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This article was downloaded by: [UQ Library] On: 14 November 2014, At: 21:26 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Education 3-13: International Journal of Primary, Elementary and Early Years Education Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rett20 Should we raise pupils' self-esteem? Effie Maclellan Published online: 30 Jul 2007. To cite this article: Effie Maclellan (2005) Should we raise pupils' self-esteem?, Education 3-13: International Journal of Primary, Elementary and Early Years Education, 33:1, 7-12, DOI: 10.1080/03004270585200031 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03004270585200031 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http:// www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

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This article was downloaded by: [UQ Library]On: 14 November 2014, At: 21:26Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: MortimerHouse, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Education 3-13: International Journal of Primary,Elementary and Early Years EducationPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rett20

Should we raise pupils' self-esteem?Effie MaclellanPublished online: 30 Jul 2007.

To cite this article: Effie Maclellan (2005) Should we raise pupils' self-esteem?, Education 3-13: International Journal ofPrimary, Elementary and Early Years Education, 33:1, 7-12, DOI: 10.1080/03004270585200031

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03004270585200031

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) containedin the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose ofthe Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be reliedupon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shallnot be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and otherliabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to orarising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematicreproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

SHOULD WE RAISE PUPILS" SELF-ESTEEM?

Effie Maclellan

This article argues that the teacher is not well served by relying on the construct of self-esteem.

Although an important idea in psychological health, self-esteem is not of direct importance to the teacher. More useful constructs would be those of self-concept and self-efficacy; both of which can be related directly

to academic achievement.

Introduction How are the children in your class/school getting on? How satisfied are they with their own achievements?

How interested are they in what school has to offer?

How much independence do they have to determine their own learning goals? How are they getting along

with each other and with you? How do they respond to

challenging tasks or unexpected situations? These questions and others like them are important to us as

teachers because they reflect aspects of self-function-

ing and the answers to them say something about how

well the self is doing its job. Given that poor self-func- tioning has been suggested as adversely affecting one's

achievement and life chances, and that it has been asso-

ciated with eating disorders and delinquent behaviour,

it is not surprising that improving self-functioning is a goal of education. It is highly desirable that we should

want to promote people's psychological well-being and

so evaluating oneself positively, having warm relation- ships with others, making genuine choices, managing

one's environment and having a sense of moving for-

ward are qualities that we wish to foster.

The Issue The importance placed on good self-functioning in our society is reflected in the sheer quantity of books, web- sites and educational programmes that offer advice on improving self-esteem. This advice tends to portray self-esteem as something that people do or do not have and implies that having self-esteem leads to 'good things' while not having self-esteem leads to 'bad things'. Further there is the suggestion that teachers can give children self-esteem through finding ways of mak- ing them feel good about themselves. Finally this advice recommends that through affirming children as worthy people (by giving praise, compliments, tokens and stickers) teachers can improve classroom be- haviour and achievement. However, as many people reading this article will testify, despite teachers' best efforts to give confidence and encouragement, they are frequently met with apathy, anxiety and helplessness. While this is disappointing given the availability of such extensive support materials, it is not actually sur- prising. The problem with trying to boost self-esteem directly is that we are pursuing the wrong strategy. In- creases in children's self-esteem do not produce

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increases in their academic achievement (Marsh, 1990; Scheirer and Kraut, 1979; Skaalvik and Hagtvet, 1990). Indeed the evidence for a link between self-esteem and any given behaviour is so weak that self-esteem cannot be claimed either to cause behaviour or behavioural change (Seligman, 1990, 1995), just as smiling does not of itself cause a person to be happy. What the evi- dence does suggest, however, is that the level of one's self-esteem is a consequence, rather than a cause, ofbe- haviour. This does not mean that self-esteem is an un- important concept or that low self-esteem is desirable. Rather, the point is that if we are to contribute to others' psychological well-being and to improve their self-fun- ctioning, we need more sophisticated explanations of why people behave as they do. While the term, self- esteem has been used in both lay and professional par- lance as though it had commonly agreed meaning, there is as yet no comprehensive theory to explain the wide variety of everyday situations in which self- esteem is implicated, nor indeed is there an adequate conceptual definition of what self-esteem is (Solomon et al, 1991). The issue thus turns on what people might actually be meaning when they use the term, self- esteem. This article will discuss two possible alter- natives: self-concept and self-efficacy.

Self-Concept Self-esteem has a close and complex relationship with the self-concept so much so that the terms have been used interchangeably (Ireson and Hallam, 2001; Muijs and Reynolds, 2001). Early understandings charac- terise self-concept as a description of our attributes with self-esteem representing the difference between our actual self and our ideal self (Burns, 1982). Sub- sequent research conceptualises self-concept as multi- dimensional (Byrne and Shavelson, 1996; Marsh, Byrne and Shavelson, 1988; Shavelson, Hubner and Stanton, 1976) with the number of self-concepts we construct being potentially unlimited. Our global self- concept comprises academic and non-academic self- concepts each of which can include perceptions of, for example, physique, social relationships and scholastic achievements. The particular self-concept that is activated at any one time is in response to the personal needs and situational contingencies of the moment (McGuire et al, 1986). Each aspect of ourselves about which we have a view contains descriptive features that we believe to be true. These are derived from ex- perience with the environment, interactions with signi- ficant others and attributions of own behaviour. But our concept of self may also contain evaluative features as to the importance or worth we place on these beliefs or descriptive features. These evaluative features comprise

the self-esteem. Because self-esteem is a value judge- ment about perceptions, it is only if the perception is an important or salient one for the individual that it matters whether the judgement is good or bad. Thus, for a professional footballer, self-concept of physical ability is likely to be particularly important to self- esteem, while academic self-concept may be less im- portant. Equally, our concepts of ourselves as teachers will strongly influence our self-esteem. Because we only need to feel good about those aspects of our person that are important to us, it does us no psycho- logical harm at all to have low esteem about aspects of our lives that are unimportant to us. Self-esteem refers to the affective qualities of positive and negative feel- ings that fluctuate across time and situations and which are distinct from our cognitions about our attributes (Leafy and Downs, 1995). Self-esteem is thus the more limited, evaluative component of the self-concept and while self-concept and self-esteem are not synony- mous, they are ambiguously related constructs.

The significance of the self-concept for education is in the assumed relationship between beliefs about self and academic achievement. However, many of the studies claiming a relationship are either conceptually or methodologically limited (Byrne, 1986; 1996) so no simple conclusions as to the strength or direction of the relationship between self and achievement can be derived. In amongst the wealth of conflicting findings, a couple of consistencies do emerge, however. One is that the relationship between academic self-concept and academic achievement is stronger than the relation- ship between global self-concept and academic achievement. The other is that the influence of acade- mic achievement on self-concept is greater than is the influence of self-concept on academic achievement (Muijs and Reynolds, 2001) although the relationship between self-concept and academic achievement may vary with age, with the definition of self-concept used and with the measure of academic achievement used (Hansford and Hattie, 1982). Taken together these find- ings have important implications for us as teachers. Rather than being overly concerned with general self- enhancement (Scheirer and Kraut, 1979) we can make greater impact on children's self-functioning by pro- moting competence through a structured, relevant and differentiated curriculum. Challenging, meaningful tasks that can be mastered and that are accompanied by specific and authentic feedback cumulatively con- tribute to improved self-concept whereas prior self- concept does not contribute directly or significantly to predicted subsequent achievement (Calsyn and Kenny, 1977; Helmke and van Aken, 1995; Muijs and Reynolds, 2001). Further the development of com-

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petence should be at the subject-specific level of the curriculum rather than at the superordinate level of overall achievement level (Muijs and Reynolds, 2001) because it is only at the level of skill development that the teacher can impact on those children who avoid critical learning situations when they perceive them to be an evaluative threat (Thompson et al, 1995).

But the self-concept has further ramifications for the teacher. The impression that we have of our own attri- butes and personal qualities is partly defined by the various social roles that we enact (Deaux e ta / , 1995) so, not surprisingly, the academic self-concept is the one that is dominantly activated within formal educa- tion with the teacher and children (usually) behaving as their respective roles dictate (McGuire et al, 1986). Be- cause it is within the context of our interactions with significant others that we define ourselves (Beachand Tesser, 1995), and because of the power given by society to teachers, it is particularly important that we base our instructional decisions on accurate inferences about children's achievement since children can adjust their behaviour to suit the demands of the situation (Goffman, 1955). While we've probably all heard of the Pygmalion effect (Rosenthal and Jacobson, 1968), few of us may be sufficiently aware of the power of teachers' expectations (Good, 1987). Unwittingly, teachers can differentiate their behaviour to provide more affective information (such as more praise, more friendly gestures and less criticism) and more cognitive information (such as more detailed and higher quality feedback, more cues as to the correct response, more time to complete tasks or more opportunities to respond to questions) to those children that they identify as high achievers while they interact with low- expectation children less, praise them for marginal or inadequate responses and express pity towards them when they perform poorly. However much the self- esteem of children may be affected by the teacher's behaviour, it is distinctly unhelpful to believe that self- esteem can be massaged in a simplistic or superficial way, a point that will be developed in the next substantive section. By responding with sympathy towards a low achiever, the teacher may intend to protect the self-esteem of that learner yet, in spite of good intentions, the effect can be exactly the opposite if children interpret sympathy as evidence that the teacher believes that they cannot do any better (Erikson, 1959/1980). While children who are not doing well at school may try to diminish the importance of school achievement (Reay and Wiliam, 1999) in order to protect their self-esteem, teachers' responses that do not teach children how to cope with/overcome low achievement are limited. Similarly, anger is an

emotion that teachers, generally, avoid expressing yet mild anger could have a positive effect by com- municating that the teacher believes that children could do better. Teachers' positive and heightened expecta- tions of all children are therefore of critical importance in the learner's definition of self.

Self-Efficacy Along with its cognitive structure, the self has a sense of agency. Our descriptions of self do not come pre- packaged or ready made. A prime part of our psycho- logical functioning is to discover and develop the self and so we explore what does or does not interest us, we make our own sense of the world, we practice our skills, and we develop some relationships but ignore others (Deci and Ryan, 1995). Through experiencing com- petence in what we do, we feel worthy and good about ourselves. In other words, we experience positive self- esteem. This self-esteem is not given to us but is a con- sequence of our own autonomous behaviour to create an integrated but nevertheless differentiated self. Whether or not we engage in behaviour directed at achieving competent performance is a function of how self-efficacious we believe ourselves to be (Bandura, 1997). Our judgements of how capable we are in rela- tion to a particular task constitute our self-efficacy beliefs and it is these beliefs that determine how much effort people will expend and how long they will persist in the face of obstacles and aversive experiences. The stronger our self-efficacy, the more active our efforts will be. Through persisting in some initially threatening task we subject ourselves to experiences that reinforce our sense of efficacy, while the premature cessation of our efforts will result in our retaining our self- debilitating expectations (Bandura, 1997). None of this denies that component capabilities for any given task are important: it merely makes the point that all other things being equal, efficacy expectations are a major determinant of people's engagement in tasks.

Although often assumed to be the same, self-esteem and self-efficacy refer to different phenomena (Bandum, 1997). Self-esteem refers to the individual's general self-acceptance of self. High self-esteem implies feelings of worth and low self-esteem implies self-rejection, self-dissatisfaction, or self-contempt. Self-efficacy, on the other hand, refers to the indivi- dual's perceptions of personal capability with respect to particular activities and the relationship between esteem and efficacy can be untidy. It is possible to have low self-efficacy for a task but not in any way to feel devalued by this, because self-worth is not invested in the task, as discussed above. It is also possible to have high self-efficacy for a task but derive no satisfaction

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from it, as might be the case for the teacher very skilled in advising children of the unsatisfactory standard of their academic achievement but who recognises the feelings of disappointment that this engenders. These possibilities underline the point that while people may well cultivate their capabilities in tasks that give them self-worth, they do not have to do so and so the two constructs should not be conflated.

Because of this distinction, people need much more than self-esteem to achieve well. As has been implied, they need high self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997). The most influential source of efficacy information is one's own experiences of mastery or success. Performing well on a particular task will increase efficacy for subsequent performance on a similar task. Another source of efficacy information is vicarious experience. Having watched a peer correctly solve a particular problem, the observing child may believe that he/she can perform as well as the model. A third source of information is what Bandura calls verbal persuasion in which the words of encouragement of significant others can bolster self- efficacy. The final source of information is physiolo- gical in which levels of emotional or physical arousal can prepare one for optimum performance. While our own experiences of mastery produces stronger and more generalisable beliefs than do any of the other sources of information, none of these sources is in- herently enlightening (Bandura, 1997). Whether or not people act on the information that is available depends on a range of personal, social and situational factors.

From the many studies in which she has been involved, Dweck (2000) argues that people's attributions of success and failure influence their levels of self- efficacy. She characterises this in terms of goals. Essentially, people either have learning goals - where individuals strive to increase their competence, to understand or master something new, or performance goals - where individuals strive either to gain favourable or to avoid negative judgments of their competence. Dweck suggests that learning goals are fostered by collaborative work, and encourage ipsative standards of success while performance goals are fostered by competition and encourage normative standards of success. Thus, a tendency to adopt per- formance goals is not in the long-term interest of the learner. Rather than using performance goals to create confidence through success, Dweck argues that it is better to inform children specifically of what is causing their lack of success and to create an emphasis on learning goals and personally challenging tasks. She argues that high aspirations and achievement are fostered through explaining success and failure in terms of effort.

The emphasis on effort as a means of improving acade- mic achievement via self-efficacy is significant for the teacher. If past failures are attributed to effort (a cause which is typically perceived to be within the control of the individual) then children are likely to try harder in the future. If, on the other hand, past failures are attri- buted to ability (a cause that is typically perceived to be a fixed, global trait which determines successful task performance), then they are unlikely to be motivated in the future. Bandura, however, is of the view that re- peated references to one's achievements being a func- tion of effort conveys the message that one's ability must be quite limited to require such unending hard work. The consequences of fixed ability attributions are indeed pervasive. Children may either avoid learning (because self perceptions of ' low' ability have told them they will only fail anyhow) or seek opportunities to demonstrate 'high' ability in safe, selected tasks where there is no risk of failure, because even this 'high' ability has limits on what one can do. While either strategy serves as a mechanism to protect the self-esteem, many children may never find out what their academic achievement could be. Dweck, however, argues that only those with performance goals tend to see ability as a stable entity and attribute their difficulty to low ability. Those with learning goals tend to have an 'incremental theory of intelligence'. The effective teacher thus focuses on learning rather than on performance goals and can do this by structuring learn- ing activities appropriately to avoid competitive situations that engender performance goals but to promote individual challenge that engenders learning goals. Teachers might also reflect on their use of praise because while it is very important to children, its fre- quent use by teachers will orient children to perfor- mance goals. Such fragile motivators may cause children to protect self-esteem by avoiding challenging tasks. Teachers need to ensure that praise is linked to an individual learner's learning goal.

Conclusion In trying to foster psychological well being generally and academic achievement particularly, the teacher is not well served by relying on the construct of self- esteem. More sophisticated constructs would be self- concept and self-efficacy. While these are not un- problematic, there is at least some evidence of their relationship with academic achievement. The pre- dominant direction of causality is from academic achievement to self-concept although there is some evidence for a reciprocal relationship between the two. Thus it is important to arrange the curriculum so as to provide challenging tasks, which can be mastered but

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which require perseverant effort since easy success teaches us to expect quick results. Whether or not chil- dren will engage in the tasks depends on their levels of self-efficacy, which is mediated by the teacher's and children's attributions for the children's achievements. The most commonly used attributions are effort and ability though the explanatory power of ability varies depending on whether it is understood as a fixed or changeable factor. The teacher, therefore, will focus on learning goals where effort and ability are emphasised as the mechanisms through which academic achieve- ment can be improved. Two caveats are however im- portant here. One is that only if ability is perceived as incremental can it be a useful mechanism for children who may see themselves as not achieving particularly well: if ability is perceived as fixed, one's less than adequate performance is further evidence of per- ceptions of stupidity. The other is that while differing attributions may alter levels of self-efficacy, there is no point in trying to explain progress exclusively in terms of effort: if huge effort is expended without com- mensurate attention to the pre-requisite skills that are needed for successful achievement of the task, it is not

surprising that the child might indeed fail. Pursuing learning goals thus involves close task analysis as well as the development of strategic behaviour.

The slippery nature of the construct of self-esteem that has been unpacked to some extent in the foregoing can perhaps be reduced to a few sentences. Although the construct is not of direct importance to the teacher, it is nevertheless an important idea in psychological health. Low self-esteem is not desirable (since this can leave people particularly anxious) but this does not mean that attempts to inflate self-esteem are good. (Indeed there is some evidence of those with inflated views of self being more prone to aggression, being less able to nurture others and being unable to maintain satisfying relationships). If children are led to believe that nothing matters quite as much as how they feel or how con- fident they are, they are unlikely to learn that life's dif- ficulties provide opportunities to turn failure into success by perfecting one's capabilities. The most effective way for the teacher to contribute to this is to enable children to experience high levels of self- efficacy and deserved academic achievement.

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Effie Maclel lan is a Chartered Psychologist who is currently based in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of Strathclyde. Her teaching and re- search interests are in the areas of learning and teach- ing and assessment in primary and higher education. (email: [email protected]

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