Living in the Big Pond: Adding the Neighborhood as a Frame-of-Reference for Academic Self-Concept Formation

Research on the big fish little pond effect (BFLPE) shows that classroom selectivity, in terms of class-average achievement, negatively affects students’ academic self-concept due to social comparison processes. The neighborhood effects literature reports positive effects of neighborhood selectivity, in terms of advantageous socioeconomic neighborhood conditions, on students’ academic development via collective socialization mechanisms, but has not investigated academic self-concept as an outcome. To investigate how socioeconomic neighborhood conditions affect academic self-concept, we separately and simultaneously analyzed the effects of classroom and neighborhood selectivity on students’ academic self-concept using two student samples coming from two grade levels (N Grade 5) = 3,906, N Grade 9) = 3,277). When separately analyzing the neighborhood, we found socioeconomic neighborhood conditions to negatively predict general, math, and German self-concept in Grade 5. In Grade 9 this was only the case for math self-concept. When simultaneously analyzing the classroom and the neighborhood, we found advantageous neighborhood conditions to negatively predict general and math self-concept only in Grade 5. Our study shows that negative neighborhood effects on academic self-concept may exist, thereby introducing the neighborhood as a potential frame-of-reference for academic self-concept formation.