A Study of the Academic Self-concept of High School Students and its Effects on their Achievement

The purpose of this research was to determine the academic self-concept of high school students and its effects on their achievement. Quantitative research design was chosen for this study. In this study, (600) Grade Ten students from five Basic Education High Schools in Urban and five Basic Education High Schools in Rural were involved. A questionnaire based on the dimensions of Reynolds’ Academic Self-concept Scale was used to find the academic self-concept in English, Mathematics and Physics. Independent Samples t-test was used to investigate whether there were significant differences in the academic self-concept and achievement of high school students in terms of gender and location of school. The results revealed that there were significant differences in the academic self-concept and achievement of high school students in terms of gender. And there were significant differences in the academic self-concept of high school students in Physics but not in English and Mathematics in terms of location. Then, there were significant differences in the achievement of high school students in terms of location. Pearson Product Moment Correlation was used to investigate the relationship between the academic self-concept of high school students and their corresponding achievement. The result revealed that there was a significant correlation between the academic self-concept and achievement. In addition simple regression was used to find out the effect of the academic self-concept of high school students on their achievement. The result of simple regression (R2 = .11) revealed that there was a positive small effect of the academic self-concept of high school students on their achievement. Although there was a small effect, the academic self-concept was one of the important factors for increasing the achievement of students. Therefore, teachers and parents need to know the ways of improving the academic self-concept and should create an environment that allow for successive approximations leading toward the end goal