‘My favourite things to do’ and ‘my favourite people’: Exploring salient aspects of children’s self-concept

Abstract

This study explores the potential of the ‘draw-and-write’ method for inviting children to communicate salient aspects of their self-concept. Irish primary school children aged 10–13 years drew and wrote about their favourite people and things to do (social and active self). Children drew and described many salient activities (39 in total) and people – including pets. Results suggest that widely used, adult-constructed self-esteem scales for children, while multidimensional, are limited, and that ‘draw-and-write’ is an effective multimodal method with which children can express their social and active self-concepts