Formation Of Academic Self-Concept Of Middle And Senior Students In Primary Schools

As students’ awareness of their academic ability,academic self-concept is regarded as an important concept in developmental and educational psychology.After a large number of empirical studies have proved the close relationship between academic achievement and academic self-concept,Undoubtedly,it becomes an important focus of research to understand the psychological process of the formation of academic self-concept.There are Two models of academic self-concept formation which have gained more empirical support——the big-fish-little-pond effect and the internal-external frame of reference model,they emphasize the role of social comparison and dimensional comparison in the formation of academic self-concept respectively.Among them,the big-fish-little-pond effect aims to emphasize that for students with the same academic ability,high level schools or classes are more likely to lead to lower academic self-concept than low level ones.Internal-external frame of reference model starts from the formation of academic self-concept channels,it was assumed that the formation of academic self-concept is mainly affected by two aspects—— the external and internal comparison(that is,social comparison and dimension comparison),students form a self-concept of a subject by comparing grade with other subjects and with other students in the same subject.Although a large number of studies have confirmed the existence of the above two models,and some researchers have started to combine them into an integrated model for analysis,first of all,there are few studies on the two models in China,let alone on the integrated model.Secondly,there are few studies on the integrated model in foreign countries,which are not systematic.On the basis of verifying the big-fish-little-pond effect and the internal-external frame of reference model of middle and upper grade students in primary schools,the research aims to explore the feasibility of the integrated model in the primary school students.A total of N =1223 students participated in our first study and a total of N=663 students participated in our rest studies.Students in first study attended32 different classes between Grade 3 to Grade 6 in two Hohhot primary school.And Students in the rest studies attended 14 different classes between Grade 3to Grade 6 in one of the primary school.First of all,the study investigated students’ academic self-concept in the elementary schools,and then on the basis of the original model,include English and their self-concept in model analysis,after verifying students’ big-fish-little-pond effect and the internal-external frame of reference model,integration model was analyzed.The results are as follows:(1)Self-Description Questionnaire I has a good model fit among Grade 3to Grade 6 grade students in primary schools.The academic self-concept and its factors of Grade 3 to Grade 6 primary school students are generally above the average level,and some factor scores show a significant downward trend with the rise of grade.In terms of gender,there are significant differences between male and female students in Chinese,mathematics and English selfconcept.(2)The big-fish-little-pond effect did not show significant effect in the Grade 3 to Grade 6 primary school students group,but fifth,sixth grade students group has begun to appear in the corresponding trends,at the same time,the students of Grade 4 and Grade 5 groups began to appear significant interactions between individual academic achievement and average class achievement.The effect is not significant difference between male and female students.(3)The data of Grade 3 to Grade 6 students in primary schools generally conform to the internal-external frame of reference model.For the newly added English,the research results basically conform to the internal-external frame of reference model,and there is no language assimilation effect between English and Chinese.Meanwhile,the results confirm the contrast effect between mathematics and language subjects.At the same time,there are significant gender differences in this model,and it is preliminarily inferred that the internal-external frame of reference model begins to appear earlier in girls than in boys.(4)Only the data of third and sixth graders have good model fit,and only the data of third graders perfectly conform to the hypothesis of the integrated model,while the data of fourth,fifth and sixth graders are consistent and conform to the hypothesis in the dimension comparison.However,in terms of social comparison,the data of students in three grades are not consistent.