Peterson and Nisenholz (1994) report that guidance and counseling are increasingly being used as interventions to assist social and academic growth and progress in elementary schools, as well as to prevent several psychobehavioral, psychosocial and/or health problems from occurring during children's later school years. As the authors put it:
The new attitude is the earlier the better...In the past, counseling was generally thought of as a task for secondary school...Today's educators know better...There's clear evidence that behavioral problems are more easily identified, treated, and remedied in young children than in adolescents. (p. 260)
One of the objectives of this early intervention is to build the child's self-esteem which is commonly defined as the child's general evaluation of him- or her self (Ziegler, Scott & Taylor, 1991). The purpose of this chapter of the proposal is to examine the literature on the effects of guidance interventions on young children's self-esteem.
The review begins with a brief discussion of the nature of self-esteem and its relation to the child's general self-concept. This is followed by an examination of the empirical research investigating various guidance/counseling interventions for their effects on the self-esteem of elementary school children.
One point that should be noted regarding the presented review is that while the major portion of the reviewed literature used samples of elementary school children, there are a few studies reviewed that used samples of middle school children. These studies are examined because in most cases, the intervention was important and applicable to elementary school students. On the basis of the reviewed studies, the final section of the review presents a series of conclusions about the effects of elementary school level guidance intervention on students' self-esteem.
According to Papalia and Olds (1995), the self-concept can be define...