From self-concept to -knowledge to -regulation: A proposal based on students’ domain-specific academic self-concepts and achievements

We initially tested whether besides possessing a positive self-concept, possessing an accurate self-concept has an incremental effect on students’ school adaptation. As self-knowledge index, we calculated ipsative profile correlations between 9th grade students’ academic self-concepts (i.e., how well students think they do) in the domains Math, German, and French and their respective achievement test scores in these domains (i.e., how well students actually do). We then related students’ self-knowledge to their general performance across these tests, their school satisfaction, and their perceived quality of the teacher-student relationship, assuming that accurate self-concepts lay the foundation for adaptive self-regulation processes (e.g., building on strengths and remedying or accepting weaknesses). In a first sample (N = 6279), we found that self-knowledge explained an incremental amount of variance in school adaptation above and beyond students’ general and domain-specific self-concepts in multiple regression analyses. The better aligned students’ self-concept profile was with their actual achievement profile, the better their performance across these domains, the more satisfied students were with schooling, and the better their relationship with their teachers. Except for school satisfaction, these findings were replicated in another cohort of 9th grade students (N = 6493), and they remained robust when we used rang-correlation instead of Pearson-correlation to derive our self-knowledge index. Notably, both indices seemed largely independent from students’ self-concepts and, on average, students seem to better “know” about their academic abilities compared to other aspects of their personality. We discuss necessary improvements to further substantiate the adaptive role of self-knowledge in self-regulation.