Strategies for Promoting the Development of Personal Identity

Social Identity

Acquiring social identity includes learning about gender, ethnicity, and ability issues. Experts on multicultural and antibias education advise teachers to focus on values, interaction patterns, and equitable teaching practices, rather than curriculum activities that highlight superficial features like flags or potentially stereotypical images of different cultures, such as a sombrero or feathered headdress (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010; Hendrick & Weissman, 2007). In other words, children are taught to respond to each other courteously as individuals. This helps to create a classroom culture that values respect, caring, and the matter-of-fact recognition of similarities and differences. It also provides the grounding children need as concrete learners to understand their places in the context of others.

Strategies that promote an accurate and unbiased environment include the following:

• Using pictures of actual children and families rather than drawings.
• Making sure that photographs, displays, and materials depict at a minimum the ethnic groups represented in your class; also be sure that people of all ages are represented.
• Examining and removing any literature that includes stereotyping of any kind.
• Using only materials that are culturally inclusive and gender-neutral (e.g., showing both men and women in different occupations).
• Encouraging children to bring materials from home for the dramatic play area.
• Making sure that dolls in the dramatic play area accurately reflect ethnic features rather than dolls that are identical except for skin pigment.
• If you notice “gendrification” in play areas, where, for example, only girls are playing in the kitchen area, designate “girl only” or “boy only” days in those centers to encourage cross-gender participation.
• Making sure classroom job assignments are gender-neutral.

Activities that can be used in the classroom to contribute to development of social identity include the following:

• Cut out and paint a life-size tracing of each child’s body and display these in small groupings, or as a “class portrait.”
• Mix paint to match the skin color of each child when making portraits, or to do handprints or footprints.
• Have children cut out pictures from magazines to make a book or collage of boys and girls doing similar things.
• Make personal time lines with photographs children bring from home that depict important events in their lives.
• Make class books of things children like or don’t like to eat or do, or things they fear or that make them happy or angry.
• Pair or group children to ensure cross-cultural and balanced gender interactions.

Confidence and Self-Esteem

As children’s cognitive awareness and ability to use words to describe “who I am” develops, they also begin to make comparative judgments about themselves in relation to others. Children tend to have perceptions about their self-worth long before they begin to talk about it, which typically occurs toward the end of the early childhood period (around age 7 or 8) (Papalia & Feldman, 2011). Younger children also seldom make subtle distinctions, usually categorizing themselves at one or the other end of a spectrum, such as good/bad. Further, their ability to be realistic about strengths and weaknesses can be affected by adults who lavish unwarranted praise or who are continually critical.

Essential to healthy self-esteem and confidence that motivates children to persist through difficulties is “unconditionality” (Papalia & Feldman, 2011). In other words, if a child’s self-esteem is solely contingent on success, she can develop a sense of helplessness if she is not successful on the first try. Conversely, if a child’s self-esteem and confidence are unconditional attributes, a failed attempt will only lead him to try repeatedly until he succeeds. Over time, children who lack confidence expect to fail and become more reluctant to take risks, while an overconfident child may not learn how to react to failure (Willis & Schiller, 2011).

The goal for teachers of young children is to help them develop realistic confidence in several ways, as Table 9.2 illustrates.

Social Identity

Acquiring social identity includes learning about gender, ethnicity, and ability issues. Experts on multicultural and antibias education advise teachers to focus on values, interaction patterns, and equitable teaching practices, rather than curriculum activities that highlight superficial features like flags or potentially stereotypical images of different cultures, such as a sombrero or feathered headdress (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010; Hendrick & Weissman, 2007). In other words, children are taught to respond to each other courteously as individuals. This helps to create a classroom culture that values respect, caring, and the matter-of-fact recognition of similarities and differences. It also provides the grounding children need as concrete learners to understand their places in the context of others.

Strategies that promote an accurate and unbiased environment include the following:

• Using pictures of actual children and families rather than drawings.
• Making sure that photographs, displays, and materials depict at a minimum the ethnic groups represented in your class; also be sure that people of all ages are represented.
• Examining and removing any literature that includes stereotyping of any kind.
• Using only materials that are culturally inclusive and gender-neutral (e.g., showing both men and women in different occupations).
• Encouraging children to bring materials from home for the dramatic play area.
• Making sure that dolls in the dramatic play area accurately reflect ethnic features rather than dolls that are identical except for skin pigment.
• If you notice “gendrification” in play areas, where, for example, only girls are playing in the kitchen area, designate “girl only” or “boy only” days in those centers to encourage cross-gender participation.
• Making sure classroom job assignments are gender-neutral.

Activities that can be used in the classroom to contribute to development of social identity include the following:

• Cut out and paint a life-size tracing of each child’s body and display these in small groupings, or as a “class portrait.”
• Mix paint to match the skin color of each child when making portraits, or to do handprints or footprints.
• Have children cut out pictures from magazines to make a book or collage of boys and girls doing similar things.
• Make personal time lines with photographs children bring from home that depict important events in their lives.
• Make class books of things children like or don’t like to eat or do, or things they fear or that make them happy or angry.
• Pair or group children to ensure cross-cultural and balanced gender interactions.

Confidence and Self-Esteem

As children’s cognitive awareness and ability to use words to describe “who I am” develops, they also begin to make comparative judgments about themselves in relation to others. Children tend to have perceptions about their self-worth long before they begin to talk about it, which typically occurs toward the end of the early childhood period (around age 7 or 8) (Papalia & Feldman, 2011). Younger children also seldom make subtle distinctions, usually categorizing themselves at one or the other end of a spectrum, such as good/bad. Further, their ability to be realistic about strengths and weaknesses can be affected by adults who lavish unwarranted praise or who are continually critical.

Essential to healthy self-esteem and confidence that motivates children to persist through difficulties is “unconditionality” (Papalia & Feldman, 2011). In other words, if a child’s self-esteem is solely contingent on success, she can develop a sense of helplessness if she is not successful on the first try. Conversely, if a child’s self-esteem and confidence are unconditional attributes, a failed attempt will only lead him to try repeatedly until he succeeds. Over time, children who lack confidence expect to fail and become more reluctant to take risks, while an overconfident child may not learn how to react to failure (Willis & Schiller, 2011).

The goal for teachers of young children is to help them develop realistic confidence in several ways, as Table 9.2 illustrates.

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