Self Concepts of Mexican-American and Anglo-American Head Start Children

This study investigated the differences in self concept of Mexican-American and Anglo-American preschool children to determine if Mexican children have less favorable self concepts when compared with Anglo children of the same age and socioeconomic background. Differences between self concepts of Mexican boys and girls and between Anglo boys and girls were investigated. A third object was to determine the extent to which children\u27s reports of self agree with their perceptions of significant others\u27 perceptions of them. Twenty-two Mexican-American and 20 Anglo-American Head Start children were given the Brown-IDS Self Concept Referents Test. This test was specially designed for use with preschool children and consisted of taking a full length Polaroid photograph of each child which served as an object about which subjects were asked questions concerning their perception of self and their perceptions of significant others\u27 (mother, teacher, and peers) perceptions of them. Results indicated that both Anglo- and Mexican-American children appear to have developed positive feelings about themselves. There were, however, significant differences in the responses of children in the two groups. Mexican-American children perceived their mothers and teachers as seeing them less favorably than Anglo children