Differences in Self‐Concept among Children with Mathematics Disabilities and their Average and High Achieving Peers

Abstract

Self‐concept ratings of children with mathematics disabilities (MD), average mathematics achievement (AA), and high mathematics achievement (HA) who attended regular classes in grades 4 through 6 were compared. Twenty‐four children in each group, who were selected from an original pool of 811 children, and who were matched one‐to‐one by grade, gender, and nonverbal ability participated in the study. The Culture‐Free Self‐Esteem Inventories (Battle, 1992), a nonverbal ability test, and mathematics achievement tests were administered to all children. Results indicated a marginally significant difference in mathematics self‐concept between the MD and AA groups but no difference between the AA and HA groups. However, children with MD rated themselves more negatively than their HA peers on mathematics, academic, and global subscales. Interestingly, the group differences on academic and general self‐concept measures did not emerge when variations in mathematics self‐concept were controlled, limiting the difference between the MD and HA groups to mathematics self‐concept only. The results suggest that by focusing on children with a specific learning disability and by using domain‐specific academic self‐concept measures, the group differences could be shown to be limited to a subject‐specific self‐concept that is pertinent to the children's area of disability.