Children may have difficulty with learning for a great variety
of reasons. In determining these reasons, the diagnostician will need
to consider among other intellectual functioning, environmental
influences, biological and emotional disorders and cultural differences.
What also needs to be included is how students view themselves
as people and as students - that is, their feelings of self-worth or
self-esteem.
Very often the solution to a child's learning problems are looked
for in the cognitive areas, when it is this affective aspect of
learning that requires attention.
There is ample research evidence to show, that children with poor
opinions of thier self-worth, are less likely to be doing well at
school than children who have a high opinion of themselves.
Less clear however, is the actual cause and effect relationship.
That is, is it more usual to find low self-esteem causing poor school
performance or does poor school performance cause low self-esteem.
This study assumes that low self-esteem is likely to be a major
cause of poor performance and that any efforts to change a child's
opinion of himself in a positive way, will result in improved
performance - in this particular case - at reading.
As self-esteem is largely learned from interaction with significant
others, an attempt was made to influence the self opinions of a group
of children by specific counselling of these 'others', here, their
parents and teacher.
The major thrust of the counselling was directed towards the
parents, although it is understood that an equal amount of effort
with the teachers of the children involved would have been justified.
In a program extending over ten one and one half sessions,
parents of an experimental group of children, were counselled in
two groups. The aims of the program were to provide parents with
an awareness of how their child's self concept is formed, how it
affects their achievement in school and how they might influence
its change. In the study, this experimental group did not show
any significant gain in achievement or self-esteem over the control
group. Nevertheless, there emerged a number of useful implications
for better practice in the field of educational counselling.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/218781 |
| Date | January 1978 |
| Creators | Barringhaus, Don, n/a |
| Publisher | University of Canberra. Education |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | ), Copyright Don Barringhaus |
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