CONVERGENCE OF VIEWS: SELF-PERCEPTIONS OF AFRICAN AMERICAN AND WHITE KINDERGARTNERS william strein, tracy simonson, and lindsay vail University of Maryland As the second in a series of studies concerning the development of kindergartners’ self-perceptions, this study examined the effects of the kindergarten experience on self-perceptions of African Amer- ican and White students as they progressed through their kindergarten year. Using a countywide sample of 209 children in 31 classrooms, the study incorporated in vivo observations of teachers’ verbal behavior and self-perception data from the Pictorial Scale of Perceived Competence and So- cial Acceptance for Young Children. Results indicate that the kindergarten experience had an equal- izing effect on the self-perceptions of African American and White children, although self-percep- tions of cognitive competence were initially lower for African American children than for their White counterparts. Teachers’ verbal interactions with children were not affected by the child’s race, at least when different achievement levels were taken into account. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. One’s initial experience with formal education has the potential to have long lasting effects on attitudes toward school, achievement/performance levels and perhaps even more global views of self. Given possible differences in cultural background and preschool experiences between African American and White children, African American kindergartners might be particularly vulnerable to early school experiences that would inappropriately weaken children’s views of their own compe- tence. Several studies of school-aged children in the 1950’s and 1960’s fueled the concern that the self-perceptions of African American students were lower than those of Whites (Porter & Washing- ton, 1979). However, the question remains unsettled because later studies have tended to find that self-perceptions of African American children are either equivalent to, or higher than, those of White children (Crain & Bracken, 1992: Stephan & Rosenfield, 1979). Additionally, few of these studies have focused specifically on kindergarten children. This study is the second in a series of studies concerning the development of kindergartners’ self-perceptions. The first study (Simonson & Strein, 1997) focused on the effects of teachers’ use of praise and criticism on the developing self-perceptions of kindergarten children. This study, us- ing additional but overlapping data with the first, examined possible differential effects of the kinder- garten experience on self-perceptions of African American and White children as they progressed through their kindergarten year. Specifically, the project explored (a) initial differences in the self- perceptions of the African American and White children as they began kindergarten, (b) differential changes that might occur for African American and White students in their self-perceptions as they progressed through their kindergarten experience, and (c) possible differences between teachers’ verbal behavior directed toward African American and White children. Because gender may inter- act with self-perceptions (Cramer & Skidd, 1992), especially in certain domains (Crain & Bracken, 1992), and feedback from teachers may differ by gender (Merrett & Wheldall, 1992), analyses also included the child’s gender as a variable, although gender was not a main focus of this study. A brief summary of previous research on these areas follows. Definitional issues have long plagued research in the area of self-perceptions (Crain & Brack- en, 1994), Traditionally, self-concept has been defined as descriptive perceptions of the self, while Psychology in the Schools, Vol. 36(2), 1999 © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. CCC 0033-3085/99/020125-10 125 This article is based, in part, on the second author’s doctoral dissertation in school psychology at the University of Mary- land. This project was supported by the Center for Educational Research and Development, and Academic Information Sup- port Services, University of Maryland. Correspondence to: William Strein, 3212 Benjamin Bldg., College Park, MD 20742-1125.