Elsevier

Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Volume 36, 3rd Quarter 2016, Pages 391-403
Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Math self-concept in preschool children: Structure, achievement relations, and generalizability across gender

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2015.12.024Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Preschoolers separate between competence and affect facets of math self-concept.

  • Early math achievement relates to math competence self-concept.

  • Early math achievement is not related to math affect self-concept.

  • No gender differences in self-concept–achievement relations.

  • Similar mean levels in math competence and affect self-concepts for boys and girls.

Abstract

This three-wave, longitudinal study explored the math self-concept of German preschool children (N = 420) with respect to its differentiation into competence and affect components, cross-sectional and longitudinal relations to early math achievement, and invariance across gender. Findings demonstrated that preschool children's math self-concept can be separated into competence and affect components, with the competence component displaying higher relations to early math achievement than the affect component. The competence component but not the affect component was found to be related to prior math achievement, providing evidence of the skill-development model of self-concept–achievement relations in preschool years. Boys and girls demonstrated similar self-concept–achievement relations and mean levels in the competence and affect components of math self-concept. Given so far little research on self-concept in preschool children, this study offers important insights and expands current knowledge.

Introduction

Students' academic self-concept can be generally defined as students’ academic self-perceptions (Shavelson, Hubner, & Stanton, 1976) and has been a widely examined and important construct in educational and developmental psychology. The importance of academic self-concept is due to its relations to a wide range of outcomes including achievement (Huang, 2011, Marsh and O'Mara, 2008; Valentine, DuBois, & Cooper, 2004), motivation (Nagengast et al., 2011, Wigfield and Eccles, 2000), effort (Trautwein, Lüdtke, Schnyder, & Niggli, 2006), and educational choices (Parker, Marsh, Ciarrochi, Marshall, & Abduljabbar, 2014). Besides investigating relations with outcome variables, researchers have invested considerable effort into studying the internal structure of academic self-concept and gender differences (Marsh and Craven, 2006, Marsh and O'Mara, 2008). Respective studies, however, predominantly focused on elementary and secondary school students, and less research has been conducted with children before the beginning of formal schooling (i.e., preschool or kindergarten children). Yet, due to cognitive limitations and differences in the learning environment, preschool children's academic self-concept might differ from that of school students. The present longitudinal study focuses on different research questions related to math self-concept in German preschool children. These questions address the possibility of further differentiating math self-concept into competence and affect components, its cross-sectional and longitudinal relations to early math skills, and the generalizability of findings across gender.

Section snippets

Twofold multidimensional structure

Academic self-concept was originally assumed to comprise math and verbal self-concepts as subcomponents (Shavelson et al., 1976). Math and verbal self-concepts have been found to be nearly uncorrelated leading to the accepted conceptualization of academic self-concept as a domain-specific construct with distinct math and verbal self-concepts (Marsh, 1990; Möller, Pohlmann, Köller, & Marsh, 2009). The domain specificity of academic self-concept is also incorporated in the Self-Description

Academic self-concept in preschool children

In the present study, we focus on German preschool children's academic self-concept which might differ from that of school-age students for various reasons. Academic self-concept has been assumed to be influenced by experiences with and within the environment (Shavelson et al., 1976). In Germany, notable differences exist between the academic environment and learning experiences of preschool and school-age children. Children usually enter kindergarten at the age of three or four and stay there

The present study

The present investigation is based on a longitudinal study in which math self-concept and early math skills (labeled early math achievement in the following) were measured three times across preschool years. The aims were to (1) investigate whether preschoolers' math self-concept can be differentiated into competence and affect components, (2) examine the cross-sectional and longitudinal relations between math self-concept and early math achievement, and (3) study gender differences in the mean

Participants

This study is a longitudinal study consisting of three measurement waves conducted with German preschool children. The first measurement wave (T1) was realized with a sample of 420 preschool children (48.8% girls; 51.2% boys) in spring 2008 when the children were in the next to last year before entering school and had an average age of 58.48 months (SD = 4.28). Time 2 (T2) data were collected 6 months later in autumn 2008 when children were on average 64.41 months old (SD = 3.99). Out of the T1

Differentiation between competence and affect components

Model 1 (see Table 1) assuming global math self-concept factors at each measurement point incorporating both competence-related and affect-related items showed a satisfactory level of fit. However, the significant chi-square difference test for MLR estimation [χ2 diff (12) = 43.78, p < .001] and the improved descriptive goodness-of-fit indices indicated a better fit for the 2-factor model assuming separate factors for competence and affect components of math self-concept at each measurement point

Discussion

Research on academic self-concept has primarily focused on elementary and secondary school students. By focusing on the math self-concept of German preschool children including its structure, achievement relations, and gender differences, this study aimed to contribute to and extend the knowledge on preschool children's academic self-concept.

Acknowlegments

This work was supported by a fellowship within the Postdoc-Program of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Data collection was carried out in the context of a large-scale longitudinal study in southern Germany (Project “Schulreifes Kind”). We thank the colleagues from Frankfurt (Jan-Henning Ehm, Hanna Wagner), Würzburg (Frank Niklas, Marie Pröscholt, Sandra Schmiedeler, Wolfgang Schneider, Robin Segerer), and Heidelberg (Isabell Keppler, Miriam Johnson, Hermann Schöler) who together

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