Justified Self-Esteem |
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| Authors: | KRISTJÁN KRISTJÁNSSON |
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| Institution: | Faculty of Education, University of Akureyri, P.O. Box 224, IS-602 Akureyri, Iceland |
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| Abstract: | This paper develops a thread of argument from previous contributions to this journal by Richard Smith and Ruth Cigman about the educational salience of self-esteem. It is argued—contra Smith and Cigman—that the social science conception of self-esteem does serve a useful educational function, most importantly in undermining the inflated self-help conception of self-esteem that has commonly been transposed to the educational arena. Recent findings about a lack of significant correlation between low global self-esteem and relevant educational variables help us to focus on the type of self-esteem that does matter in the classroom: justified domain-specific self-esteem, in which the chief domains in question are the school subjects and students' self-respect. Moreover, this paper suggests that low self-confidence—which is a real problem for many students—may often be mistaken for low self-esteem. |
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