Self-Awareness and Self-Esteem
This domain tests whether you can explain what self-awareness is, how it differs from self-esteem, and how each is built or damaged. Expect definition-based questions, a description of the Johari Window panes, and short-answer items asking you to apply a self-improvement method to a school situation.
Core concepts
- Self-awareness is accurate knowledge of your thoughts, feelings, strengths, weaknesses, values and how others see you. Self-esteem is the value judgement you place on yourself - how worthy you feel. Self-awareness is knowledge; self-esteem is evaluation.
- The Johari Window (Luft and Ingham) has four panes: Open (known to self and others), Blind (known to others, not self), Hidden (known to self, not others), Unknown (neither). Feedback shrinks the Blind pane; self-disclosure shrinks the Hidden pane.
- Self-concept has three parts: the ideal self, the real self and the public self. A wide gap between the ideal and real self lowers self-esteem.
- A SWOT analysis lists Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats; strengths and weaknesses are internal, opportunities and threats external.
- Healthy self-esteem is stable and realistic. It is not boasting and it does not depend on comparing yourself with others.
Worked example
A student says, 'I always fail at mathematics, I am useless.' Reasoning: this is a global, permanent label, not a fact. Rewrite it as specific and changeable - 'I lost marks in algebra because I did not revise the formulae.' Then act: twenty minutes of daily practice and asking the teacher for feedback on errors. Asking the teacher also reduces the Blind pane, because it supplies information about you that others already see.
Traps
- Writing that self-esteem means ego or arrogance; examiners want self-respect plus realistic assessment.
- Mixing the Johari panes: feedback moves information from Blind to Open, not from Unknown to Hidden.
- Confusing the internal and external halves of SWOT.