Browsing by Author "Laaksonen, Mikko"

Self-esteem affects to child’s appearance, thoughts and actions and it has a big impact regarding child’s learning, well-being and future sights. Previous studies reveal that teacher’s feedback has a big role when enhancing child’s self-esteem. The aim of this study was to examine primary school teachers’ descriptions of primary school students’ self-esteem in school and the ways of enhancing it in their job. The theoretical frame of this study is based on Michele Borba’s five component self-esteem model and on previous studies that reveal the importance of enhancing child’s self-esteem. This study was a qualitative study and it was analysed by using a phenomenographic analysis. Eight primary school teachers’ participated to the study. Four of them were male and four women. The data was collected from the primary school teachers throughout theme interviews. The data consists of 92 transcribed pages from the interviews. The categories presented as the results of the study were build from the descriptions of the primary school teachers and concerning the research questions. They were build from detailed expressions towards to a bigger picture and finally forming the categories shown as results. What comes to the results, primary school teachers’ know quite well and many-sided, how to enhance students’ self-esteem. As a result, five different types of categories were revealed. The categories were enhancing the student’s feeling of security, enhancing the group dynamics, enhancing the student’s selfhood, enhancing the student’s realistic target set up and enhancing the student’s feeling of competence. It is important to enhance self-esteem long-term and always take into account the different types of individuals in the group. Primary school teachers’ also thought that the enhancement of self-esteem is important in the school. Regarding the primary school teachers’ descriptions of the manifestation of students’ self-esteem and its level in school, six different types of categories were revealed as a result. The categories were the appreciation of yourself, the recognizing of your strengths and weakness’, social skills, the trust towards yourself and your abilities, the courage to participate and try new things and the tolerance of disorder in routines. What comes to the results, a primary school teacher needs to focus the attention towards the students’ and try to get to know the students’ better. That way the teacher can identify the quality of the students’ self-esteem. The results of this study are similar when comparing them to Borba’s self-esteem model.