Dimensional and Social Comparisons Effects on Domain-Specific Self-Concepts and Interests: A Study of Elementary School Children from Luxembourg Across Two Waves

Already at the beginning of elementary school, students start to develop self-beliefs and attitudes that reflect their motivation, thoughts, and feelings about a specific school domain. The internal/external frame of reference (I/E) model (Marsh, 1986) encapsulates this phenomenon by explicating the formation of academic self-concept through a combination of social (i.e. comparing one’s achievement in one domain with the achievement of one’s peers in the same domain) and dimensional (i.e. comparing one’s achievement in one domain with one’s achievement in another domain) comparison processes. The recently established generalized internal/external frame of reference (GI/E) model (Möller, Müller-Kalthoff, Helm, Nagy, & Marsh, 2015) builds on the I/E model by extending it to the formation of other subject-specific academic self-beliefs and attitudes, such as interest and test anxiety. Despite the salience of the (G)I/E model in educational research, studies investigating the formation of self-beliefs and attitudes according to this model remains scarce among elementary school children. This study aims to contribute to the current literature by examining the associations between verbal and mathematics achievement, on the one hand, and corresponding domain-specific self-concepts and interests, on the other hand. A population of Luxembourgish elementary school students was assessed twice, two years apart (once in Grade 1 and once in Grade 3) as part of the Luxembourgish school monitoring system (EpStan, cohorts 2014 & 2016; epstan.lu). Using a domain-specific approach, students were assessed on math and verbal achievement as well as German- and math self-concept and interest. This culminated in a sample of N = 3606 elementary school children who participated in both waves. German- and math self-concepts and interests were self-reported whereas standardized achievement tests (see epstan.lu) were used as indicators of math and verbal (Luxembourgish for Grade 1 and German for Grade 3) achievement. Cross-lagged structural equation modelling was performed in Mplus 8 using WLSMV estimation for categorical variables. Overall, the results
suggest strong support for the (G)I/E model for Grade 3, while only partial support was found for the (G)I/E model for Grade 1. More specifically, for both Grade 1 and Grade 3, achievement was positively related to self-concept and interest within the same domain. Negative relations between achievement and self-concept and interest across domains were found in Grade 3, but not in Grade 1. The findings are discussed within the context of theory and research on self-concept differentiation processes, dimensional comparison theory, and the multilingual Luxembourgish educational system.