Theories and Concept

Self-esteem

Self-esteem is a term which almost everyone is familiar with, however, many may not actually fully understand it. The first definition of self-esteem was given by William James (1892), who said,

“…feelings of self-worth come from the successes an individual achieves tempered by what the person had expected to achieve.”

James (1892) model,                     Self-esteem = Success 

                                                                     Pretensions

This model suggests that the development of self-esteem will be through personal success or by pretensions. In more recent years self-esteem has been defined by many other researchers, such as, Rosenberg (1965), who said self-esteem was a positive or negative orientation towards oneself (Mitrovic, Todorovic & Markovic, 2012). This links with James (1892) and Elmer (2001) who suggested that self-esteem could be high or low within individuals (Bunyan, 2004; Osborne, 2014). Self-esteem has also been said to include the perceived evaluation of others (Cooley, 1964. Cited in: Neff & Vonk, 2009). Further research has suggested that people who have high self-esteem are likely to have a highly positive global evaluation of themselves. However, people with low self-esteem might define themselves as unfavourable (Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger & Vohs, 2003).

How we feel about ourselves can have a huge impact on how to act day-to-day and can influence our lives.

A current model of self-esteem created by Fox (1990) called the Hierarchical Model is broken down into three sub-domains: academic, social and physical all under the main domain of global self-esteem. 

 

Fox (1990) Hierarchical Model. 

If self-esteem is equal in these sub-domains and an individual feels confident in each of these domains, they would be considered to have high self-esteem, which I believe is true because if you feel good about each of these areas then your self-esteem would be good. However if one of these sub-domains is not up to scratch, then it could easily shift how you are feeling about yourself and how to perform in day-to-day life.

How can Adventure Education enhance self-esteem?

Adventure Education and outdoor programmes have been suggested to be beneficial in enhancing self-esteem. A meta-analysis carried out by Hattie, Marsh, Neill and Richards (1997) determined that adventure programmes can have a strong lasting influence on people taking part in them, with regard to self-esteem. This study contradicts a study carried out by Baumeister et al. (2003) who analysed whether self-esteem really did boost performance. The results from his findings suggested that boosting self-esteem alone does not improve academic and physical performance. Laboratory studies have generally failed to find that high self-esteem leads to good task performance. However, they have shown that people with high self-esteem do persist more in the face of failure compared to people with low self-esteem (Shrauger & Sorman, 1977). Baumeister et al. (2012) conclude their review by claiming that self-esteem does not have a large impact on individuals’ performance in an academic condition. However, the outdoor environment has been seen to prove otherwise.

Dowling (1996) stated that self-esteem was the second most targeted intended outcome after co-operation and can be seen in outdoor programmes. When working in the outdoors as an instructor, my initial aim for the group I was working with may not be to improve or enhance self-esteem at first, but by getting the group to take part and do the activity set out it may be a by-product produced by taking part in the activity. This can be seen when you find yourself working with a nervous and unconfident child who does not want to do the activity, but instead of just throwing them into the activity, finding different way's to nudge them into it can really help them build on their trust they have for you and their confidence to do the activity. This can be referred back to Hattie et al's. (1997) meta-analysis in that adventure can have a strong lasting influence on an individual. Adventure has many different pathways to go down to allow an individual to develop their self-esteem.

Just because we fail at something does not mean we are not going to find success; it just means we have to find another way of getting it and not to let it affect how we feel  about ourselves. 

  

References

Baumeister, R., Campbell, J., Krueger, J. & Vohs, K. (2003). Does High Self-Esteem cause better Performance, Interpersonal success, Happiness, or Healthier lifestyle?. Psychological Science in the Public Interest. 4. 1-44

Bunyan, P. (2004) Towards the measurement of social self-esteem in the adventure environment. Doctoral thesis, University of Southampton; University of Chichester.

Mitrovic, M., Todorovic, D. & Markovic, Z. (2012). Anxiety and Self-Exteem in students of Sport and Physical Education. Research in Kinesiology. 40. 133-139.

Neff, K. & Vonk, R. (2009). Self-Compassion Versus Global Self-Esteem: Two Different Ways of Relating to Oneself. Journal of Personality. 77. 23-50.

Osborne, R.E (2014). Self-esteem.  Available at: http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?sid=b3cc8966-b023-4aee-8578-8887c65dcafd%40sessionmgr115&vid=10&hid=117&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#db=ers&AN=93872219 (Accessed: 22 March 2015).

Shrauger, J.S. & Sorman, P.B. (1977). Self-evaluation, initial success and failure, and improvement as determinants or persistence. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. 45. 784-795