"Cogito Ergo Scribo: Applying Self-Schema Theory to the Composition Classroom"

About the Author

Joshua Cruz is currently studying literacy and higher education at the University of Pennsylvania. He has also taught reading and writing skills classes at the community college level while attaining a master's degree in English from Rutgers University. He plans on returning to the community college to continue teaching literacy to at-risk and marginalized students.

Contents

Introduction to Student Alienation and Self-Schema

Several Studies to Justify an Interest in Self-Schema Theory

Practical Application

Works Cited

Several Studies to Justify an Interest in Self-Schema Theory

If we look at Cross and Markus’s experiment in “Self-Schemas, Possible Selves, and Competent Performance,” we find that a self-schema oriented toward a certain activity can “positively influence competent performance in future situations by enabling schematic individuals to persist longer on problem-solving tasks and to recall [pertinent] information” (427).  In this study, 1500 students were asked to provide information about themselves, specifically focusing on their attitude toward and their ability to engage in analytical thinking. Those that rated themselves as having good analytical thinking skills were considered schematic analytical thinkers. Those that rated themselves below average were considered aschematic. All students were then given a section of the analytical GRE test. Students that had taken Calculus 1 or more advanced math classes were excluded from this study. Thus, there was a pool of students with roughly the same level of mathematical skills, roughly the same outlook on life, and roughly the same level of self esteem (these were all accounted for in the study), but with different outlooks toward analytical thinking. Both schematic and aschematic groups scored nearly the same on the analytics test itself, suggesting that the students were capable of equal levels of competency. The significant difference lies in the way that students perceived taking the test. Schematic individuals reported feeling as though they were in control of the test, and genuinely enjoyed taking the test over aschematic individuals. In a follow-up study, they found that aschematic students have the ability to perform just as well as schematic students, but the motivators for these students are radically different.

In this second study, the experiment was essentially copied, but this time the researchers included questions designed by Julius Kuhl regarding action and state orientation. Action oriented individuals are those that can regulate their thoughts and actions toward a particular task; they have what might be considered malleable selves, which are readily changeable given a particular task. State oriented individuals, on the other hand, have difficulty regulating, and tend to be more static and unmoving in self concept (Moss 1). To further complicate matters, Kuhl distinguishes two dimensions of action and state orientation: failure and decision. Failure orientation measures how much an individual ruminates on failure and takes to heart criticism and rejection. Those who are action oriented deal well with criticism and are able to direct their thoughts toward improvement, whereas state oriented individuals tend to ruminate on their failures. Decision orientation refers to one’s self efficacy--how enthusiastic and confident individuals are when faced with even a challenging task. Decision action oriented individuals can embrace tasks, and usually display initiative when faced with a challenge; state decision oriented individuals, on the other hand, have difficulty beginning tasks and seeing them through to the end.

What does all this have to do with self-schema, and more importantly, writing? In the second Cross and Markus study, students self reported information about their motivational habits. Unlike in the first test, students were also told whether or not they had “failed” the test. What all of this boils down to is a suggestion that students with domain specific self-schemata fall into action decision orientation; they persisted longer on more difficult problems, and genuinely felt a sort of internal motivation to complete the task to the best of their capabilities. Aschematics also scored as well as schematics on the test, but when we apply Kuhl’s orientations to their motivations, they scored on the test primarily to avoid failure. When asked to take a second test that would not be assessed in pass/fail terms, these same aschematic individuals performed more poorly than schematic individuals in the same situation. We might say, then, that aschematic individuals succeed in certain tasks only to avoid failure, not because they attribute any real meaning to the task.

So, students aschematic to a particular task may find themselves completing that task only to avoid harboring feelings of self resentment and failure. In terms of a writing or composition classes, this finding tells us why students may produce mediocre work that they do not seem to “own.” This may also be why, as Dubson notices, his students only glance at his feedback before trashing the paper; they want to avoid feeling personally attacked. These students do what they must to avoid failure, and push through the course without ever actively engaging in the learning process, as learning this material does not pertain to their identities. They learn only enough to avoid failure, which many teachers will likely agree, barely constitutes learning.

Here, it is important to note that self-schema is not composed simply of the identities that individuals ascribe to themselves at one given moment. Within self-schema theory, we also have to concept of “possible selves,” or identities that one wants to possess at a later time. Possible selves do not simply determine how an individual receives and structures information, but determines an individual’s long and short term goals (Markus, “Possible Selves,” 954, 961). Possible selves include selves that individuals would like to become or avoid, and in many ways it is these possible selves that determine how an individual’s self-schema is formed. Again, this probably sounds like unsubstantiated common sense--individuals will form goals to become the people that they want to become--but we might not expect these mental structures to be quite as stubborn as they are.

Ng Chi-Hung has performed several studies on self-schema, possible selves, and education. In one of his earlier studies, he tested three factors in student goal orientation and achievement. He was hoping to test the dynamics between self-schema and possible self, teachers’ expectations for the students, and the relationship between teachers and students. What he found was that the students’ interactions with teachers did not particularly affect their goals and idea of possible selves. The initial hypothesis of Chi-Hung’s study was that students would shape their goals toward the teachers’ perceived expectations; if, for instance, the teacher emphasized mastery of a particular skill set, it would be expected that the students would prime themselves by studying those particular skills. Surprisingly, this is not what happened in most cases. Students focused on those skills and abilities that were specific to their own self-schemata and that appeared to be congruent/most relevant with their projection of desired possible selves (“Internalization”). The conclusion of Ng’s study justified the idea that “self-schema outweighed the other two social variables in predicting students' goal orientations. In particular, self-schema was the most important predictor for mastery goal” (“I’m Motivated”). Students master what they perceive as being relevant to master, regardless of a teacher’s expectations upon them, regardless of the relationship that they have with a particular teacher; this will be an important point momentarily.

A final study that I would like to (very) briefly discuss is Merriam and Brockett’s The Profession and Practice of Adult Education. Here, these researchers look at the nontraditional student that, for whatever reason, is not in the college setting for several years, then decides to return. We might expect these individuals to be at a disadvantage as they have been out of the educational loop for some time. In my own experiences as a community college reading and writing instructor, nontraditional students tend to be more focused and responsible than their fresh-out-of-high school counterparts. This is also true in the findings of Merriam and Brockett, who suggest that this is because nontraditional students have had time to develop more specific and solid “self concepts,” which we might take here to be synonymous with self-schema. They continue to spell out a connection between self-direction, self-regulation, self-efficacy, and self-concept. A follow up study (Jacobson and Harris, 415-416) even goes so far as to say that nontraditional students at community colleges have a greater tendency toward success than the traditional four year university student because correlations between “self-schemata and strategies for learning… suggest that motivational beliefs such as goal orientation and self-efficacy are linked in important ways to the use of cognitive and self-regulatory strategies." Even though they attend schools that are typically conceived as less rigorous and less linked to success, these adult learners actually meet greater success because their self concepts/identities dictate that they are to be more engaged with their academic experiences.