Abstract:
One of the psychological variables that may have a long-lasting effect on our life is labeling and as Ercole (2009) maintains, students‟ accomplishments might be severely undermined through the teacher‟s labeling. In spite of this issue, few studies have been carried out on the ramifications of labeling in the educational contexts (Riddick, 2000), in general, and in EFL classrooms, in particular. The current study is an attempt to investigate the occurrence possibility of negative labeling and how such labels eventually influence students‟ psychological/academic potentials. Since it was not possible to expose the students to the experience of negative labels in their real situations, the 100 high-school female participants of the study were asked to make predictions on social /academic success of a fictitious student who was labeled as dyslexic (Hunt, 2006). Besides, they were given a modified 11-item questionnaire (Mwania & Muola, 2013) about their experiences of being labeled. The participants were also asked to fill in the Coopersmith Self-esteem Inventory (SEI) (1967) to see if there is any relationship between their labeling experiences, their self-esteem and their reported academic achievements. The collected data was then processed using SPSS. The findings of the study indicate that teacher‟s negative labeling was significantly related (sig. = 0.00) with students‟ self-esteem, their academic (sig. = 0.02) potentials, and their future life/success/expectations. The study bears some significant implications for teachers‟ education since the findings show that the negative ramifications of labeling in EFL contexts should be taken into more consideration in teaching.
Machine summary:
"30) Old Negative Labels: New Exciting Labels: Demanding Holds high standards Unpredictable Flexible, a creative problem solver Loud Enthusiastic and zestful Argumentative Opinionated, strongly committed to one‟s goals Stubborn Assertive, a willingness to persist in the face of obstacles Noisy Curious Wild Energetic Extreme Tenderhearted Inflexible Traditional Manipulative Charismatic Impatient Compelling Anxious Cautious Explosive Dramatic Picky Selective Distractible Perceptive PURPOSE OF THE STUDY The main purpose of the present study is to investigate the existence possibility of negative labeling in English learning classroom settings and its relationship with such personality variables as selfesteem and how such labels eventually influence the students‟ personal/social/academic capability.
RESULTS Descriptive Results Table 4 displays the summary of the descriptive findings including the standard deviations, the means, minimums and maximums of the social desirability, selfesteem, teacher negative labeling, and the students‟ English midterm/final/total average scores.
Table 8: Pearson Correlation of Students‟ Selfesteem, Academic Achievement (English Midterm/Final/Total Average Scores), and Teacher‟s Negative Labeling Variables Correlation Coefficient Significance Level Selfesteem -0.
The following Table 9 shows the regression variables and significance coefficient of the performed statistic test about the relationship between selfesteem, academic achievement (English midterm/final/total average) variables and teacher negative labeling.
In sum, the findings of the present study highlight the importance of the formal and informal assessment of the students in the ELT contexts since the teachers might use some inappropriate labels to address the students based on the formal tests/evaluation results or even the informal questioning of the students, which may have some negative effects on their selfesteem and academic achievements."