Browsing by Subject "inklusiivinen koulu"

Objectives. There has been a wide range of international studies of self-esteem between students in regular classes and special classes. However, research has yielded conflicting results. Some studies report lower self-esteem levels among students in special classes, while others note no differences. Throughout the history of research on self-esteem, there have been concerns that the concept was poorly defined and there were a large number of self-esteem instruments poorly correlating with one another. The purpose of this study is to compare the self-esteem of students in special classes and in regular classes in four secondary schools in grades 7 through 9 in the city of Espoo. Along with the global self-esteem also academic, social and physical domains of self-esteem are studied. The difference in self-esteem between the students with and without special educational needs in regular classes is also studied and compared with the students in special classes. The difference in self-esteem between the genders and the grade levels is compared and the equivalence of the two self-esteem measures is analysed. Methods. The data was collected between November 2018 and February 2019 in four secondary schools in Espoo. Self-esteem was assessed with two different self-esteem measures, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale (RSE) and the State Self-Esteem scale (SSES) among 148 students. The participants included 97 students in regular classes and 51 students in special classes. 17 students in regular classes had special education needs. All the students in special education classes were classified as having learning disabilities. Results and Conclusions. Results indicate that there is no difference in general self-esteem between students in regular and special classes. No difference was found with either selfesteem measures. Neither was there any difference in self-esteem between the students in special classes, the students with special education needs (SEN) in regular classes and the students without special education needs (non-SEN) in regular classes. However, the students in special classes had higher global self-esteem (RSE) in the 9th grade than the students in regular classes. Differences in domain-specific self-esteem were also found. Both the students in special classes and the SEN students in regular classes scored higher in social domain of self-esteem than the non-SEN students in regular classes. The SEN students in regular classes also scored higher than the other two groups in physical domain of self-esteem. The difference in self-esteem between genders was obvious and statistically significant: the boys had higher self-esteem scores than girls with both scales. However, as different grades were compared, the only statistically significant difference between genders was found with the seventh-graders. The correlation of the two self-esteem measures was high and statistically significant.