Browsing by Subject "globaali itsetunto"

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 global self-esteem of students in special classes and in regular classes in two secondary schools in grades 7 through 9 in the city of Espoo. The difference in global self-esteem between the genders and the grade levels is also studied. Methods. The data was collected in April and May 2015 in two secondary schools in Espoo. Selfesteem was assessed with two different self-esteem measures, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale (RSE) and the State Self-Esteem scale (SSES) among 88 students. The participants included 56 students in regular classes and 32 students in special classes. The students in special classes were classified weather as having learning disabilities (17) or emotional and behavioral disturbance (15). Results and Conclusions. Results indicate that there is no difference in global self-esteem between students in regular and special classes. No difference was found with either self-esteem measures. Neither was there any difference in self-esteem between the different types of special classes. However, the difference in self-esteem between genders was obvious and statistically significant: the boys had higher self-esteem scores than girls with both scales. As different grades were compared, the ninth-graders had lower self-esteem scores than the seventh-graders assessed with SSES-measure indicating that self-esteem lowers during the secondary school years.