A Study On Academic Self-concept And Academic Achievement In Chinese Secondary School

Self-concept has been playing a key role in the research of the self for more than 40 years. Since 1980's, the research of self-concept has made quiet great progress due to the view of self-concept as a multidimensional and hierarchical structure, the widely use of the SDQ (Self Description Questionnaire) and the improvement of the statistics.At present study, by using the SDQ II, the self-concept of secondary schools in Guangzhou, China were surveyed. The differences between boys and girls, among schools, and among ages were investigated. The focus, however, is on the relationship between academic self-concept and academic achievement. SPSS 10.0 and LISREL8.30 were applied to analyze the data. The results are as follows.1. Group differences of the self-concept.There are significant different development levels of self-concept among different grades. But no differences were found in self-concept as a whole across gender and schools.2. Relationship among the self-concepts of different subjects.Chinese, math, and English are the key courses in secondary schools. Negative correlations were found between math self-concept and Chinese self-concept, between math self-concept and English self-concept while Chinese self-concept and English self-concept is positively related. All of these correlations, however, are not significant.3. Extended internal/external frame of reference model.Extended internal/external frame of reference (I/E) model for all the three key courses were examined and the model was supported by the data, (a) Math, English, and Chinese achievements are highly correlated; (b) Math self-concept and Chinese self-concept, Math self-concept and English self-concept are negatively correlated, but Chinese self-concept and English self-concept is positively correlated; (c) Math, English, and Chinese achievements each had positive effects on the matching domain-specific self-concept; (d) Chinese achievement has positive effect on the English self-concept, and negative effect on the math self-concept; math achievement has negative effects on the English self-concept and Chinese self-concept; English achievement has positive effect on the Chinese self-concept, and negative effect on the math self-concept. All of these effects, however, are not significant.4. The big-fish-little-pond effect.By analyzing the scores of Chinese achievement and corresponding self-concept in different classes, the big-fish-little-pond effect was found.5. Longitudinal analysis of academic self-concept and academic achievement.The academic scores of the students and the corresponding period of self-concept were collected at two time points and the relationships among them were analyzed. Large effects were found of the self-concept in the time 1 on the achievement in time 2. The effects of the achievement in time 1 on the self-concept in time 2 became weaker than those in time 1.