{"id":59235,"date":"2021-09-08T06:37:47","date_gmt":"2021-09-08T10:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=59235"},"modified":"2021-09-08T06:37:47","modified_gmt":"2021-09-08T10:37:47","slug":"self-esteem-and-academic-difficulties-a-vicious-circle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/self-esteem-and-academic-difficulties-a-vicious-circle\/","title":{"rendered":"Self-esteem and academic difficulties, a vicious circle?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nResearch shows that we all have a strong and perennial\u00a0need for self<\/a>\u00a0–\u00a0esteem<\/a>\u00a0– that is, to think that we are valuable, that we are loved and approved.\u00a0Students are not immune to this need.\u00a0Because of the importance given by society, parents or teachers to academic success, students who face academic difficulties and failures see their self-esteem threatened.<\/p>\n

These students are likely to think that they are not “a good person”.\u00a0It will then be imperative for them to regain value and, for this, they have self-protective psychological mechanisms.\u00a0The big problem is that each of these mechanisms will harm\u00a0their self<\/a>\u00a0–\u00a0determined motivation<\/a>\u00a0, that is to say, coming from themselves.\u00a0A pupil is self-motivated when he freely chooses to accomplish a school task, finds doing this task interesting, important and rewarding.<\/p>\n

The more self-determined his motivation, the more the student will develop and maintain the efforts essential to overcome the difficulties inherent in any learning.\u00a0This motivation is in a way the essential energy to maintain the pupil’s efforts, to overcome his difficulties.\u00a0The presentation of three of the self-protective psychological mechanisms will highlight their deleterious impact on students’ efforts.<\/p>\n

Anticipate failure<\/strong><\/h4>\n

The first of these self-protection mechanisms is top-down social comparison.\u00a0When the student is having difficulty on a school task or has just failed it, if he has the opportunity, he will choose to compare himself to students who are doing less well or struggling more than him.\u00a0Who has not announced a bad grade by citing the name of comrades who had had worse!<\/p>\n

This downward comparison preserves self-esteem and makes you feel good.\u00a0The problem is that the student regularly choosing comparison targets below him, will gradually give less interest and importance to his learning.\u00a0In other words, his self-determined motivation decreases: he will feel authorized to do worse than his current performance.\u00a0His self-esteem is protected but his academic difficulties will increase.<\/p>\n

The second self-protective mechanism is\u00a0behavioral\u00a0auto-handicap<\/a>\u00a0.\u00a0It occurs when the student anticipates failure.\u00a0The latter will then\u00a0place obstacles<\/a>\u00a0(procrastination, reduction of efforts, drug or alcohol abuse\u2026) on the way to his performance.\u00a0Lack of effort is thus a frequent example of an obstacle or self-\u00a0handicap<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0: the pupil arrives at an exam without having revised anything.<\/p>\n

If the anticipated failure does take place, the pupil can explain it by his lack of effort, his laziness (the obstacle).\u00a0He thus avoids the worst explanation for his self-esteem: lack of intelligence.\u00a0If he passes the exam despite the obstacle, he will perceive himself and be seen as very gifted (he will have passed without effort!).\u00a0The problem is that in preferring to pass regularly for a lazy person rather than for a person who would lack intellectual capacities, the pupil accumulates gaps.<\/p>\n

Even if he resumed making the necessary efforts to learn, it would not immediately translate into academic success, thus threatening his self-esteem again.\u00a0He is therefore caught in this process preventing him (unconsciously) from developing a self-determined motivation, the source of the necessary efforts to overcome his academic difficulties.<\/p>\n

Reconsider the mistake<\/strong><\/h4>\n

The third self-protective mechanism is\u00a0psychological disengagement,<\/a>\u00a0which consists in permanently discrediting areas that threaten self-esteem.\u00a0A pupil disengaged from the school field will proclaim that school does not matter to him, that studying has never interested him.\u00a0However, the pupil who psychologically disengages from school (or from a particular subject) no longer possesses any self-determined motivation: he attaches neither interest, nor value, nor importance to school tasks, and therefore has no plus that energy needed to persevere in the face of difficulties.\u00a0His academic difficulties therefore only increase.<\/p>\n

The terrible effectiveness of this disengagement mechanism is that the psychological break with school or a particular subject is often experienced as a personality trait, a natural characteristic against which one cannot fight: “I don’t like school. because I am rather manual \u201d;\u00a0\u201cI don’t like math because I don’t have a logical mind\u201d.<\/p>\n

The description of these three examples of self-protection mechanisms makes it possible to understand that the failing student, to protect his self-esteem, adopts behaviors which will only accentuate his difficulties.\u00a0However, it is possible to prevent students from resorting to its self-protection mechanisms.\u00a0This requires helping them to see difficulties, mistakes and failures as normal stages in all learning, so that they do not undermine their value.<\/p>\n

Carol S. Dweck’s work<\/a>\u00a0has shown that it is important to help students realize that the goal in school is to learn, not to be successful above all else.\u00a0To learn means to be wrong.\u00a0Therefore, situations of failure are worthy of interest because the errors they contain can help to find a way to reach a solution.<\/p>\n