Looking Carefully Around the Pond: Academic Self-Concept, Academic Self-Efficacy, and the Big-Fish-Little-Pond Effect

• In Event: How Beliefs About Self Relate to Motivation and Cognition

Abstract

This study examines the presence of the big-fish-little-pond-effect (BFLPE) in high school math and science classes. We look particularly at the presence of the BFLPE with regard to academic self-concept and academic self-efficacy. Due to its traditional frame-of-reference components, academic self-concept was subject to the BFLPE while academic self-efficacy, with its traditional focus on independent, prospective assessments, exhibited no such effect. However, academic self-efficacy did show the countervailing phenomenon of a basking-in-reflected-glory effect. Results suggest the importance of carefully created items that distinguish between these two related, self-belief constructs as well as the need for future research to determine the effects on students of being in higher performing classrooms.

Authors

• Jeff Vomund, George Mason University

• Angela D. Miller, George Mason University