Article+Study

= Research Study: Self-esteem, academic self-concept, and aggression at school =

 Article Citation: Taylor, T.D., Pamela, D., & Malanchuk, O. (2006). Self-esteem, academic self-concept, and aggression at school. //Aggressive Behavior,// 33, 130-136.

**I. Research Design Description** The research design that was used in this study was qualitative research. The overall purpose of the study was to find out if there is a direct relationship between self-esteem and aggression. Aggression was defined in three different ways, physically, psychologically, and socially. For example, pushing or hitting would be considered physical aggression, whereas taunting or threatening others would be psychological and spreading rumors or defaming others would be social aggression. In order to explore this information, longitudinal data on middle school children was analyzed. The study is based upon racially and socioeconomically diverse students in an East-coast state. The first wave of data was collected at the beginning of the students’ seventh grade year and the second at the beginning of their eighth grade year. These participants completed interviews and answered self-administered questionnaires both years. In addition, the students’ parents were interviewed and they also completed questionnaires about their children.

** II. The Problem ** The problem of the study was to figure out if there is a direct relationship between students’ self-esteem and aggression in middle schools. The article defines aggression as the deliberate infliction of harm on another person. The question in the study was “How will overall self-esteem influence children’s likelihood of committing acts of aggression in school?”(Taylor, Pamela, & Malanchuk, 2006). Before this study no published research has examined a link between domain specific self-concept and aggression in related contexts. There have been studies done on the link between egotism and aggression, however; and it has been suggested that narcissism is clearly associated with increased aggression. The article states that “in a series of laboratory experiments those who scored high in narcissism responded more aggressively to rejection than did those low in narcissism, while general self-esteem did not moderate participants’ reaction to rejection [Twenge and Campbell, 2003] (Taylor, Pamela, & Malanchuk, 2006). Throughout this study, researchers explored various factors relating to middle school students’ self-esteem, self-concept, and aggression in order to maintain longitudinal data and come up with a conclusion.

** III. The Design ** The way that this study was designed was based off of two hypothesis statements. Data was then collected, analyzed, and computed in order to obtain results and come up with a conclusion. Two hypotheses were formed at the beginning of this study: “H1: Students with less favorable academic self-concept will be more likely to commit acts of aggression in school than children with more favorable academic self-concept” (Taylor, Pamela, & Malanchuk, 2006). “H2: Students whose high academic self-concept is threatened will also be more likely to commit acts of aggression in school than other children” (Taylor, Pamela, & Malanchuk, 2006). In order to explore and come up with a conclusion, data was collected and analyzed based on 842 middle school students. These students were all enrolled in middle schools in the same county in an East coast state. Just over half of this population was male (51.1%) and 2/3 of the participants were African American and 1/3 were Caucasian. Taken into account were the students’ history of aggression, the results from their self-esteem questionnaires, self-concept of academic abilities, academic performance, threat to self-concept, and aggression-related controls. These factors were compared and computed throughout the study.

** IV. The Procedure ** As stated above, students' history of aggression, the results from their self-esteem questionnaires, self-concept of academic abilities, academic performance, threat to self-concept, and aggression-related controls were all taken into account throughout the procedure of this study. When the parents of the participants filled out the interviews, they also answered questions about their children's history of aggression. The only acts that were considered aggression and included in analysis were ones that resulted in formal school discipline. Behaviors that result in formal school discipline included fighting, hitting or shoving another student, bringing a weapon to school, or threatening a teacher. According to the answers from parents, 22% of all participants had been disciplined at school for aggressive behavior at school some time during their seventh grade year. Information that was gathered to measure self-esteem was based on six questions that the students responded to, on a scale of 1-5. The questions were used to measure students' satisfaction with who they are and their behavior. Responses of all six of the items were averaged to obtain a single score. Self-concept of academic abilities (SCA) was measured using several questions that asked students to indicate how well they in specific subjects and in school in general. They had to indicate this on a scale of 1("not at all good" or "much worse than other kids" to 7("very good" or "much better than other kids"). The scores were averaged, and suggested that participants generally believed they were above average. Academic performance was taken into account according to the participants' GPA's for the seventh grade year, which was obtained from school records. The average was 3.13. For this study, threatened high self-esteem was conceptualized in terms of academic performance. General aggression was controlled for in two ways, the history of school discipline, and the results from the participants completing a measure of anger. Students were asked to indicate on four items how frequently they feel angry on a scale of 1(almost never) to 5(almost always). This average was 2.35. After computing the correlations among relevant variables, with being disciplined at school for aggression as the dependent variable, the relationship between self-esteem and aggression in schools was addressed by squaring the academic self-concept and self esteem and including them in the analysis.

**<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> V. The Interpretation ** <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;">Overall in this study, self-esteem was found to be unrelated to aggression in schools. The first hypothesis was supported, as students with less positive perceptions about their academic abilities were more likely to show aggression in school than those with more positive perceptions. Evidence does support the fact that academic self-concept is a significant predictor of school aggression. The article goes on to discuss the importance of doing this study even though the conclusions are somewhat tampered by the limits of the study itself, as it is not an experiment and casual conclusions cannot be made. The article states, "we explore only a single domain of self-esteem; in order to better understand the relationship between self-concept, self-esteem, and aggression, future research should explore other domains as well, beginning with those domains in which children's aggression is more frequent or perhaps more problematic such as the family" (Taylor, Pamela, & Malanchuk, 2006).

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;">**<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> VI. General ** <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;">I found reading this article to be very significant especially due to the fact that I am studying to be a middle school educator. To anyone else, this information may not seem as significant; however, I found it very interesting to read about the research that took place to see if self-esteem and aggression are directly related in the schools. I believe that it is important for middle level educators to be knowledgeable about some of the problems their students face. I am studying one very common problem of middle school students which happens to be self-esteem. This article taught me a lot about self-esteem, self-concept, narcissism, and aggression. Prior to reading this article I have never taken into consideration that there is a difference between self-esteem and self-concept. The article gives an example that one student with high self-esteem can feel good about himself overall, but he may feel that he is good at sports and terrible at math. Just because this child has a low self-concept about how they do in one subject does not mean they have an overall low self-esteem. In order to apply this to my future class, I want to try my hardest to motivate my students to try in every subject. When a student has a low self-concept about how they do in a certain subject, they tend to not try as hard. I want to help my students think positive and to overcome any low self-concepts they may have acquired. Academics are not the only area of concern. Many times middle school students will change their outlook on themselves due to lack of fitting in. I do not think that many middle school students realize the effect that having low self-esteem has on so many different aspects of life. I want to educate my students about this. One way that I will go about educating my students about these concepts will be by implementing activities to help students have better outlooks on themselves. These activities can take place in advisories or even in core subjects. This can be done in a variety of ways whether it is a classroom discussion or a written assignment. For example, in Language Arts I can have my students write a poem about the things they like about themselves. In an art class, students can create collages of pictures or symbols of things that they like about themselves, enjoy doing, and what they want to be when they grow up. My main focus will be to emphasize the positive qualities of all of my students.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;">**<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> Connections ** <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;">I made connections to this article in a couple of different ways. One of the ways I connected to this article was by thinking back to my own middle school experience. I remembered specific students that acted out during school. One of my peers in particular that I remember was a boy named Jon who did not have the highest GPA, and he always seemed to be the one getting in trouble during class, whether it was for talking back to the teacher or just for being off task. It made me consider if the reasons he acted out was due to having a low self-concept which is said to be associated with a lower GPA according to the study. I also thought about the way bullies act towards their peers. When I was growing up I felt like adults were always telling me that if someone was making fun of another person it is because they are insecure with themselves. I kept thinking about that while reading the article about this study because if a student is insecure with themselves they have a lower self-esteem, which I was so curious to find out if that is what made them aggress socially. It also made me think about my own self-concept. Freshman year of college when I was taking my general education classes I was not as motivated to try as hard as I do now. Once I began to focus more attention on my studies and realized the importance of getting good grades my GPA started to rise and I began to feel better about myself academically which reflected in my grades. Another way that I connected to this article was as a pre-service teacher. I feel that it is very important to not have biases towards any of my students, whether they have a great self-concept or a very egotistic personality. I am sure it is difficult at times, but it is so important to focus on the positive and to try and help every student have good self-esteem without having the notion that they are better than everybody else.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;">**<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> Reflections ** <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: medium;">After reading this article, I was somewhat surprised about the findings. I thought that someone with a lower self-esteem would have higher aggression in middle school. I did not necessarily think that they would be more physically aggressive, but socially, I thought they would belittle others to try to feel better about themselves. I was not surprised to find out that students with a low self-concept generally had a lower GPA. I definitely need to take into account the idea of having a positive attitude towards all subject areas in order to benefit my students and their self-concepts according to the subject. I really liked that the article defined the important concepts that were being studied before getting into all the technical research, especially because I have never really taken into account the difference between self-concept and self-esteem. The way that the article was formatted made it easy to follow and understand. The participants in this study were 2/3 African American and 1/3 Caucasian, but the article does not discuss any other ethnicity. I do not feel that the article was biased or prejudice, but it states that it is racially diverse, and technically it could be done in a more diverse population. I do not think, however, that ethnicity has anything to do with self-esteem and aggression being linked. I do not think it has anything to do aggression in schools at all, but I think it would be interesting to conduct this study, or one similar, throughout a larger population. I feel that reading about this study will beneficial to me when writing my middle school problem paper on self-esteem and when I become a teacher. Teachers should have their students fill out interest inventories and academic self-concept interviews at the beginning of the year. This will help the teacher gain an understanding of what types of things their students are interested, and how they feel about certain subject areas. Teachers should take into account the types of things that students like to learn about in order to motivate the students. Teachers should also educate students about the importance of having a positive out look on oneself, and do self-esteem booster activities throughout the year. Middle school students may need to be reminded of their great qualities, as they begin to get lost in the idea of trying to fit in. As a future educator I will make my students aware on the first day of school that my classroom (and the whole school) is a bully free zone, under zero tolerance. No belittling or secluding of peers will be tolerated in my classroom. I will do a lot of group activities so that my students get used to working together and accepting the opinions of others. Overall, this article made me realize how much more goes into teaching than just instruction, and that I need to do the best I can in order to turn my students into well-rounded citizens.