can be considered atraitself-esteem, whereas specific self-esteems concern particular areas ofpeople’slives. 
 Self-affirmation theory (Steel,1988) suggests that people cope with negative outcomes in one domain byfocusing on their achievements in other, unrelated domains. This meansthat individualswith high global self-esteem would feel overall quite competent evenwhen theiracademic self-esteem is low. Low-literate adults who have failedacademicallybut succeed in other aspects of their lives may have a high generalself-esteemthat will allow them to lead full, not deficient, lives. Adult literacylearners often look at themselves as competent workers, parents, andcitizens,which may partially compensate for their lack of literacy. Talkingabout adultliteracy students in terms of their deficiencies and abnormally lowself-esteemjust adds to the existing stigma. 
 3. This study doesn’t suggest thatself-esteem of adult students is high. Rather, that it doesn’t differsignificantly from the self-esteem of the PhD students. Since we don’tconsiderraising self-esteem of the latter group to be our primary goal,focusing onraising self esteem of the former group represents a logical skew withpotential pernicious corollaries, with the most dangerous one being, asHal and Isuggested in our report, that it may strengthen the existing stigma.Self-esteem is crucial for success in academic settings for bothgroups; but perhapsit is best addressed through strong pedagogy by helping studentssucceed intheir academic pursuits. 
 ___________________
Gina andVirginia raised a question about self-esteem of learners incorrectionaleducational programs. Unfortunately, I am not familiar with existingliteratureon the matter. However, during my recent presentation at the AERAconference,one of the attendees who teaches in a prison described her students ashavinghigh self-esteem. I cannot judge the validity of her conclusions sincetheywere based solely on her observations; it’s just interesting toconsider. 
___________________________
Thanksagain to everyone – I am really enjoying this discussion.
 Ana.

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