The implications for student self-esteem of ordinary differences in schools : the cases of Malta and England

Abstract

This article is written by two people, sometimes speaking together as 'we', sometimes speaking individually as 'I', in order to put forward our own individual perspectives. Both of us are teachers and researchers. Both of us began our teaching careers in schools, and now teach in universities. One of us, Deborah, is based in Malta, and the other, Morwenna, in England. At the time we met, about seven years ago, Deborah had just started a PhD; Morwenna was one of her supervisors. The PhD was completed a couple of years ago, but we have stayed in contact, mostly by e-mail, which we use to talk about our lives and work. The article is a result of our continuing interest and concern about social justice in education. That is, we are interested in how classrooms, schools and indeed the whole educational system, can contribute to social justice, or at least, deal with some of the injustices that get enmeshed in educational practices. Central to social justice is personal identity as related to group membership (as defined by social class, gender, race, sexuality, and so on), whether it is defined by the individual concerned or whether it is ascribed to them by others. So it is easy to see that 'identity' has something to do with social justice. But the more everyday concept of 'self' seems less obviously a matter of politics, or so it would seem from the kinds of discussions of self-concept, self-esteem, self-image, and the rest, which are found in the educational literature. It is this issue of the relationship between social justice and self that we raise - and suggest some ways of resolving - in this article. For the remainder of this article, we will use the term 'self-esteem'. It is possible to differentiate self-esteem, self-concept and self-image, but the different terms are in fact often used almost interchangeably by both theorists and practitioners.