Fundamental Pedagogy Jana Doležalová

5.2 Prerequisites for Self-education 
The basic processes of self-awareness, self-knowledge and self-
evaluation are applied within self-education.
Self-awareness – awareness about oneself and one’s own existence.  
Self-knowledge – getting to know oneself, special features in actions, 
behaviour and experience, 
- key moment for self-education, 
- getting to know one’s weaknesses and strengths is important,
- self-knowledge occurs through self-reflection, 
- the need for objective self-knowledge, beware of biased information 
about oneself within the self-examination and formation of self-
knowledge (may be influenced by the evaluation by others), 
- self-distance is an important instrument of self-reflection (Ulrichová, 
2013), 
- 
self-knowledge methods: simple registration of own behaviour and 
conduct, regular reflexion, possibly in writing, dailies and free 
association methods (professional supervision required). Individual 
methods have their pros and cons – for more details see Míček, 
1986).
Self-approach, self-concept – opinion about oneself and/or relationship 
to oneself formed on the basis of self-knowledge and self-evaluation; 
influences self-evaluation. 
Self-evaluation – evaluation of oneself
- should focus on own thinking, behaviour and action, needs, interest, 
conative qualities and skills, 
- influences one’s behaviour, activities and performance, formation of 
personality, 
- self-evaluation is influenced by communication, relationships among 
people and atmosphere; children may be influenced by their 
surroundings especially easily, 
- we register positive or negative, high, low or unstable self-evaluation, 
- errors in self-evaluation; overrating oneself (increased self-
evaluation) or underrating oneself (reduced self-evaluation), 
- self-criticism is related to self-evaluation – critical evaluation focusing 
mostly on one’s negative utterances and features. 

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The result of correct and objective self-evaluation – one neither overvalues 
nor undervalues himself/herself, knows his/her pros and cons,
- objective self-evaluation is influenced primarily by the upbringing 
from early childhood
- the quality of self-education depends on objective self-evaluation.