The Impact of the Self-Esteem Movement in Students

I have two distinct groups of students: those that work independently with little direction and those that need a lot of direction. Those that need guidance, tend not to take a risk, require affirmation at each stage or just want to know what the correct answer is (rather than be guided towards coming to the answer on their own). They take criticism personally and lose motivation quickly. Those that are independent learners tend to have specific questions and don’t waste time; they can be critical of the information presented (and even challenge the information). I think some of the characteristics… Read more »

I see positive outcomes when I encourage my students, rather than trying to focus on their negative behaviours and comments during a lesson.

I think one thing that really impacts me in this session is how we can bridge the GAP between Gen Y in our teaching deliver

Some students need to be spoon fed information and how to do things where as other students seem able to persist and investigate when they hit a road block.

As a teacher, I can see an improvement in their engagement when given praise and encouragement – work on developing their self esteem skills. Praising students provides motivation and continuation in their learning journey.

I think that students are all different and it is clear which have a fixed and those that have a growth mindset. We will need to focus on moving them all towards having an open growth mindset at least while they are learning to prepare them for their futures.

I find the high school classes to be a mix of both fixed and growth mindsets. But I have noticed that all the students need external feedback constantly and individually. They don’t want to be praised as a whole class, but one by one. If this praise is not offered voluntarily the students will persist until they receive an individual feedback.

Most of my students have low self esteem and learning difficulties.

We have classes across all age groups and the younger generations tend to be the first to ask what is the minimum I have to do to pass – they are not interested in the learning journey but in a quick outcome with as little input as possible. When the students are engaged they do need constant reassurance that they are doing an activity correctly this can be very draining if you have a large class group that all require constant praise

The majority of my learners fall into the fixed mindset. They avoid risks and challenges and seek external validation and guidance to ensure they are correct before giving things a go. They give up easily, set the benchmark low and are quick to blame when the going gets tough.

I cringe when i hear uni students say “P’s mean degrees”! This to me is laziness not a self-esteem issue. Just doing what you need to do to pass rather than giving it your best effort.
I’m lucky that my cohort of students attend their ESL classes because they believe it will truly help with their everyday life in Australia no matter how difficult the class may seem to them. Do they seem to lack confidence? Yes at times they do.

With the introduction to new work, questions start – what do I need to pass? how many tries can I have? where would I find the answers? Students want to do as little as possible to complete the work. Not really interested in the learning just the end result – PASS, and what is the easiest way to do achieve that. Any submission means work is correct and achieved.

Students ask for the marking guide for the assessments and choose the amount of effort required based on the predicted outcomes. IE Minimal effort to pass. The trend in vocational education is “Competent or Not Yet Competent” there is no failure status that actually provides value to the student that they are not coping with the work, just a false sense of “I’m almost there…”

We must be careful with the praise we give students, too much can be detrimental to their progress. Its best to encourage them to work harder to find the answer themselves. A bit of gentle prompting can be helpful. .

Many students expect the answers to be given them. Some ask for assistance before even attempting to work out the answer. This could be because of low self esteem,

Many students have low self esteem. Many are from low economic communities and are not always able to buy their text books. I will often give a copy of the text book to the student or enable them to have the library hold the books for them. I feel that if, as a teacher, I can show interest in the student and encourage them to gain further education, they either enrol in other courses or email me telling me of their intended course. Sometimes they email to say they have found employment. This feedback from students makes me feel that… Read more »

Some students do not appear to have self esteem in the classroom. They do however, have a strong sense of “I’m a leader and my friends will follow”. External validation from their teachers is not desired but want their friends to know ‘they are important’ to others.

They believe rules are not for them and so social media is ever present in the classroom, always wanting to share their work with others or their daily experiences. In essence ‘work can wait’ as getting in touch with my peers is foremost on my mind.

Students are wanting direction before giving the task too much effort. When directed to work alone, many of the students seek to have their work viewed by the teacher before submitting it for assessment. They are all part of the same pack and it is not in their nature to submit and take the consequences without checking with their pals.

I’ve observed that, ironically, as students grow up they tend to develop characteristics of a ‘fixed mindset’ and lose the tendencies of a ‘growth mindset’. They consider performance as identity and are always concerned about how others perceive them. They become competitive, but want to achieve things without trying or working for it. They tend to complain about everything and require constant recognition of their performance. They look for easy ways to gain popularity and don’t even want to attempt things that they think they have a remote chance of success. They lack the tenacity and resilience that is expected… Read more »

A definite impact in my students, students who are bright and could really push themselves to achieve are quick to dish up any work so they can tick and flick. I’m done, no care for quality or challenge. Others require constant reassurance they have done “what you want”

The biggest impact I see is the level of complaints when you provide honest feedback that is not sandwiched with enough praise and the time that is wasted by dealing with the complaints because they feel “wronged” that they haven’t demonstrated a competency and you have asked them to do more research/learning into it.

Students need encouragement to build up their confidence to take further challenges. Accordingly, praising students on what they have achieved can help them develop cognitively and socially. However, encouragement or praising must be genuine. Overpraising will only create a negative effect. Students will not believe the teacher or take any further challenge. They will wait for solutions to be told. They don’t accept failure.

The Students I am engaging with are extremely needy. They do not want to work hard for anything, cannot handle constructive criticism and want to be handed the answers to all of the assessments.

They ALL have mental health issues and hide behind this. They use Mental Health to manipulate the system and want to be handed the Qualification.
It is only a matter of time before they are Using COVID 19 as an excuse as why NOT to complete their studies

I have seen all the three impacts in the cohorts I have come across but dependence exists everywhere in every class room. I see very few students trying a problem rather most of them waiting for the solution to come on the board. That’s where I think we as Teachers need to use various motivational techniques to get them to try solving the problem. I always try to tell students that’s what they have to learn to experience to use it in their day to day life. They need to first try and not give up or wait for solutions,

I see these characteristics daily in my classroom and it is the most discussed problem amongst my colleagues. As a Montessori educator I aim to develop independence and self motivation however parents use a self esteem approach at home. Parents are constantly contacting me about little issues that the children can work out for themselves and being “curling” parents. Issues can be about forgetting a snack or social problems. Parents do not give their children the responsibility for themselves so children are dependant on others.

Students want the answers given to them. If they don’t know the answer, instead of trying to work something out for themselves, they seek out help prematurely.

I find that students are less inclined to research and do further reading to extend their own understanding, but want the answers provided by the teacher.
When challenged, they can very easily become unproductive and wait for someone else to do the thinking for them….. or give up.

With the students I have taught, I have noticed the impacts that are made by teachers and myself are we tend to overpraise to get a desired outcome or behaviour. Too much praise eventually loses its effectiveness (desensitization). I find if I give constructive feedback rather than praise is more effective to get students to become more motivated to continue their learning and progress.

I find that the students are extremely impatient. If they try something new and the can’t master it straight away, and thus receive the positive response or praise they desire and that makes them feel good about themselves, then they give up. They are unwilling to put in the hard yards to learn how to accomplish a task and simply tell themselves the task is outside their skills set.

It can result in students requiring constant feedback and validation.

All of us have been challenged by the lunacy of the covid lockdown and the effects on both our own work, and on how we teach. The result has been increased stress for students due to lack of face to contact. Zoom meetings, despite the hype, do no cut it. Research has shown that people get stressed in remote video conferencing due to the fact that they are unable to pick up on subtle facial expressions. Moreover, the notion of the ‘digital natives’ has not, in my experience, been proven to be correct. Most young people approach technology as a… Read more »

My students have been challenged by a variety of remote learning platforms, but they have embraced the opportunity to learn a huge array of new skills. They did this even though they have difficulties with English.

With COVID-19, I have found it very difficult to engage some students in the process of online learning, no matter what extra lengths are offered. These particular students all have a variety of needs – steming from self-esteem issues.

I see students with a lack of motivation or desire to challenge themselves. Students are often very dependant wanting assistance before they undertake tasks so that they can check that they are right, scared of failure.

As many of our students have English as a second language, it is not always easy to assess whether their reticence to participate is from lack of understanding some of the language used (which often includes technical words) and/or being embarrassed to talk in front of others and/or just feeling overwhelmed and then withdrawing.

Students reach critical periods of submitting assessments and it gets ‘too much’ and they withdraw from the course.

I see students dropping their studies once they face a challenging, long and difficult test.

Not all of my students are Gen Y so I don’t see this sort of mindset always expressed in my students. In recent ‘connected delivery’ I did find extra encouraging helped some younger students to continue in the course. So many other factors at play, but it may have also been the need for ‘external validation’ operating

Apathy without a doubt. They perceive themselves as failures from school (often early school leavers with significant literacy needs and/or disabilities) who don’t see the point of trying.

I find that a some of our students need to be pushed to get assessments finished as they don’t have the passion for their job (Trades Apprentices ) and are only doing the course as its a requirement for the apprenticeship. Where those who want the job have more of a passion and try harder .

I often see students who require regular and sometimes constant positive feedback to finish a task. I feel that I am the cheer-squad that needs to continually encourage them to participate in their learning and skill development.

It will be very limiting and creativity will be lost if we aren’t self motivated and have our own internal validation. As I have a mix of students I find that they offset each other in the discussions that we have.

I see a mix in my student cohort. I have mature learners who have more of a growth mindset… however the majority of my students are of a fixed mindset. Those who I consider products of the self esteem Movement find it difficult to take personal ownership of their work and responsibility and have difficulty seeing boundaries ( due dates). At times they can be very needy…wanting to check everything before attempting anything ( risk avoidant)

I am finding the external validation versus the internal validation a real challenge in the learning environment. Particularly since moving to more online / connected delivery platforms due to COVID19.

Within my role I have mix of students. My mature age students are motivated to learn more and put in effort, whilst I find with the younger generation, recently out of school, they require lots of spoon feeding or an expected amount of support to understand things. At times they will just not attempt something if it seems too hard.

My students are mainly youth at risk, from disadvantaged backgrounds, early school leavers. They haven’t experienced much praise at school, have low levels of self-confidence, and don’t appear to have received much praise at home either. They are amazed when told they got it right or their work is good, and it clearly encourages them to try harder – I’m wondering if the era of self esteem is already over, or perhaps it is just the socio-economic gap.

I feel my students are of fixed mindsets with exception of a few students. I feel if we don’t make the learning easy for the student it all becomes to hard for them. Thus getting the student to complete any task or their work is extremely hard

I’ve found that there are some students who lack confidence and require me to give them a lot of direction and motivation.

I think I may have less teaching experience than many on this blog (and I teach by distance, so it’s harder for me to judge) but I don’t particularly detect a strong trend of apathy/passivity, desensitisation and dependence among young students. To be honest, I sometimes get those feelings myself, and I’m not a product of the self-esteem movement.