Browsing by Subject "opettajan toiminta"

The aim of this study was to examine 6th graders' self-esteem and find out what kind of factors in the school environment are interrelated with it. This study examined interrelation between self-esteem and gender, learning difficulties, school value, school satisfaction, teacher's behavior, being bullied and participating in bullying. These different variables were chosen based on previous studies about self-esteem. The aim is to gain better understanding of the different factors that influence students' self-esteem in the school environment and therefore provide help for teachers battling with issues regarding self-esteem enhancement. The data was collected in the spring of 2013 as part of the Mind the Gap -project. Participants (n=735) were 6th grades from 33 different schools. Three different groups according to self-esteem were formed: weak, mediocre, and strong self-esteem in relation to other respondents. Relations between self-esteem and other variables were examined by Pearson's product-moment coefficient and Independent-Samples T test was used to examine differences between genders. Finally two-way ANOVAs were conducted to investigate self-esteem and gender differences regarding the different variables. According to the results 6th graders evaluated their self-esteem as relatively good. Boys reported better self-esteem than girls. However the boys also experienced more learning difficulties and took part in bullying more than girls. Girls' reported their school value, on the other hand, higher than boys'. There were no differences between genders in school satisfaction, experiencing teacher's behavior nor being bullied. The effect of self-esteem was clearly higher than the effect of gender on all the variables. Also an interaction effect of self-esteem and gender was found regarding being bullied. In the mediocre self-esteem group boys experienced more bullying than girls. The boys of the mediocre self-esteem group also participated in bullying the most.