Factors Influencing Change in Children's Self-Concepts

Abstract

related to teachers' and peer groups' perceptions of children's self-concepts (5). This article will report the findings relating to the influence of selected factors on changes in children's self-concepts. This second part of the study investigated the effects of four factors, (a) social-emotional climate, (b) teacher participation in an in-service child study program, (c) teacher acceptance of self and others, and (d) grade level, on changes in children's self-concepts in the fourth and sixth grades. Self-concept was defined as those perceptions, beliefs, feelings, attitudes, and values which the individual views as describing himself. The ideal self was defined in terms of those qualities which describe the person he would like to be. In this study data on children's self-concepts and ideal selves were obtained by means of a Q-sort, an instrument and technique which requires the subject to make a forced normal distribution of a series of self-referrent statements. The Q-sort developed for use in this study was a stratified random sample of 50 self-referrent statements which had been selected from a universe derived from responses of fourth and sixth grade children reported in a study by Jersild (3). Correlating the child's self-sort with his ideal sort provides a measure of his self - ideal self congruency and may be expressed in terms of a Q-correlation coefficient. Change in self-concept in this study was defined as change in self-ideal congruency. A representative sample of eight classrooms enrolling 251 children in seven suburban elementary schools of a large county school system in Maryland was selected for study. Classrooms were selected on the basis of their being willing to participate in the research and their being representa