Browsing by Subject "academic self-concept"

Research on the ethnic Malay minority in Singapore has attempted to examine the issue of the community’s academic underachievement over the years tend to only look at it through the lens of historical and socio-political factors. This exploratory study is thus to contribute to the limited literature on Malays in Singapore from a socio-psychological perspective, especially in relation to Malay ethnic identification, perceptions of prejudice, and academic underachievement. Results of the study show that beliefs about ethnic injustice, but not academic performance, had more of an effect on psychological disengagement among ethnic Malay-Muslim students in Singapore. Higher ethnic identification predicted greater psychological disengagement, particularly discounting processes, as well as accounted for lower academic self-concept in general and also in the two subscales of academic confidence and academic effort. Rather than used as a justification to continue the harmful narrative of ‘cultural deficit’ and ‘minority mindset’, it is hoped that knowing the relationship between ethnic identification and academic self-concept and psychological disengagement processes in the academic domain would help inform future research in finding new targeted ways to counter these behaviours and increase achievement.