Background to the Research

• There is a growing body of research concerning the factors that influence the development of self-esteem and the relationship between self-esteem and performance. This study explores these factors within the context of the integrated sector of education in NI, where Catholic and Protestant pupils are educated together.
  

Research Approach

• The self-perceptions of 546 boys and girls aged 11 to 13 and 14 to 15 years at 2 integrated comprehensive and 5 segregated post-primary schools in NI were measured using the Self-Perception Profile for Children.

Main Findings

• In segregated and integrated schools respectively 23% and 29% of children came from homes where the head of the household was classified as a 'professional', 38% and 28% as 'skilled', 15% and 15% as 'semi-skilled , 11% and 11% as 'white collar', 9% and 10% as 'minor professional' and 4% and 7% as 'unemployed'.
• In segregated and integrated schools, and in relation to parental educational achievement, 10% and 21% respectively had been educated to university level, 20% and 19% to non-university higher education level, 19% and 18% to secondary school level to 18 years of age, and 52% and 42% to secondary school level to 16 years of age.
• The study upheld earlier findings by demonstrating gender differences favouring the boys in the domains of athletic competence, physical appearance and global self-worth and girls on behavioural conduct.
• The data analysis showed that social class had no impact on the self-perceptions of pupils.
• The self-perceptions of children in the integrated sector may benefit from several factors. They may come from family backgrounds that are more disposed to enhancing self-esteem and self-competence in children. They may not have taken the 11+ and been freed from the negative labelling of this process and they may have adopted a 'integrationist identity' freeing them from some of the more negative aspects of their denomination-based identities.
• Catholic adolescents attending the integrated schools perceived themselves to be more scholastically competent than Catholic adolescents from the segregated schools. Furthermore, differences in perceptions of scholastic competence between Protestant and Catholic pupils within each of the school types favoured Protestants in the segregated schools and Catholics in the integrated schools, although this difference was not statistically significant.
• There were school type differences in favour of the integrated school children in the domain of physical appearance, social acceptance, athletic competence and global self-worth, and a school type and religion interaction in the domain of scholastic competence favouring Catholic children at the integrated schools over those at the segregated schools. This suggests that children attending integrated post-primary schools generally perceive themselves more positively.
• In order to further assess the development and stability of self-esteem among these adolescents, a long-term longitudinal study is suggested.