Self-Esteem in Adventure

Self-Esteem in Adventure

The term ‘self-esteem’ can be portrayed in many different ways due to all individuals being different to one another, which gives a great difficulty when trying to give it a singular definition. However, Fox (1990) gives a definition that ‘self-esteem is concerned with the evaluative element of self-concept where individuals formulate a judgement of their own worth’. However, Sonstroem (1989) comments that it is difficult to view the self without affect or evaluation. Self-concept is defined as ‘the individual’s belief about himself/herself, including the persons attributes and who and what the self is (Baumeister 1999)

William (1890) was one of the earliest people to define self-esteem, ‘Self-Esteem = Success/Pretensions. Which means that the level of self-esteem is the conflict between aspirations and achievements. Meaning that there is a difference is what they aspire to do and to what they currently are.

There is evidence that self-esteem and self-concept can be enhanced through participation in adventurous activities (Gibbs and Bunyan 1997 & Hattie, Marsh, Neill and Richards 1997), however, some learners will not benefit from adventure, for example, whether or not an individual has the ability to scale a mountain, whether they can or they can’t to others, to themselves they may feel like they have no physical self-worth and that there isn’t any point of trying. A lack of self-confidence to themselves will lower their self-esteem and stop them from achieving their full potential. Hattie et al., (1997) state that from their meta-analysis they found that self-esteem is the most predominant outcome through an outward bound activity, they concluded that this form of activity compared to traditional educational activities will enhance the learner’s self-esteem. On the other hand, Heatherton & Polivy (1991) state that if a facilitator doesn’t have the correct means of effective teaching in the outdoors, the learners may fall short of the goals and have a decrease in their self-esteem.

There can be low self-esteem which can cause depression within learners, however, there can also be too high self-esteem can lead to having rejected social influences and engagements.

After reading Hattie et al., (1997) paper on adventure education and outward bound, the notions they made about the measures labelled self-concept were that they are classed as cognitive appraisals, integrated across various dimensions that we attribute to ourselves. ‘Physical self-concept is typically inferred from responses to global physical scales that may confuse different physical components reflecting, for example, health, physical attractiveness, body composition, fitness, strength, and physical activity’ (Marsh, Richards, Johnson, Roche & Tremayne, 1994). Marsh et al., (1994) created a self-esteem model with different sub-sections relaying different forms of one’s global physical self-concept. I believe that this model doesn’t go into enough detail on the sub-sections, even though there are a lot of them.

After Hattie et al., (1997) stating that self-esteem being the greatest outcome from outward bound courses, it can be said that the facilitators will need to learners with caution. The facilitators will need to try and combat over-focusing on some learners when it comes to outdoor adventure as other learners will not benefit from being left out. The facilitator will need to take into consideration the comfort zones of each of the learners as one learner may find one task comfortable, yet another learner will find the task in their panic zone. The facilitators will try and manipulate the sessions in order to generate the best out of the learners, giving them the best chance to boost their self-esteem, setting achievable goals will allow learners to receive a sense of achievement. Leading on from this we have the black box model, where we have an input -> process -> output but we don’t know what causes the output, whether it be the facilitator, the sessions, the learners or even the environment.

References

Baumeister, R. F. (1999). The Self in Social Psychology. Psychology Press.

Fox, K.H. (1990). The Physical Self-Perception Profile manual. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University, Office for Health Promotion.

Gibbs, C., & Bunyan, P. (1997). The Development of Self-Esteem Through the Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme. Horizons, 4, 23-25.

Hattie, J., Marsh, H., Neill, J., & Richards, G. (1997). Adventure Education and Outward Bound: Out-of-Class Experiences That Make a Lasting Difference. Review of Educational Research, 67((1)), 43-87.

Heatherton, T. F., & Polivy, J. (1991). Development and Validation of a Scale for Measuring State Self-Esteem. Journal of Personality and Social psychology, 60(6), 895-909

Huitt, W. (2004). Self-Concept and Self-Esteem. Educational Psychology Interactive.

Marsh, H.W., Richards, G.E., Johnson, S., Roche, L., & Tremayne, P. (1994). Physical Self-Description Questionnaire: Psychometric properties and a multitrait-multimethod analysis of relations to existing instruments. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 16,270-305.