Big-Fish-Little-Pond Effects on Academic Self-Concept and Academic Self-Efficacy Across Countries

• In Event: 31.055 - Development of Ethnic Identity and Self-Concept in Adolescents

Abstract

Building upon Marsh and Hau’s study (2003), we revisited a theory called the big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE) that an individual student’s academic self-concept was negatively affected by their schools’ academic achievement levels. We also examined if the BFLPE was applicable to students’ academic self-efficacy. For empirical analyses, we used PISA 2006 and PISA 2012 data to test the BFLPE on different domain-specific self-concept and self-efficacy measures. The results show that the BFLPE appears universal for students’ self-concept in both science and mathematics across OECD countries. However, the BFLPE was not consistently found in self-efficacy. We provide theoretical explanation in different results between academic self-concept and academic self-efficacy from the literature review.

Authors

• Hyekyung Jung, Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation

• Eunjoo Kim, Yonsei University