Relations between academic self-concept (ASC) and measures of reading-related performance and self-concept were examined in 60 beginning school children who, after 2 years of schooling, were assessed as having positive, negative, or typical ASCs. Data were collected soon after school entry, toward the end of Years 1 and 2, and during the middle of Year 3. Children with negative ASCs performed poorly on reading-related tasks and reported more negative reading self-concepts than did children with positive or typical ASCs. Reading was also highly predictive of negative and positive ASC group membership, but not of typical ASC group membership. Past studies of relations between ASC and achievement involving full-range samples of young children have underestimated the point in time when these factors become causally related to each other. The negative consequences of young children developing patterns of difficulty in learning to read are discussed.Several studies have examined the relations between selfconcept and achievement and their importance for classroom practice (Bracken, 1996;Byrne, 1996;Strein, 1993). Strein (1993) noted that a "surge in published research on self-concept in general, and academic self-concept in particular, has made this topic one of the 'hottest' areas in the educational psychology literature" (p. 273). The major focus of this interest is on the relations between academic self-concept and achievement. In her review of research on academic self-concept (ASC), Byrne (1996) noted that the abundance of studies devoted to this topic over the past 30 years is evidence of the substantial interest in the link between ASC and achievement.This link is important because achievement-related selfperceptions are thought to influence achievement through their effect on motivation (e.g., Borkowski, Carr, Rellinger, & Pressley, 1990; Schunk, 1991) and the self-regulation processes of metacognition (Borkowski et al., 1992). In the context of reading, Henk and Melnick (1992) observed that the motivational influence of academic self-perceptions determines whether "opportunities to read would be sought or avoided, the amount of effort that would be expended during reading, and the degree of persistence in pursuing text comprehension" (p. 111).Numerous studies have examined the causal link between ASC and achievement (Byrne, 1996; Marsh & Craven, 1997), and it appears that the causal ordering of these two variables changes with age. For young children, achievement appears to be causally
