According to Edelstein (2001), there are current two basic views of self-esteem in education, which is said to be commonly defined as holding a high opinion of oneself. One current theoretical position is that self-esteem is good for students in general, and that if is important for them to think well of themselves regardless of how well or badly they have actually performed in school. This view holds, that if students esteem themselves highly, they will automatically do better--and even if they don't do better, they will feel happier about themselves. In other words, this theory holds, at least in part, that improvements in self-esteem are associated with improvements in academic performance.
The second view of self-esteem is more libertarian. This approach, according to Edelstein (2001) holds that self-esteem should be viewed by students as something they have earned. In this regard, Edelstein states that the libertarian view holds that if students perform better, they will then automatically feel better about themselves, rate themselves more highly and so forth. Feeling better is, therefore, viewed as a psychological reward for improved performance.
Both of these views of self-esteem have been aligned with delinquency in adolescents, both males and females. However, the first view can be more closely aligned with delinquency because it holds that delinquency can be a direct effect of low self-esteem in some students and that the delinquent behavior can be improved merely by increasing students' levels of self-esteem (Goff & Goddard, 1999).
However, putting the two approaches together, it can be seen that the current theoretical literature postulates associations between self-esteem, academic performance, and delinquency. In general, they suggest that low self-esteem is connected to poor academic performance, which in turn is associated with a number of problematic behaviors, one of which can be delinquency. The purp...