Sense of self
is your perceptions, beliefs, judgements, and feelings about
who you are as a person. Students tend to have a self-worth where
they believe that they are capable or inept. Children in the primary
grades make a distinction between two aspects of themselves, how
competent they are at day-to-day activities and acceptance by friends
and family. As you'd imagine, the concrete becomes abstract so
eventually their sense of self becomes more complex. Here I am
pretty much copying the book word for word since they're facts so
good job Dr. Ormrod. In the upper elementary grades they realize
that they may be more or less competent or "good" in
their academic work, athletic activities, classroom activities,
acceptance by peers etc. By adolescence they make general
self-assessments about their ability to make friends, their
competence at adult work, and romantic appeal.
(Are sports your forte?)
There are different ways to judge such
as by how popular you are around people but many young people around
the world commonly judge themselves by their physical attractiveness.
Students that have a positive sense of self are more likely to
excel academically, socially, and physically. They are more apt to
to pay attention, follow directions, work independently and
persistently etc. Students' beliefs about themselves are
self-constructed just like their view of the world. For example, a
student may be bright but a topic being covered is a weak spot and
they view themselves as dumb even though they excel in other areas
well. A slightly inflated sense of self may be productive as they
will have more of a tendency to take on challenging tasks as long as
it doesn't enter the arrogance territory.

(Do you have stunning looks like Tony Parker's wife Eva Longoria?)
There are three factors influencing
sense of self. This is something that we may know and not think
about. They are Previous Performance, Behaviors of Others and Group
Membership and Achievements. Previous performance is complex because
we view ourselves by our previous performance and construct who we
are and who we are affects how we perform. A bad experience can
occur if a person has a bad belief in one's ability to do a task and
that negativity causes them to do bad and their confidence shrinks
even more. To avoid this vicious cycle teachers need to have
different ways to test students so they will have a chance to excel
in academic, social, and physical tasks. Teachers need to make sure
they have done work that has lead up the current task at hand. I
have highlighted "In fact, the occassional failure that such
challenges bring - provided that students eventually will succeed -
will ultimately lead to a more realistic and resilient sense of self.
(Do you excel and become excited from learning?)
(Do you excel and become excited from learning?)