Читать книгу New Perspectives on Older Language Learners - Miriam Neigert - Страница 21

If, in short, there is a community of computers living in my head,

there had also better be somebody who is in charge;

and, by God, it had better be me.

– Jerry Fodor, 1998 -

Even though we should not imagine self-concept or the self to be some homunculus in our heads, i.e. we should not reify the self, the following questions remain: Where are self and the self-concept located in our brains (and beyond)? How is self-concept structured? Again, answers to these questions cannot result in an exact description of an entity in our heads.1 The answers will remain on a conceptual level, just as a structural formula of water is merely a graphic representation of its molecular structure. In his work Principles of Psychology (1890), James provided us with one of the earliest attempts to illustrate our self-concept structure. James thought of the self to be comprised of the I-self (the knower; the subjective self) and the Me-self (what is known). What he labelled Me-self has also been referred to as the objective self or the empirical self, and later as the self-concept (Harter 1996: 1f.).2 James further divided the Me-self into three parts: the spiritual self, the social self, and the material self (1890: chapter X). His formulation has influenced researchers after him (e.g. Shavelson et al. 1976; Song & Hattie 1984; Marsh & Shavelson 1985): He considered these three constituents to be in a somewhat hierarchical order based on their importance for the individual – with a spiritual self at the top, a social self in the middle, and a material self at the bottom (Harter 1996). This idea of a self-conceptual hierarchy in our minds has been taken up, refined, and tested in numerous studies (for a detailed review see, e.g.: Marsh & Hattie 1996a; Byrne 1996a) – with Shavelson et al.’s model (1976) probably being the most prominent and influential.

The hierarchy of the Shavelson et al. model (figure 2.1) was ordered in the following way: a general self-concept was at the apex of the model, which was then further divided into non-academic and academic self-concepts. Academic self-concepts in particular have been at the centre of attention in follow-up research and will also be relevant for this research project. It is also notable that their model implied multidimensionality (academic and non-academic factors; the academic dimension further included subjects such as math self-concept or English/verbal self-concept) of the self-concept, in addition to a hierarchical structure. Both hierarchical and multidimensional aspects of the self-concept have been validated in numerous follow-up studies (for a detailed review see Byrne 1996b).

The academic self-concept strand in the original Shavelson et al. model identified by Marsh & Shavelson (1985) has, however, been revised after testing the model had indicated a close to zero correlation between math and English self-concepts (q.v. the following section). Based on empirical findings, the new model now had two separate higher-order academic factors (Math/Academic Self-Concept and Verbal/Academic Self-Concept) rather than one global academic self-concept (1985: 120; Marsh 1990; Xu et al. 2013). From her review of these different validation studies, Byrne draws the following conclusion:

These findings underscore the domain specificity of academic self-concept and, thus, the need to use instrumentation designed to measure specific rather than global dimensions of academic self-concept research that bears on perceptions of self relative to particular academic subject areas. (1996b: 292)

Clearly, self-research has moved from investigating one global self-concept to viewing and measuring it in a more multidimensional and domain-specific way (Markus & Wurf 1987: 301; Marsh et al. 1988; Swann & Bosson 2010); a hierarchical and multidimensional self-concept whose facets are becoming more differentiated and independent with age (Shavelson & Marsh 1985). But to what extent do we actually “run around with pyramids in our heads” (Hattie 1992: 242)?

Instead of a two-dimensional or “monolithic” (Mercer 2011a: 70) entity in our minds, other researchers have argued for three-dimensional representations of our self-concept (e.g. Bracken 1996). The introduction of the book A 100 Ways to Enhance Self-Concept in the Classroom (1976) serves as an early, intuitively accessible example of this. Here, the authors Canfield and Wells depict self-concept as a glob with dots in it, or, as they write, a “strong jellyfish” (p. 2). With the help of the dots’ positions, they explain the role of core and peripheral beliefs within our self-concept:

Notice that some of the dots are more ‘internal’ than others. The more central a belief is to your Self, the more value – either negative or positive – you attach to it. For example, most teachers feel that to be smart is more important than to be a good swimmer. (Not everyone feels that way.) (1976: 2)

They argue that the more central or internalized a dot (belief) is, the more difficult it becomes to change this belief. Markus and Wurf (1987: 302) also make this differentiation between core and peripheral conceptions based on their importance with regard to their overall sense of self. They consider core conceptions to be well elaborated and, thus, to have a higher impact on our behaviour than peripheral conceptions. This makes the core beliefs less susceptible to change than peripheral, i.e. less stable, self-beliefs.

Another alternative model – similar to that by Canfield and Wells’ glob or jellyfish – has been developed by Mercer (2011a: 68). Her model focuses specifically on the self-concept domain of ‘language learning’. Based on the data of the participant “Joana”, Mercer created a molecular model or network model of Joana’s self-concepts (e.g. Physical Self-Concept, Academic Self-Concept, General Languages Self-Concept, English as a Foreign Language Self-Concept). The advantages of this approach to modelling self-concept are that multiple connections between different facets or domains of self-concept can be made. The strength of connections as well as the size (importance) of individual facets can be highlighted in the ‘molecule’ and these give a more realistic impression of self-concept complexity (ibid.: 67). In this model Joana’s English (EFL) and Italian (IFL) as a Foreign Language self-concepts are not only quite well elaborated and complex (= size of spheres), but also have a strong connection (= size of connecting line between spheres) based on the collected data.

Nevertheless, Mercer highlights that this representation of Joana’s self-concept is only valid for this particular part of her self-concept, in the context of foreign language learning and at the time of data collection. This in turn means that this type of model is able to capture the dynamic and contextual nature of self-concepts (2011a: 68f.). This leads to the next question about self-concept: How do we develop or form self-concepts?