The Impact of the Self-Esteem Movement in Students

I think it is all about giving them the tools and motivation for self discovery!

When I provide support to students their teacher always thanks me afterwards telling me how much I helped to improve their students’ confidence and low self-esteem. I appreciate the feedback, but honestly, I thought I was just showing them how to use software/technology/print/upload an assessment or whatever the issue was.

I’ve had so many students with incredibly low self-esteem and self-worth. By not accepting their excuses, by following up and pushing them along without doing it for them….they have sent me photos of them holding their certificate and thanking me for not giving up on them.
Saying that this was the first certificate they ever got….great feeling for both parties involved.

There is an increase in mental health issues and low self esteem within students. They are certainly fixed on approval & reassurance at every step of the way. Parental influences even choice of course at TAFE to ensure students are not overly challenged.

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Sometimes I see it as a product of competitiveness, whether positive or negative and sometimes it is just a character strength that is underdeveloped or overdeveloped.

Students tend to be righteous about validating the need to not perform as normal. Excuses are easily used and life’s little challenges become ‘mountain like’ instead of a minor bump to accept and move on.

After working in the adult learning sector for numerous years with challenging environments for eight years in Juvenile Justice and three in rehab for drugs and alcohol (both environments the students resided in the learning environments) with the result of the social programming the strategies that have worked is about taking responsibility (even down to changing a toilet roll should it end on their watch) which in turn assists in building a stronger character progression and creates a platform within their character to build resilience in their life journey. we often separated behavior to give them a platform to change… Read more »

I feel like the perception that these students don’t try and they are apathetic is born from the students’ knowledge that working hard no longer equals success in the future, as it did for previous generations. I think it is more a sense of hopelessness with how the world is going to treat them, and less a sense of a movement instigated by the generation that blames them for behaviours they themselves have instilled in the next generation. Their failures are also more to be feared now, as they are more public. We think the previous generations had more resilience,… Read more »

On-line is a fact of life with teaching after the Covid experience-where do we go from here to advance these teaching methods? Interesting that many students would rather relate to class activities with DMs rather than voice/video

Resilliance is an important

I am witnessing the impact of the Self-Esteem Movement expressed in the students I engage with through; their apathy toward learning, or education &/or engagement with others, in the areas they are not interested in, the disregard of due dates of assessments, the dependence of placing the blame on someone/something else, & looking for someone else to do the hard work or fix it!!

They require more support, assistance, guidance and multiple attempts. All in all = less try.

In my experience (over 2 decades of teaching), I have noticed the increase in appeals from failing students; questioning and challenging the outcome. Unsurprisingly, the same students also fail to apply themselves to their studies.

In recent years I have found that children have been mollycoddled- they expect to be hand held through all types of learning, have not got the need to research for themselves and always need praise. We as teachers are told to be very sensitive to their needs. They do not expect to be marked as unsatisfactory and its always the teachers fault. There are the exceptional students who are forward thinking but in the minority.

i have been teaching for 42 years during this time students generally speaking as have become less interested in applying themselves academically and in the quality of their work they want everything too easily got.

My first teaching position was within a school that had a strong focus on character progression and resilience building. All of our teaching, learning, classroom management, etc. was founded in a character progression model. Our goal was to build student skills rather than content knowledge and to embed self regulation skills in all that we did. We as a collective staff relied on consistent task based feedback, high expectations, mistakes as learning opportunities, student/ teacher rapport, ongoing reflection and reference to the progression, and use of success criteria and learning intentions. This saw excellent growth in student emotional regulation skills,… Read more »

As a parent, we encourage a growth mindset, embrace failure and trying new things, but it seems to go against the kids’ natural instincts to protect themselves from failure and embarrassment. It’s got to be embedded in our family culture from such a young age.

What I am seeing is they need constant reassurance on what they have done but often will take very little initiative for them selves

The impact of the self-esteem movement manifests itself in the students I teach in their lack of internal drive and determination. It is also evident with some of my colleagues who are constantly seeking extrinsic feedback

I have a mix of fixed mindset and growth mindset students. Ages vary from 17 – 54. Of course, I seem to spend more of my time with the fixed mindset students especially when they are learning new clinical skills. The other students just get on with it, and practice practice practice but the fixed mindset students need constant engagement and reassurance.

Self esteem leads to a sense of shame to some which inhibits their engagement in learning and trying new things.

I think it is keeping them from progressing and accumulating knowledge. They expect an answer to their question, don’t think about it and move on. Only because they are too afraid to fail if they give the wrong answer themselves. A failure is not learning from mistakes, making mistakes is a learning opportunity.

In my work as a Tafe teacher In Pathology. Their is a range of ages from 18 – 50 years. There is a great range of personalities. Sometimes the older student can feel insecure at first. A percent of the younger student expect to pass, come in late have assessment accepted late. But it is a small percentage. In Pathology and Food industry you can not make mistakes, just ok is not good enough. It is a world where errors can kill a patient. I also have a lot of experience as a dog trainer. Positive reinforcement for good work.… Read more »

The impact of the Self-esteem movement is quite visible, in my work, as an ESOL teacher, as I teach English to adults who all feel they are lesser because of their lack of language skills. Their self esteem gets hurt quite easily, however, this issue of hurt self-esteem, I have noticed in students from both age groups, younger students and not so young ones. Constructive feedback is critical for their learning and progressing, but how we construct that feedback makes such a huge difference. Saying, that you have done all correctly, but for this, and this, and that, sometimes might… Read more »

When giving students a task where, the instructions are explained verbally, and in writing, and then students are also given question time i have found that certain learners are unable/unwilling to then attempt the task without a “safety net” rather than try and fail they will just freeze and shut down.

Students tend to think they should be hand held and guided through every step of their study – they don’t want to have to think, research or make a decision for fear of being incorrect

Reassurance, even if the students know that they are following the correct protocol or have answered the questions correctly ,they seek further reassurance

The students like everything to be easily achievable with little amount of work. They do not like it if they need to redo something

The students that I teach need to be given step by step instructions even after explaining the steps they want to them reassure them that they will pass

I have found that students love praise but become angry if feedback is not to their liking. This makes it more challenging to help students achieve competence.

Many of the students that I teach needs to be constantly told and reassured to complete tasks even though i have done demonstrations, step by step application details. Positive feedbacks are always welcomed however, constructive feedback are not every welcomed.

I find it is at times more difficult to teach a lot of the students due to this movement. They often get angry or upset by constructive criticism. Having always been praised and basically told everything they do is good enough, they don’t accept it when told that what they have done is not to the industry standard needed in order to be employable. It is hard work but when you do finally get through to them and they improve their skills and actually deserve praise it means more to them, because they know it was deserved.

I believe that as an educator who is developing the future generation of students need to completed erase the concept of praise and let the children experience the reality of life as failures are a learning opportunity & motivation to do better. Begin by acknowledging what the children’s strengths are and what behaviour requires modification to be successful in life.

We as educators need to be careful with our feedback and praise. Appropriate and in-time praise and adequate feedback inspire and encourage students, while inappropriate and wrong-time praise demotivate students.

I teach a large group of students through an online platform. This is to support their theory ,and assist with knowledge and content of course material. It is often a challenge to get some of the students to connect .This is due to fear of failure or of the unknown .Strange considering they take many risks in personal life and online is where they spend most of their time. When they do come online and realise the support i can provide they seem to want more, as there is often a positive result in the outcome.

I engage with students of different age groups, ethnic origin and socio-economic background and the other factors not just age group comes into play.
I feel people who have suffered hardships are more like to show more of growth mindset.

I do see degrees of apathy in students in I engage with.

Through my delivery I have identified two groups of students – those that require guidance (and take up about 90% of my time) and another group that are very independent and self directed with their learning. It annoys me that I get drawn into spending more time with students that don’t engage in their learning, and expect answers, rather than having the time to expand the independent learners knowledge and critical thinking.

The majority of my younger students are from a fixed mindset group due to the hardships they went through in their own countries. Therefore they need unconditional positive regard.

The majority of my adult students are of a growth mindset group. In other words, they embrace failure as a learning opportunity.

Teaching adults who haven’t grown up in Australia, I can’t exactly frame them into these mindsets, but I can definitely recognize certain characteristics that can either push them ahead, or really limit them in their learning, particularly relating to identity, risk taking and what motivates them.

You can definitely tell who has a fixed mindset and who has a growth mindset. I work with a lot of trainees, and the ones who successfully complete and get instant employment at the end, are those who are self-motivated and value the challenge of learning. Those with a fixed mindset are left behind scratching their head wondering what happened. I’ve recently started giving these trainees “learning challenges” where they need to problem solve and think creatively instead of providing step-by-step learning modules – the results have been amazing and the engagement has improved.

I really like the clear definition between fixed mind set and the growth mind set. I have all adult students and can identify very quickly which students are fixed and who has the growth mindset … always welcome the growth mindset student!

Apathy; readily blame others; dependence

All i want to say is that I am awesome 🙂 Just in case nobody else tells me that. I actually affirm my students, and this was before I watched and learnt from this course about how millennials work However, I also try to get my students to think through a problem and tell them when they are wrong, but also affirm when they are correct My trade is all about problem solving, and without it, students will struggle The challenge is to help those students move from the fixed mindset to a growth mindset and that is where I… Read more »

I teach year 11 and 12 students but at TAFE, so in an adult learning environment, as well as young adults. The impact of the self-esteem movement is so tiring, frustrating and causing situations where we only have the time to teach them the basics. They are not willing to do homework (including the flipped classroom model) as they want their hand held through each and every task. This means that instead of being able to have adult conversations about various solutions to issues during class time based on homework activities and research tasks, we do these together in class,… Read more »

I find young learners fall into linear learner category. They need every step clearly set out and lack confidence to jump ahead or work independently. To lessen this small set goals can build esteem. I do find the constant need to validate success draining as an educator. Real life won’t always give a reward for simply doing what was asked.

I promote a learning environment that encourages self-motivation and self-directedness. I make all learners feel comfortable with their learning capabilities and motivate them to want to learn. I encourage everybody to get along and all to achieve their best! It is an exciting time!

I have seen how the younger lot of students is always after instant gratification. They are “needy” of appreciation of every single thing they do or they wont do it. I fear they will soon wake up to a harsh reality. Are the schools doing enough? Are they preparing the students for their( students’) future???

I am seeing, for example, early school leavers at TAFE struggle with the entire concept of a learning environment – however this is more than the impact of the self-esteem movement, its exacerbated by the ‘COVID movement’ and built onto an already unique situation: disinterest, apathy, disrupted sleep/wake patterns, distraction from phones, waiting for answers rather than searching. Every day is a challenge to come up with new ideas to engage, motivate and facilitate learning.