This paper brings together the experiences of children, teachers, and parents in two very different schools in Jamaica—one primary and one preparatory. The data are taken from two larger qualitative studies. The first, An Exploration of Two Classrooms: Cases in Classroom Management, is a case study of a grade 5 teacher’s classroom management strategies in a government primary school and her interaction with four of her students—selected because they were highly responsive and promised to be information-rich respondents.

The current study explores the racial and linguistic self-concept of 138 children between the ages of 5 and 10 years, enrolled in a poor, urban, Jamaican government school. In Jamaica, studies into the racial self-concept of adults have been conducted since as early as 1952 (Kerr); however no study into the development of racial and linguistic self-concept in Jamaican children has yet been documented.