Self-concept of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian students: Competence and affect components and relations to achievement ¬リニ

a r t i c l e i n f o Previous research on differences and similarities in self-concept of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian students did not consider the possible differentiation between competence and affect components. As a result, it is unknown whether previously found differences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students' self-concepts are the result of their beliefs about their abilities or their feelings about specific domains. Thus, the present study aims to examine and compare the structure, the mean levels, and the relations to achievement measures of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian students' self-concepts in academic and non-academic domains when taking the competence–affect separation into account. Self-concepts in math, English, school, physical ability, and art were measured with 1809 secondary school students including 343 Indigenous students. For Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that all self-concept facets measured could be separated into competence and affect components although the correlations between competence and affect components were high, particularly for art and physical ability self-concepts. Non-Indigenous students demonstrated higher levels of school competence, English competence, English affect, and math competence self-concepts. Indigenous students displayed higher levels of physical ability competence self-concept while no group differences could be found for school affect, math affect, physical ability affect, and art competence and art affect self-concepts. Invariance tests revealed an invariant factor structure and invariant relations between the multiple self-concept facets and achievement factors across Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. Hence, the present study adds to our understanding of the similarities and differences regarding Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian students' self-concepts. Indigenous Australians are one of the oldest surviving and diverse Indigenous cultures in the world (Bodkin-Andrews & Carlson, 2013; Butler, 2000). However, Indigenous Australians have also been recognised as one of the most disadvantaged Indigenous groups in the world today, across a wide variety of quality of life indicators including socioeconomic status, physical and mental health, and education The disadvantage of Indigenous Australians particularly manifests itself with regard to educational inequities and " These educational inequities are of grave concern, particularly given that they are pervasive, extending across preschool through high school " results, Australia was ranked above the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average, however Indigenous Australian students' results were consistently below the OECD average for reading, mathematical, and science literacy (De Bortoli & Thomson, 2010). Furthermore, across the three time frames, there was no improvement in Indigenous students' performance.