organizations), and that they fail to serve the most
needy and difficult to educate. Others caution that ex-
isting programs are too limited to offer the benefits
of a true education marketplace. Defenders point to
court rulings and mounting experimental evidence to
rebut these charges.
See also: CLASS SIZE; HOME SCHOOLING
Bibliography
Coulson, Andrew J. Market Education: The Unknown History. New
York: Transaction Books, 1999.
Henig, Jeffrey R. Rethinking School Choice: Limits of the Market Meta-
phor. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.
Levin, Henry M. Privatizing Education: Can the School Marketplace
Deliver Freedom of Choice, Efficiency, Equity, and Social Cohesion?
Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001.
Lieberman, Myron. Privatization and Educational Choice. New York:
St. Martin’s Press, 1989.
Merrifield, John. The School Choice Wars. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow
Education, 2001.
Andrew Coulson
SELF-CONCEPT
The self-concept is the accumulation of knowledge
about the self, such as beliefs regarding personality
traits, physical characteristics, abilities, values, goals,
and roles. Beginning in infancy, children acquire and
organize information about themselves as a way to en-
able them to understand the relation between the self
and their social world. This developmental process is
a direct consequence of children’s emerging cognitive
skills and their social relationships with both family
and peers. During early childhood, children’s self-
concepts are less differentiated and are centered on
concrete characteristics, such as physical attributes,
possessions, and skills. During middle childhood, the
self-concept becomes more integrated and differenti-
ated as the child engages in social comparison and
more clearly perceives the self as consisting of inter-
nal, psychological characteristics. Throughout later
childhood and adolescence, the self-concept becomes
more abstract, complex, and hierarchically organized
into cognitive mental representations or self-
schemas, which direct the processing of self-relevant
information.
See also: PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT
Bibliography
Damon, William, and Daniel Hart. Self-Understanding in Childhood
and Adolescence. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Harter, Susan. ‘‘The Development of Self-Representations.’’ In
Handbook of Child Psychology, Vol. 3: Social, Emotional, and Per-
sonality Development, 5th edition, edited by William Damon
and Nancy Eisenberg. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1998.
Lewis, Michael. ‘‘Social Knowledge and Social Development.’’ Mer-
rill-Palmer Quarterly 36 (1990):93–116.
Jeannette M. AlvarezSELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY
The term self-fulfilling prophecy most often refers to
a phenomenon where students perform to a level con-
sistent with their teachers’ preconceived expectations
for them. In a classic study conducted in 1968, re-
searchers told elementary school teachers that some
of their students had been identified as having
marked potential for intellectual growth. In fact, how-
ever, the designated students had been selected ran-
domly. Eight months later, the students who had been
identified as intellectual ‘‘bloomers’’ showed greater
gains on an Intelligence Quotient (IQ) test than other
students in the school. This result became known as
the Pygmalion effect, in reference to George Bernard
Shaw’s play by the same name, and underlies recom-
mendations that teachers should hold high expecta-
tions for all students.
Teacher expectations can influence students’ mo-
tivation and achievement in two ways. First, inaccu-
rate judgments of a student’s effort and ability may
bias evaluation of that student’s performance. Sec-
ond, teachers tend to challenge, interact with, and
praise students of whom they have higher expecta-
tions. Expectations that are too low can lead to de-
creases in motivation, engagement, and learning.Bibliography
Rosenthal, Robert, and Lenore Jacobson. Pygmalion in the Class-
room: Teacher Expectation and Student Intellectual Development.
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968.
Stipek, Deborah. Motivation to Learn: From Theory to Practice, 3rd
edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998.
Lynley H. Anderman
Tierra M. FreemanSELFISHNESS
Unlike the more commonly studied topic of egocen-
trism, which focuses on cognitive-developmental bar-
riers to effective social functioning caused by young
children’s inability to appreciate others’ perspectives,
the concept of selfishness emphasizes motivational
barriers to effective social behavior caused by an indi-
vidual’s unwillingness to balance self-enhancing and
other-enhancing goals in situations calling for coop-
eration, sharing, or consideration for others. Indeed,
the term selfishness is generally considered inappro-
priate for self-centered behavior that can be attribut-
ed to ability deficits. That is why this label is rarely354 SELF-CONCEPT