Monday, March 18, 2013

Development of a Sense of Self



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?)