‘If I do well I feel on top of the world’: investigating the impact of students’ academic achievement on self-esteem

Academic achievement can be thought of as the extent to which learning has been accomplished. Previous work suggests that self-esteem is impacted by academic achievement for students, but further work is required to contemplate why. The current study therefore aimed to explore this by asking, How is self-esteem impacted by students’ academic achievement? Eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with students from a Scottish university, transcribed, and subjected to Braun & Clarke’s (2006) six stage reflexive thematic analysis. Two themes of Grades and feedback and Peer comparison highlighting two main conclusions: firstly, that self-esteem is negatively impacted by poor academic achievement (i.e. poor performance) but that this is mediated by others’ poor performance. In addition, students value feedback in order to increase academic achievement, noting the negative impact on self-esteem when feedback is not constructive, just critical. Implications, limitations and future research suggestions are detailed.