On students' self-concepts inferred by teachers and classmates

The <<Intemal/Extemal Frame of Reference (I/E) model>> by Marsh (1986) assumes that the formation of the academic self-concept in a particular domain is influenced not only by social comparisons (external frame) but also by dimensional comparisons (internal frame). Dimensional comparisons are comparisons between the own achievements in two different domains. Within this study, we investigated whether the I/E model is also valid for the estimations by others. For that academic self-concepts in maths and German of N = 1114 students were assessed as well as the estimates of their N = 48 mathematics teachers and their classmates. For the self-descriptions of the students we found - as expected - positive effects of the external and negative effects of the internal frame of reference. Observers however mainly used social comparison information to estimate other people's self concepts and disregarded dimensional comparisons.