Declining perceptions of competence: A consequence of changes in the child or in the educational environment?

Eighty middle-class, ethnically diverse kindergarten and fourth graders rated their current academic competence and predicted their future academic attainment. Half of the children were in classrooms in which normative evaluation was highly salient; the other half were in classrooms in which normative evaluation was deemphasized. The kindergarten children in classrooms in which normative evaluation was salient rated their competence and future attainment lower than did kindergarten children in classrooms in which evaluation was not salient. The salience of normative evaluation did not affect the fourth graders' self-perceptions of competence, and it did not affect their predictions regarding their future attainment. The results suggest that developmental change in children's judgments about their competence must be understood in terms of an interaction between age and the classroom environment.