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.