The Relationship Between Students Self-esteem, Schoolwork Difficulties and Subjective School Well-being in Finnish Upper-secondary Education

This study seeks to explore the structure of subjective school well-being (swb) and the relation between swb, self-esteem and experienced schoolwork difficulties and some background variables of academically oriented students in their first year in upper-secondary education. First, the one-factor model in swb fitted the data best. Second, the findings from hierarchical regression analyses indicated that swb was affected by parents income, schoolwork difficulty and self-esteem. Third, self-esteem was influenced by gender and parents income, schoolwork difficulties and swb. The results suggest that parents income has a stronger effect on self-esteem than well-being, and boys have higher self-esteem than girls. We argue that students, especially girls, self-esteem and swb need to be strengthened through educational support and psychological guidance. 2020 The author(s)