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Enhancing Self-Esteem of Junior High Girls: The Impact of Participation in an Optional Course

Susan I. Hutton, EdD
Assistant Professor
University of Calgary
February 1996

Enhancing Self-Esteem of Junior High Girls: The Impact of Participation in an Optional Course 

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the self-esteem of adolescent girls participating in an optional course designed to improve the self-esteem of participants.  The research design includes both qualitative and quantitative aspects.  Only quantitative data analysed from the Culture Free Self-Esteem Inventory (CFSEI-2) for the thirty-six girls in the experimental and control groups are presented in this report.  Data indicate a trend of an overall increase in self-esteem for the experimental group and an overall decline in self-esteem for the control group.  Specifically, the experimental group made significant gains in self-esteem in two of the four sub-tests, social and general, and maintained levels of self-esteem in the parental and academic sub-tests of the CFSEI-2.  In contrast, the control group significantly decreased in levels of self-esteem in three of the four sub-tests of the CFSEI-2, social, academic, parental and maintained levels of self-esteem in the general areas.  The findings indicate a positive relationship between self-esteem and enrollment in the optional course and, suggest that providing direct classroom instruction may enhance girls self-esteem.  Suggestions for course design include a strong emphasis on mentoring and an all girls’ environment.

Introduction

The research presented in this report is one portion of a larger project that evaluates the self-esteem of adolescent girls participating in an optional course entitled Enabling Visions.  The study arose from the efforts of a large urban district’s  appointment of an Advisor for Women’s Issues to examine issues of inequity for women staff and students.  During the first three years of the Advisor’s appointment focus was on female staff issues.  During this time women teachers and administrators expressed to the Advisor their increasing concern with the low self-esteem of girls in the district.  They cited possible causes as inequitable treatment of boys and girls in the classroom and in sport-related activities and negative images of young women in the media including images that portray women in chains, in the role of evil witches, and in anorexic states.  These conditions were, in the opinion of women staff and the Advisor, giving young women a distorted view of what they should or should not be. 

Although concerns cited were being expressed in a general manner, it was a specific request that led to a district-wide conference of young women to address issues of self-esteem and the subsequent development and offering of an optional self-esteem, mentoring course for girls.  Funds from the Advisor were granted and a district wide conference was developed around a successful female film director who was the key note speaker.  As a part of this request, the film director would also be invited to speak to girls in a separate, second forum.  This second forum for girls was suggested as a strategy to address the earlier concerns of women staff regarding the low self-esteem and lack of positive female role models for young women in their district.  A year of planning resulted in a one-day conference for girls who were selected from over 50 schools.  Each participating school left the conference with the goal of initiating some activity  to continue efforts to support girls and decrease inequitable situations in their lives.

One such activity at a junior high, is the focus of this report.  The principal of the junior high proposed an optional course for young women to her staff.  Three staff members had attended the conference for girls and had represented the issues convincingly to their peers and gained their enthusiasm and support.  The principal of the school had a long history of involvement in women’s issues in the district and she and her school Coordinator of Curriculum had been invited and served on the planning committee for the district conference.  The course, entitled Enabling Visions after the district-wide conference, was approved by the board.  The course was designed on a semester basis, to be offered twice a week for 50 minutes beginning in the fall term.  Critical components of the course content included: matching each girl with a female mentor in a field of work identified by the girl as a possible future career, information relating to the differences in female and male socialization, review of literature regarding inequitable treatment of girls and boys in the classroom, journal writing, assertiveness activities, examination of portrayal of women in the media, and development of presentations that participants could share with other students in their school.

Background

As evidence mounts that girls’s self assurance decreases in the adolescent years (Gilligan, 1992; Brown & Gilligan, 1992; Robertson, 1992; Shuster, 1992) this problem has become the focus of many recent reports and subsequent recommendations.  For example, The American Association of University women’s (AAUW) report (1990), resulting from a national survey to study the self-esteem, education and career aspirations in adolescent girls and boys in today’s society, stated that adolescence is a difficult time for both girls and boys.  This report noted that although girls and boys both experience a significant loss of self-esteem in a variety of areas as they grow older, the loss is most dramatic and has the most long-term effect for girls.  Specifically, the AAUW report noted that a gender gap in self-esteem increases with age.  That is, between elementary and high school, a majority of boys retain high levels of self-esteem whereas girls’ self-esteem falls 31 percentage points during this time (p. 4).  This decline in self-esteem results in girls’ lack of confidence in their abilities and a general sense of worth that is more dependent upon appearance than on ability; the reverse is found for boys.  With self-esteem critically related to career aspirations, the lower self-esteem of girls puts them at a disadvantage for future careers as they begin with lower hopes for their future and are less confident in their talents and abilities. 

Girls the are seen to be at high psychological risk during adolescence.  They “have been noted to lose their vitality, their resilience, their immunity to depression, their sense of themselves and their character” (Brown & Gilligan, 1992, p. 2).  Many scholars connect psychological risks to differences in male and female socialization (Hutton et. al, 1992; Orenstein, 1995; Bailey, 1993).  For example, Sadker & Sadker (1986, 1994) found that teachers directed their attention inequitably with boys getting the majority of higher quality feedback at the expense of girls in the classroom.  Boys receive significantly higher proportions of praise, criticism and remediation.  Boys demand and get more teacher attention.

What can be done to enhance the self-esteem of girls?  Again, findings of the AAUW report (1990) are helpful.  Family and school, not peers as is commonly noted in popular literature, have the greatest impact on adolescents’ self-esteem and aspirations.  Adults make a significant difference.  As adolescents find people believing in them they believe in themselves.  Sadly, many girls find people, including their teachers, believing that females cannot do the things they believe they can.  The result is one cause of girls’ low self-esteem.  Academic self-esteem was found to be the most important aspect of self-esteem for elementary girls (Battle, 1992). Thus, teachers have a special opportunity to affect the self-esteem of their female students by instilling a sense of confidence.  Students who posses self-confidence more readily address their interests and aspirations. 

Aburdene and Naisbitt (1992) recommended that women become sources of validation for their young female counterparts by accepting responsibility for mentoring young women.  Mentoring has been noted as an effective strategy for increasing women’s self-esteem and opportunities in the workplace (Rowe, 1981; Swhartz, 1992).  Shwartz (1992) noted that while it is difficult to institutionalize mentoring programs, it has been done and has proven successful to women’s advancement in the workplace.  In addition, the most promising mentorship programs for young women mentors have mentors that are women, not men (Swhartz, 1992;  Auburdene & Naisbitt, 1992).  There is a need to study the efforts of women to mentor and provide direct instruction to girls in classroom settings.  It is important to document the effects these efforts have on the possible improvement of adolescent female self-esteem and subsequent future success in the workplace.

Purpose

The overall purpose of this study is to compare self-esteem measures of adolescent girls who participated in an optional course entitled Enabling Visions with adolescent girls who did not participate.  Specifically, the objectives of this study are to determine if involvement in an optional mentoring, self-esteem course (1) had a positive impact on participants’ self-esteem, (2) increased participants awareness of women’s issues and, (3) resulted in participants’ selection of specific pro-active strategies enabling them to get their learning needs met at school.  In addition, findings of this study will provide recommendations to enhance school efforts in continuing mentoring, self-esteem course development. This report relates quantitative findings related to objective one of the overall study; did involvement in an optional mentoring, self-esteem course have a positive impact on participants’ self esteem?  The Culture-Free Self-Esteem Inventory, Second Edition (CFSEI-2) was utilized to provide a measure for self-esteem in this study.

Theoretical Framework

Battle (1992) developed the Culture Free Self-Esteem Inventory, Second Edition (CFSEI-2), a series of inventories, to assist diagnosticians and educators working with developing children and youth to assess self-esteem, their feelings about themselves, and their abilities.  Battle defines self-esteem as that which “refers to the perception the individual possess of his or her own worth” (p.  3).

Six scales were developed from the 60 items of the CFSEI-2.  They are (1) General Self-Esteem, the aspect of self-esteem that refers to individuals’ overall perceptions of their worth, (2) Social Self-Esteem, the aspect of self-esteem that refers to individuals’ perceptions of the quality of their relationships with peers, (3) Academic Self-Esteem or School-Related Self-Esteem, the aspect of self-esteem that refers to individuals’ perceptions of their ability to succeed academically, (4) Parent-Related Self-Esteem, the aspect of self-esteem that refers to individuals’ perceptions of their status at home, including their subjective perceptions of how their parents or parent-surrogates view them, (5) Lie Sub-Test, items that indicate defensiveness and, (6) Total Self-Esteem, a composite score (Battle, 1992, p. 3).

In developing the scales of the CFSEI-2, Battle integrated findings in the literature that self-esteem comprises a number of concepts that he represented in scales in the CFSEI-2 inventory.  Inventory construction to establish reliability and validity estimates was extensive and included over 60 studies.  Since publication of the first edition in 1981, the CFSEI has been used successfully in over 800 master’s and doctoral theses in more than 20 countries.

The CFSEI-2 is an appropriate instrument to select for this study.  It was standardized on equal numbers of girls and boys in the United States and Canada and the commonality of childrens’ attitudes worldwide has been established by Yamamoto’s research (1987, cited in Battle, 1992, p. 8) in six countries including Canada.  Thus, Battle includes the concept of culture-free in the title of the inventory.  The CFSEI-2 has been translated into French, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese, and Vietnamese.

Methods

In this portion of the study an empirical, quasi-experimental design was used to investigate possible cause and effect relationships of a treatment, namely self-esteem course instruction, and the subsequent development of self-esteem in adolescent girls.  Both an experimental group and a control group were administered the CFSEI-2 inventory. After the experimental group took the Enabling Visions course, both groups were readministered the CFSEI-2 inventory.   A true experimental design including random selection of participants in both the experimental and control groups was not possible since the treatment was an optional course offering within the junior-high curriculum and participants enrolled based on self-selection.

Subjects

Participants were students in a large, urban school district in the province of Alberta, Canada.  Thirty six (36) adolescent girls in a junior-high/elementary school with a student population of 300 were included in the study.  The girls, in grades 8 and 9, had an age range of 13-15 years.  Twenty-one (21) adolescent girls enrolled in an optional self-esteem mentoring course composed the experimental group of this study.  The control group of 15 adolescent girls from the same junior-high/elementary school were randomly selected in order to best represent a cross-section of the student population.

Inventories were administered in both pre and post treatment.  Both experimental and control groups lost one participant reducing the number of subjects to 20 in the experimental group and 14 in the control group.

Central Findings

SPSS for Windows V6.1.2 was employed to calculate means, standard deviation, and t-tests.  Data from the CFSEI-2 was analysed employing the two-tailed t-test of significance for each of the self-esteem sub-tests of social, academic, parental, general and total.  These parametric test were chosen so that comparisons could be made to Battle’s normal data.  The inventory values of pre and post tests were compared with each other and discussion of the findings of experimental and control groups follows.

TABLE 1

DIMENSION CONTROL GROUP EXPERIMENTAL GROUP

T-test Statistics for Self-Esteem Dimensions for Control (n=14) and Experimental (n=20) Groups
Pretest by Post Test Measures

The lie sub-test of items indicating defensiveness was found to be within normal limits (Battle, 1992) indicating that subjects provided authentic responses regarding their perceptions of self-worth.

Social Self-Esteem            

Social Self-esteem, girls perceptions of the quality of their relationships with peers was found to have significantly increased (p<.05) for the experimental group and conversely to have significantly decreased (p<.05) for the control group.

Academic Self-Esteem

Academic self-esteem, girls’ perceptions of their ability to succeed academically decreased slightly for the experimental group.  The decrease was not significant (p>.05) indicating no change or a maintenance of academic self-esteem for the experimental group.  However, academic self-esteem of the control group significantly decreased (p<.05) for the control group.

Parental Self-Esteem

Parental self-esteem, girls’ perceptions of their status at home, including their subjective perceptions of how their parents or parent surrogates view them slightly increased for the experimental group.  Although not a significant increase (p>.05) this finding indicates no change of a maintenance of parental self-esteem.  The control group findings indicated a significant decrease (p<.001) in parental self-esteem.

General Self-Esteem

General self-esteem, girls’ overall perceptions of their worth was found to have significantly increased (p<.01) for the experimental group and for the control group there was no difference.

Total Self-Esteem

Total self-esteem, girls’ overall perceptions of their social, academic, parental and general self-esteem was found to have significantly increased for both the experimental and the control groups (p<.05).

Summary of Four Sub-Test and Total of Self-Esteem

Data indicate significant increases in total self-esteem for both the experimental and control group.  However, examination of sub-test data indicate there were more significant increases for the experimental group as compared to the control group.

Examination of data, using the total scores, indicates a trend of an overall increase in self-esteem for the experimental group and an overall decline in self-esteem for the control group.  Specifically, the experimental group made significant gains in self-esteem in two of the four sub-tests, social and general, and maintained levels of self-esteem in the parental and academic areas.  In contrast, data indicated that the control group significantly decreased in self-esteem in three of the four sub-tests, social, academic, parental and maintained levels of self-esteem in the general area.

In summary, girls who enrolled in the optional mentoring course Enabling Visions measured significantly higher levels of self-esteem compared to those not enrolled.  Those not enrolled were measured to have significantly lower levels of self-esteem.

Discussion and Implications

As this report is ongoing and requires integration of qualitative and quantitative findings implications presented here are limited.  However, from the background information and quantitative findings it does appear that providing direct, classroom instruction is critical to enhancing self-esteem and may counter-act the high risk status of adolescent girls.  Girls participating in the self-esteem course not only maintained but improved their self-esteem. 

For those wishing to design courses for adolescent girls aspects of this course that may assist in raising self-esteem and appear worthy of consideration include: a direct focus on women’s issues including an exploration of media portrayal of women (videos, television, magazines, newspapers, comic strips, etc), lessons in assertiveness training, creation of personal collages, visitations to women’s hospitals, information from the literature regarding gender inequities in the classrooms, creation of student videos based on examining myths in the literature, media and their world generally, and spending time with assigned women mentors.

Pairing girls with women mentors appears to be an extremely important component in course development.  Mentoring has been noted as an effective strategy for increasing women’s self-esteem and opportunities in the workplace (Rowe, 1981; Swhartz, 1992).  The most promising mentorship programs found that it was vital for mentors to be other women, not men (Swhartz, 1992; Aburdene & Naisbitt, 1992).  Participants in this study were asked to select an area of future career interest and then were matched for a day-long experience in the workplace with a mentor.  When girls in this study were exposed to women as models in the workplace and afforded the opportunity to interact on a personal basis it appeared these women mentors became sources of validation for their young female counterparts.  ‘Physic support’ (Steinem, 1993) can be gained when women come together to discuss issues of self; what it means to be a girl/woman in our society. 

Providing instruction in an all girl environment allowed participants a safe and secure environment in which to explore  woman’s issues.  There is a growing body of literature which supports single-sex instruction for girls.  Robertson (1992) reported that girls demonstrate increased levels of academic accomplishment in math and science when instruction is given to girls separate from boys.  The most accurate predictor of high self-esteem is academic success (Battle, 1992).  It may be that the growth in self-esteem of participants in this study is in part attributable to an all girls climate where trust, openness and freedom to explore issues was enhanced.   Further, such growth in self-esteem may be synergistic with academic success in regular classroom instruction.

Implications from the above indicate a need to further explore course instruction as a method to increase adolescent girls’ self-esteem.  Administrators and teachers wishing to implement such a course may gain by becoming more aware of women’s issues and gender literature; by allowing those who wish to implement such a course flexibility in course design, content and delivery to allow for participants’ involvement in dealing effectively with the realities of their lives; by allowing for such courses to be delivered in single-sex environments; and; by ensuring a mentoring component in such courses.

Equal treatment, whether actual or perceived, does not always provide equal opportunity.  Focused, direct instruction in self-esteem, such as that experienced by the experimental group of this study,  may enhance equal opportunity for adolescent girls.  Girls’ self-esteem demands critical attention.  The experience, strengths and needs of girls must be given high priority if they are to move beyond the high risk stage of adolescence (Brown & Gilligan, 1992) and enter their adult lives as women who have confidence and a strong sense of self-worth that allows them to be full participants and contributors to our society.

Notes

1.  The author wishes to acknowledge Barbara Mahon, Principal and Leslie Robertson, Curriculum Coordinator, Calgary Board of Education and Thomas Gougeon, Associate Professor, University of Calgary for their contributions to this study.

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