Rural Junior High School Academic Self-concept And Academic Achievement

Since James began the research of self-concept, it has become an important research area in psychology. In 1976, Shavelson pioneering proposed a multidimensional and hierarchical structure of academic self-concept, and divided self-concept into academic self and non-academic self. Since then, academic self has become the self-concept research focus. The widely use of the SDQ (Self Description Questionnaire) developed by Marsh and the improvement of the statistics made the research of self-concept gain new progress.At the present study, by using the SDQ--Ⅱ, the academic self-concept of 300 rural secondary students was surveyed. The overall averages of academic self-concept, the differences between boys and girls, among grades and the relationship between academic self-concept and academic achievement were investigated. SPSS16.0 was applied to analyze the data. The results are as follows.1. The overall average of academic self-concept is at a medium level.2. The development level of academic self-concept shows a declining trend. There are significant differences in math self-concept, general school self-concept and academic self-concept among different grades.3. Significant differences are found in academic self-concept across gender. Girls in verbal self-concept are significantly higher than boys, while boys in math self-concept are significantly higher than that of girls.4. The academic self-concept and academic achievement is positively related. Math self-concept and math grades,verbal self-concept and verbal grades are significantly positive correlation. But math self-concept and verbal self-concept are significant negative correlation.5. Different academic achievement students' academic self-concept have significant differences. Outstanding group of students in academic self-concept is significantly higher than the middle academic level and poor academic level groups of student.