Self-Esteem in Children with Special Educational Needs

Peter W. Gurney

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429994456
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

First published in 1988. The mounting concern in schools over widespread failure in academic achievement, greater disaffection in children and the lack of confidence in many school leavers are highlighted by the difficulties experienced by children who have special educational needs. Within this group the importance of the child's evaluation of him or herself – i.e. self-esteem – is a neglected issue.

This book investigates how the level of self-esteem appears to influence social behaviour and school performance in children with special educational needs. It discusses the practical steps that can be taken to assess and enhance self-esteem in children with special needs and evaluates their effectiveness. The author emphasises the discrepancy between the performance of children who have special educational needs in ordinary classrooms with that achieved in special settings. He argues that the negative impact on a child's self-esteem created by placing him/her in an ordinary classroom may outweigh the benefits of greater integration. A full and informative treatment of both the theoretical and practical implications of a neglected subject, this text book is suitable for experienced special educational needs teachers and those undergoing teacher training, as well as psychologists with an academic interest in the self-concept or a professional involvement in assessing children.

Chapter 1

THE SELF-CONCEPT: GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS AND THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS

To gain some perspective on the various contributions to the present understanding of the word ‘self’ we need to examine the work of William James, who in 1892, published one of the earliest useful texts. He drew attention to the difficulty that what is being studied, i.e. ‘self as object’ can also be studied by that person, ‘self as agent’, a feature which has led to much argument and confusion. In this book we shall concentrate on the object (Me) rather than the agent (I), important though it is also to study the latter. James said of the ‘empirical self’ or ‘Me’ that, in its broadest sense, it is, ‘the sum total of all that he (Man) can call his’, and may be divided into three parts:

• (a) its constituents;
• (b) the feelings and emotions they arouse (self-appreciation); and
• (c) the acts which they prompt (self-seeking and self-preservation).

Charles Cooley in 1902 concentrated principally on the aspect of self that James termed the ‘Social Me’. In Cooley’s view, separation of the individual from his social environment in any discussion was clearly unhelpful and he concentrated on the intimate relationship between the individual and the social environment in which he lived. The term ‘looking glass self’ was suggested by Cooley and served to crystallise the thinking of some writers (e.g. Goffman, 1959) that an individual’s concept of himself is entirely, or largely, determined by the reactions of others to him in the course of social interaction. This theoretical contribution was extended by Mead (1934) who saw human behaviour as commencing properly in young children when their sense of self had begun to develop. Mead saw self as a product of symbolic processes and therefore laid emphasis on the importance of language development and use. Mead’s work also stimulated thought about the idea of an individual having an overall sense of self which was situation-independent yet would be derived from a number of ‘specific selves’ drawn from a wide variety of situational experiences.

In 1908 William McDougall wrote about the ‘sentiments’ of Man, including in his list the ‘self-sentiment’ which he appeared to define as an organised system of emotional tendencies and behavioural dispositions centred around the self as an object. Self-sentiment had particular importance but it was one of a variety of sentiments and was not a central and dominant feature of personality in determining response behaviour.

Unconscious motives carne into the picture when Freud began to publish his theories. He conceived a more global construct of the self, which included the ‘ego’, ‘superego’ and ‘id’ within it. The ego was learned as a result of transactions between the individual and his environment and was conceived as mainly operating at the conscious level. Self, on the other hand, incorporated both conscious and unconscious elements. Freud did not however discrim-inate consistently between self and ego.

Adler (1935), Fromm (1939) and Horney (1950) were influenced by Freud’s ideas and all conceived the idea of a form of innate drive which operated to motivate behaviour. Adler used the term ‘superiority striving’, Fromm ‘self-fulfilment’ and Horney ‘self-realisation’. The spread of Freudian ideas drew attention away from the study of the self-concept in its own right and this decline of interest was further reinforced by the upsurge of behaviourism initiated by Watson (1924). The early behaviourists have, perhaps, been unfairly stereotyped as ignoring the internal states of the person. As a generalisation this would be invalid as many, Watson included, were prepared to acknowledge the existence of internal states and the part that they might play in determining behaviour. In the interests of a more tough-minded empirical approach, the internal state of the organism was set on one side however to allow research effort to concentrate on the observable events involved in stimulus and response behaviour.

Gordon Allport argued strongly however for the unique properties of each individual. Allport fused the ego and the self into what he termed the ‘proprium’ which he defined as, ‘the self as object of knowledge and feeling’, (Allport, 1961, p. 127) thus introducing greater coherence into the concept.

In 1947 Sherif and Cantril published a developmental picture of the self and presented what they considered to be evidence of the contribution made to perception by self-reference. Gardner Murphy in the same year used self as a more central concept in his theory and also emphasised the effect upon the child of an ‘unlovely self-picture’.

By the 50s the Neo-Freudians were giving more attention to the ‘self-picture’ and psychologists working in the clinical areas were finding the behaviourist model too confining. An important contribution in the field of psychotherapy came from Carl Rogers (1951). Thirty years of experience in therapy led Rogers to propose a theory of personality with ‘self’ at its centre and, moreover, agent of its destiny. Whilst Rogers talks of development towards the ‘true’ self, Maslow (1954) talks of the process of ‘Self-actualisation’, both terms implying a potential which may never be fully achieved.

The consensus of opinion amongst writers such as Lecky (1945), Snygg and Combs (1949) and Kelly (1955) is that individuals acquire a concept about their selves just as they do for any other object in their perceptual field. This self-concept is considered to be of great importance, both in influencing immediate behaviour and controlling future development.

More recently, Bandura (1971, 1977) has made a useful contribution to our understanding from his position as a social learning theorist, using the concept of ‘self-efficacy’. He has tried to explain how information from specific performances, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion from others and physiological states can alter the level and strength of an individual’s self-efficacy. He has also made clear how ‘modelling’ functions to help children adopt and internalise the standards of those adults who are important to them. These standards then become self-imposed on children, leading them to respond to their own behaviour in either a self-critical or a self-satisfied way. Bandura (1971,. p. 28) argues that occasionally these self-controlled consequences of behaviour become more powerful than consequences from the external environment, ‘…. there is no more devastating punishment than self-contempt’.

Meichenbaum and Goodman (1971) also noted from their research that it is not the environmental consequences of our behaviour which is of primary importance but what we say to ourselves about these consequences. As Mahoney (1974, p. 36) states, ‘…. there is a broad consensus among psychologists and philosophers alike that most action is occasioned by a mediated rather than a direct reality.’

In 1932 two Germans named Bertram and Klausman attempted to fly 500 miles across the Timor Sea from the Dutch East Indies to Darwin. Unfortunately they flew seriously off course, landed in a deserted, arid area and were lost without food for 53 days. After their rescue one German became mentally ill and died two years later. The other returned to repair and fly his plane out, wrote a book and founded a leading business in aerial photography. Yet both had survived an identical disaster. It appears that the personal view which each man took of this experience was crucial in determining his subsequent behaviour. Their relative levels of self-esteem would have been an important factor in shaping their view of this disaster.

The self-concept is built up, it is argued, by perceptions of experience over time after birth. It is argued that a major advance cannot take place until the infant can perceive himself as a distinct object in his environment, capable of decisions on different courses of action. He needs also to be able to view others in a similar way. Jersild (1955 p. 17) says that, ‘…. once the child has achieved the ability to attribute purpose and intention to the acts of others, this ability will have a pro-found influence on the development of the self-system.’

When a child has reached this stage of development, other people become a very important source of information about his self. As Babladelis and Adams (1967, p. 195) state, ‘…. it is not surprising that the reflections of himself in the eyes of significant others play a crucial part in the concepts he acquires about himself.’

The self is considered to be influenced by two other related concepts: the ‘other self’, a picture based upon the evaluation of others with whom the individual interacts, and the ‘ideal self’, a picture of the self that the individual feels he would like and ought to be.

The ‘other self’ (or ‘cognised self’ as it is sometimes called) is considered by some writers to be an important source of feedback to the self. It is argued that the individual is frequently led to revise his cognised self because of changes in his concept of how others see him. Other theorists lay stress also on the ideal self in this respect:

Satisfaction or concern of an individual with his phenomenal self is datum of great importance. Much behaviour becomes coherent when understood in terms of the ideal self towards which an individual aspires and his personal evaluation of how close he sees himself to this ideal. (Block and Thomas, 1955, p. 254)

It is often considered to be a prime function of the self-concept to bring consistency into behaviour. This helps individuals to predict their own behaviour and assists other people with whom they are inter-acting to predict their behaviour more easily. Stagner (1961, p. 195) says, ‘The individual has a mental picture of himself and of the actions appropriate to this image. His self-image is a guide, a source of inner cues to behaviour which makes for consistency. ‘

Staines, J.W. (1954, p. 17) argues that, once established, the self-concept resists change; ‘…. that the conditions of initial growth do not appear to be the conditions of subsequent growth.’

This inertia, which is considered by some writers to be characteristic of the self in development, is thought to be essential to allow the self to fulfil its function of giving stability to the personality and facilitating prediction. There are respects in which such stability constitutes a disadvantage: Bowman (1966, pp. 76-77) argues that:

It is generally assumed that the way a person thinks of himself determines the general intent and direction of a person’s behaviour. In other words, persons who think of themselves negatively will behave in self-defeating ways, even though they may choose a variety of behaviour patterns in the process.

Change is also made more difficult, it is argued, because the individual develops strategies for maintaining the self which either, ‘(a)…. have a high probability of giving us evidence that we are who we think we are or (b)…. cover up or redefine evidence that we might be something we think we are not.’ (Babladelis and Adams, 1967, p. 265)

Strong evidence that reality and the self-concept are no longer in agreement may lead the individual to revise it. Jersild (1952, p. 20) says that, ‘Learning something which really makes a difference to oneself, in the sense that there is a revision or change in the self-concept, is likely to be painful. Some of the most valuable learnings are the most painful.’

The writer sees the self-concept as a symbolic construction built up within a person over a period of years from birth, which is a product of the psychological processes of attention, perception, learning and memory, as they are currentlyconceived. The self-concept, it is argued, begins as a growing collection of attributes but, in course of time, is evaluated by the person himself, both overall, and in relation to specific groups of attributes. This collection of perceptions not only acquires a conceptual structure over time but also acquires affective associations of positive and negative feelings. These have a motivational function and become associated with particular behavioural tendencies. The self-concept may therefore be described as an attitude object of the person. It has more importance than most other such objects because of its proximity to the person’s central value system.

The self-concept may be conceived as containing both conscious and unconscious elements. Unconscious elements are however excluded from the writes definition, although their presence within the person is not denied. Instead of forming part of the definition, however, such elements will be conceived as creating defensive behaviour and certain kinds of response sets, an aspect which will be discussed in a later section concerned with measurement problems.

As defined thus far, the self-concept is seen as a central and important object in the conceptual structure of the individual, which may mediate between stimulus and response when the former has a self-relevant aspect. It would only mediate indirectly in response to information provided for the person as part of an internal check and feedback mechanism. The self-concept, then, is a relatively stable internal abstraction consisting of all that individuals see as ‘theirs’: physical, social and emotional aspects, characteristic actions and competencies, together with important material possessions.

Self-esteem, on the other hand, is the relative degree of worthiness, or acceptability, which people perceive their self-concept to possess. Two general reference sources of information for this relative judgement are crucial. They are the opinions of important, or ‘significant’ others and the ideal self. To understand a particular child’s source of self-esteem we would have to be clear which ‘reference’ group the child is using to make these relative judgements. Is it parents, all adults, peers, teen-age idols? In addition, we would need to be clear about the elements of the child’s ideal self-concept. How discrepant is it from present judgements, that is, the cognised self referred to earlier? As will become clearer in the next chapter, a young child will not have developed an ideal self so he will be forced to make judgements largely on the opinions of those adults who are important to him, i.e. parents and teachers. This means that comments made by adults are potentially very powerful and formative because the young child is receptive to all kinds of information which is relevant to refining his self-concept.

A review of the contributions from writers on the self-concept makes clear that four main theoretical perspectives have contributed to our under-standing. They are the psychoanalytic (represented by Freud and the neo-Freudians), the humanistic (Rogers, Maslow), the phenomenological (Lecky, Snygg and Combs) and the behavioural (Bandura). Key concepts have arisen from each perspective as follows:

Psychoanalytic

This approach lays emphasis on unconscious processes in determining behaviour and on the development of the ‘super-ego’, or conscience, as the child grows older. Processes which are inaccessible to the child are probably hidden from the adult and it is probably easier to relegate them to particular response sets or ‘defence strategies’. A strongly developed super-ego will lead to a child being better behaved, it is argued, but will also generate strong guilt and anxiety feelings in relation to any misdemeanour. This perspective also places a strong emphasis on the importance of early experiences thus usefully focussing attention on the importance of previous experience in the development of the child.

Phenomenological

The group of writers adopting this perspective put a greater emphasis on the here and now, both in terms of the way perceptions are organised and of present consciousness. They see the person as embedded in his own personal and subjective world, thus finding it difficult to maintain direct contact with the objective world. All perceptions are likely to be distorted by personal meanings to a degree: the perceptions which are admitted are likely to be consonant with the self-concept rather than discrepant from it. In addition, it is argued that our behaviour is also an attempt to confirm this picture of the self, thus maintaining its integrity.

Humanist

Athough writers adopting this perspective are usually endorsing a phenomenological view as well, they are noted separately here because of their statements that, ideally, the person should be self-actualising, that is, always striving to achieve his own potential. Rogers, in particular, underlines the need for positive self-regard in this process while Maslow says that we cannot behave in a self-actualising way unless certain lower levels of need are satisfied and are no longer dominative or ‘pre-potent’.

Behaviourist

Skinner, a pioneer of behaviourist thinking and empirical work (1978), may not necessarily have acknowledged the existence of self but he elaborated important principles, relating to reward and punishment, which are useful in explaining the development of a child’s behaviour with age. Others writing more recently have shifted the focus towards social learning. Bandura (1977) for example has expounded the idea of ‘self-efficacy’ as mentioned earlier;and Mahoney (1974) in writing about cognitive behaviour modification has emphasised that most behaviour is triggered by our personal response or interpretation of preceding experiences rather than the actual events themselves. A particular strength of this perspective lies in its ability to suggest strategies by which change may be brought about in children’s self-concepts, a vital issue to be reviewed in Chapter 6. While this approach is clearly concerned with the here and now, practitioners who adopt it are usually interested in the child’s past experiences as well, even if they label it a ‘reinforcement history’.

No single perspective will hold all the insights that a teacher needs for working with children. An eclectic approach i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The Self-Concept: General Characteristics and Theoretical Foundations
• 2 The Development of the Self-Concept
• 3 Assessment of Self-Esteem
• 4 Self-Esteem, Schooling and Academic Achievement
• 5 Enhancing Self-Esteem in Children with Special Needs I: Indirect Influences
• 6 Enhancing Self-Esteem in Children with Special Needs Ii: General Classroom Strategies
• 7 Practical Classroom Activities Related to Self-Esteem for Special Needs Children
• 8 Enhancing Self-Esteem in Teachers of Special Needs Children
• 9 Summary and Conclusion
• Appendices
• Bibliography
• Index