The Development Track Of Self-esteem In The Middle And Late Childhood: The Role Of Peer Relationship And Academic Adaptation

The middle-late childhood is an important period of personality development,during which children not only need to face the entrance pressure(from primary school to junior high school),but also to prepare for the upcoming adolescence.Self-esteem refers to the positive evaluation and experience of children in the process of socialization which relates to their mental health and social adaption.In this study,participants were 1317 primary school students,who were followed up for four years from grade 3 to grade 6.Assessments of children’s self-esteem,peer acceptance,academic achievement and learning problems were obtained from both self-reports,peer assessment,and teacher rating.Latent growth modeling was used to examine the initial levels and change in selfesteem over time,and the prediction of gender and peer acceptance in both self-esteem’s initial levels and growth;Then to further explore the individual difference in the selfesteem developmental trajectories during middle-late childhood,model testing was used to determine the growth patterns of esteem and the number of class group trajectories;Finally,considering the important role of academic adaptation in primary and secondary education in Chinese culture,the prediction of academic adaptation(academic achievement,learning problem)on the classification of self-esteem developmental trajectories.The results showed:(1)Children’s self-esteem increased in a linear trajectory from grade 3 to grade 6,girls had higher initial level of self-esteem than boys,but the self-esteem of girls grows more slowly than that of boys over time;(2)Peer acceptance at given testing point could promote children’s self-esteem at that time;(3)The developmental trajectories of children’ self-esteem during middle-late childhood could be divided into 3 subgroups: high increasing group,middle slowly decreasing group,low quickly decreasing group,most of them belong to high increasing groups;(4)Academic adaptation could significantly predict the classification of selfesteem subgroups during middle-late childhood.Compare to the middle slowly decreasing group,the higher level of learning problems,the smaller possibility of children belonging to the high increasing group,the better academic achievement,the higher possibility of children belonging to the high increasing group;(5)The effect of academic achievement on the development of self-esteem of girls was significantly higher than that of boys.The better academic performance,compared with boys,girls were more likely to fall into the low quickly decreasing group.