Primary Students' Self-concept And Its Relations With Psychological Health

Self-concept is one of the important parts of self-consciousness,which is a product of all the beliefs and evaluations one has about oneself and includes one's behavioral tendencies(Burns,1982). The evaluation comes from self's experience and it's acknowledgment on the environment. Many psychologists have been focused on self-concept since William James posed it to Western psychology. Although the scholars have studied it from different perspectives, they still pay less attention to how it's development affects people's behaviors and actions. Psychological health is the key aspect for their development in the future. Many investigations exist show that the psychological health of the Chinese primary school students is not optimistic. But there are still less research on whether self-concept is related to psychological health, and how it affects psychological health. Thus this thesis attempts to investigate the affecting degree and the different reactions of self-concept to the primary students' psychological health. The subjects in this investigation are primary students ranged from Grade 3 to Grade 6. The investigation aims to provide some helpful information for cultivating primary students' active self-concept and promoting their psychological health. This thesis adopts the methods of quantizaion and qualitization, 388 primary students from 2 primary schools of Liuzhou are chosen in the investigation. Quantization reseach depends on SDQ and MHT Questionnaires, which analyses the development of primary students' self-concept and psychological health. The results are shown as following:1. The development of primary students' self-concept varies with grades but not significantly. The trend is like a shape of a hill. It develops more fast from Grade 3 to Grade 4, and then declines slowly from Grade 4 to Grade 5, finally reaches the lowest points at Grade 6 with a quick decline.2. The development of primary students psychological health didn't vary much according to sex. But it varies with different grades. Primary students are more likely to meet with psychological problems during Grade 3, 4 and 5.3. The total scores and its factors of self-concept are positively related with psychological health and its factors---- the higher the self-concept is , the poorer the psychological health is . Further investigation shows that both psychological health and its factors can be predicated by at least another two factors of self-concept. The qualitization is carried out by interviews. Those who get higher and lower scores are selected to accept the interviews. 8 subjects are interviewed, whose parents, teachers and friends are also included. The interviews show that interpersonal communication with significant others,academic achievement, the style of reasoning and the position in the class are major factors to self-concept. Finally, the thesis suggests both educators and parents to understand the function of self-concept from a new perspective, try to cultivate students' active self-concept and promote their psychological health.