Validity of the children's orientation to book reading rating scale

The present study investigates the validity of a 4‐point rating scale used to measure the level of preschool children's orientation to literacy during shared book reading. Validity was explored by (a) comparing the children's level of literacy orientation as measured with the Children's Orientation to Book Reading Rating Scale (COB) with a teacher's rating of a child's level of attention and effortful control on the Children's Behaviour Questionnaire (CBQ), and (b) computing the predictive validity of a child's COB rating with overall levels of emergent literacy at the end of the preschool school year. This study involved 46 preschool children from low‐income backgrounds; children's literacy orientation was rated during a group teacher‐led book reading. Children's ratings of literacy orientation during shared book reading using the global 4‐point COB scale were significantly correlated with teacher ratings of a child's attention and effortful control as measured on the CBQ. Hierarchical regression results indicated children's literacy orientation significantly predicted children's end‐of‐year alphabet knowledge and overall emergent reading skills above and beyond the variance contributed by children's language skills and family income. The validity of a global rating for indexing children's level of literacy orientation was supported. Educational implications and recommendations for the COB as a component of early literacy assessment are discussed.     

Ethnic enclaves—Cul-de-sacs or conduits: Differential aspirations in Greek American,Caucasian American,Latino, and Asian American neighborhoods in New York City

This chapter describes eight studies that were conducted with culturally distinct groups living in ethnic enclaves in New York City. Four o fthe studies (involving 1, 447 students) analyzed the effects of SES, family structure variables, family processes, math self-concept, and prior ability on children's math achievement (interconnections within the Walberg productivity model). Four qualitative studies were also conducted with high achieving children and their parents (158 interviews) to secure in-depth information about how th four ethnic groups used different family processes to bolster achievement. The results of these studies show that cultural/ethnic differences had greater effects on math achievement than SES. The children's reading achievement was found to be the most important predictor for math achievement in all the ethnic/gender groups. Excessive pressure and parental help were found to have negative effects on math achievement. However, parental support and the provision of extensive intellectual resources were found to strengthen reading achievement. These processes indirectly affect math achievement. Finally, the qualitative and quantitative data from these eigth studies show that most ethnic/gender groups facilitated their children's achievement (serve as conduits). The Greek Americans, however, attempted to channel their girls into traditional family roles, and Latino families, because of their limited economic resources, were found to marginalize their boys' school experience (cul-de-sacs).     

Recalled test anxiety in relation to achievement,in the context of general academic self-concept,study habits,parental involvement and socio-economic status among Grade 6 Ethiopian students

The study investigated the predictive nature of test anxiety on achievement in the presence of perceived general academic self-concept, study habits, parental involvement in children's learning and socio-economic status. From a population of 2482 Grade 6 students from seven government primary schools of a sub-city in Addis Ababa, 497 participants were randomly selected, namely 248 boys and 249 girls. The mean age of the participants was 12.98 years. An adapted version of Sarason's Test Anxiety Scale (28 items), plus the General Academic Self-Concept Scale (18 items), and Parental Involvement (10 items), Study Habits (10 items) and Socio-Economic Status (10 items) scales developed by the authors were the instruments of the study. The findings of the study indicated: (a) test anxiety correlated with achievement with a weak correlation of ?0.186; and (b) perceived general academic self-concept and study habits were positively and significantly related to achievement. Stepwise multiple regression on achievement resulted in the selection of general academic self-concept, study habits and parental involvement as significant contributors to achievement in that order. Test anxiety was found to be a non-predictor of achievement in the presence of other variables.     

A Structural Equation Model of Parental Involvement,Motivational and Aptitudinal Characteristics,and Academic Achievement

The authors used the structural equation model (SEM) approach to test a model hypothesizing the influence of parental involvement on students' academic aptitudes, self-concept, and causal attributions, as well as the influence of the 3 variables on academic achievement. The theoretical model was contrasted in a group of 12- to 18-year-old adolescents (N = 261) attending various educational centers. The results indicate that (a) parental involvement had a positive and significant influence on the participant's measured characteristics; (b) causal attribution was not causally related to self-concept or academic achievement when the task involved finding causes for success, but, self-concept and causal attributions were found to be significantly and reciprocally related when the task involved finding causes accounting for failure; (c) self-concept was statistically and predominantly causally related to academic achievement, but not vice versa; and (d) aptitude and self-concept accounted for academic achievement, although the effect of self-concept was predominant. These results suggest that in adolescence, cognitive-affective variables become crucial in accounting for academic behavior.     

Placing Assessment Into the Hands of Young Children: A Study of Student-Generated Criteria and Self-Assessment

This study is an investigation by a teacher-researcher of first-grade and second-grade children's generation of assessment criteria for integrated projects and the children's self-assessments of those projects using a 5-point rating scale. The study also compares students' scores with the teacher's independent scores from the rating scales. The results indicated that the young students believed that the amount of work and cooperation that went into a project was as important, if not more important, than the actual product that resulted from their efforts. They further believed that process skills were ones on which they should be assessed individually and as a group. When students' scores were compared with teacher's independent scores on the self-assessment rating forms, it was found that either the majority of the scores were similar or that the teacher tended to rate the students higher than the students rated themselves. The study found that group evaluations of other groups did not yield reliable scores because students tended to let the negative behavior of a single student affect the group's score. The study also found that young children are quite capable of choosing their own assessment criteria and engaging in self-assessment.     

Parental involvement,children's aspirations,and achievement in new immigrant families

The authors investigated the relationships among multiple aspects of parental involvement (English proficiency, school involvement, control and monitoring of children), children's aspirations, and achievement in new immigrant families in the United States. They used data on immigrant parents and school-age children (N = 1,255) from the New Immigrant Survey to examine immigrant families from diverse backgrounds. Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that parental English proficiency and involvement in school education are related to children's academic achievement, cognitive development, and English language ability, directly as well as indirectly, through children's educational aspirations. Parental control and monitoring is not beneficial to immigrant children's cognitive development, although variations were found across different groups. They also observed intriguing findings regarding gender and racial or ethnic diversity. Based on their findings, they provide recommendations for the fostering of academic success and the design and implementation of educational programs and practices for immigrant children.     

Who Am I and What Can I Do? Children's Self-Concepts and Motivation in Achievement Situations

We review recent theoretical and empirical work on children's self-concept development and how their self-concepts motivate their behavior in achievement situations. Several important issues regarding the self-concept are considered, including what beliefs make up the self-concept, how those beliefs are structured, how the self-concept differs across age and between boys and girls, and how specific aspects of the self-concept relate to an individual's overall self-evaluation. Theoretical views and research on how children's self-concepts relate to their motivation in achievement settings are presented, as is work on how the self-concept guides achievement behavior. We address the issue of causal direction in the relation between the self-concept and achievement. Suggestions for future research are provided.     

Do socio-motivational relationships predict achievement motivation in adolescents with high and low school self-concepts?

Considering the essential role that socio-motivational relationships at school play with respect to achievement motivation, this study examined the differences between students with a low school self-concept and students with a high school self-concept in a large sample of 7th and 8th grade students (N= 1088; MAge= 13.7) in secondary schools in Brandenburg, Germany. Multi-group structural equation modelling was used to estimate the associations between the variables of socio-motivational support and achievement motivation. The results showed that students with a high school self-concept report higher levels of socio-motivational support than students with a low school self-concept, whereas a teacher plays a more important role in motivating low self-concept students. Furthermore, the results underline the importance of adjusting the teacher's support to the level of the student's school self-concept as one of the possible prevention and intervention strategies aimed at boosting adolescents' achievement motivation after the transition to secondary school.     

Family,schools and Taiwanese children's outcomes

Background Educational reform is a major challenge facing schools in Taiwan. The new educational reform requires that every primary school must have parental involvement programmes in their school schedules, and to support these new programmes, there is a need for research to examine the extent and nature of parental involvement in primary schools in Taiwan, and to investigate the impact of parental involvement on pupil outcomes.

Purpose The purpose of the study was to examine the extent to which parents' involvement in schooling is related to primary pupil outcomes, after taking into account differences in family social status and family structure, and the children's perceptions of their school learning environments.

Sample For the analyses data were collected in 2001 from 261 6th-grade Taiwanese students, 128 boys and 133 girls, from four primary schools in the Taichung City school district. The average age of the children was approximately 11 years.

Design and methods In the analysis of the research model, a quantitative approach was adopted, in which each student completed two questionnaires and two academic achievement tests. The first questionnaire included questions to assess family social status, family structure and parents' involvement in their children's education. In the second questionnaire there were questions to measure pupils' self-concept and perceptions of their schools' learning environments. The data were analysed using multiple-regression techniques to examine relationships among family social status, family structure, parental involvement, the school learning environment and pupils' school-related outcomes.

Results The findings suggested that: (a) children's academic achievement is related to their family social status and perceptions of immediate family learning environments, and (b) children's self-concept is associated with their perceptions of classroom learning environments, parents' aspirations and parents' involvement at home. These propositions indicate the differential nature of the relationships among family and school environments and measures of children's school outcomes.

Conclusions In the Taiwanese context, by showing the particularly important association between Taiwanese family environments and children's school outcomes, the present investigation supports the educational reform movement that encourages schools to involve parents more intimately in shared responsibilities.     

Dimensionality of the Piers-Harris children's self-concept scale for miniority gifted children

The relationship between children's self-concepts and their academic achievement has been well established. More recently, the multidimensionality of the self-concept and the relationship of specific self-concept dimensions to achievement have been investigated. However, the multidimensionality of the self-concept among minority gifted children has not been studied. The present study examined the multidimensional structure of the Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale among 438 predominantly Black gifted children. Six clearly defined orthogonal factors emerged. However, the structure of these factors differed from those reported by Piers and Harris.     

Family Socialisation and Children's School Outcomes: an investigation of a parenting model

The study investigated relationships between the dimensions of a parenting model and children's school outcomes. Also, a bioecological model was examined which proposes that proximal parenting processes have the general effect of mediating relationships between distal social contexts and children's outcomes, while advantageous individual characteristics enhance associations between proximal family processes and children's characteristics. Data were collected from 900 (460 boys, 440 girls) 11 year‐old Australian children and their parents. The findings suggest that: (a) a parenting model defined by parents’ aspirations, parenting practices, and parenting style has modest to moderate concurrent validity in relation to children's academic achievement and school attitudes, (b) the proximal processes of the parenting model mediate substantially the relationships between family social status and children's academic achievement but not the associations between intellectual ability and outcomes; and (c) there are sex‐group differences in the nature of the relationships between the dimensions of the parenting model and children's school outcomes.     

Social skills and problem behaviors as mediators of the relationship between behavioral self-regulation and academic achievement

Early behavioral self-regulation is an important predictor of the skills children need to be successful in school. However, little is known about the mechanism(s) through which self-regulation affects academic achievement. The current study investigates the possibility that two aspects of children's social functioning, social skills and problem behaviors, mediate the relationship between preschool self-regulation and literacy and math achievement. Additionally, we investigated whether the meditational processes differed for boys and girls. We expected that better self-regulation would help children to interact well with others (social skills) and minimize impulsive or aggressive (problem) behaviors. Positive interactions with others and few problem behaviors were expected to relate to gains in achievement as learning takes place within a social context. Preschool-aged children (n = 118) were tested with direct measures of self-regulation, literacy, and math. Teachers reported on children's social skills and problem behaviors. Using a structural equation modeling approach (SEM) for mediation analysis, social skills and problem behaviors were found to mediate the relationship between self-regulation and growth in literacy across the preschool year, but not math. Findings suggest that the mediational process was similar for boys and girls. These findings indicate that a child's social skills and problem behaviors are part of the mechanism through which behavioral self-regulation affects growth in literacy. Self-regulation may be important not just because of the way that it relates directly to academic achievement but also because of the ways in which it promotes or inhibits children's interactions with others.     

Residential Mobility,Inhibitory Control,and Academic Achievement in Preschool

Research Findings: The present study investigated the direct effects of residential mobility on children's inhibitory control and academic achievement during the preschool year. It also explored fall inhibitory control and academic skills as mediators linking residential mobility and spring achievement. Participants included 359 preschool children (49% female) studied in the fall and spring of the preschool year (73% were enrolled in Head Start). Residential mobility was significantly and negatively associated with fall inhibitory control and fall math and literacy. Significant indirect effects of mobility were found for spring math and literacy through inhibitory control and fall achievement. Specifically, the negative relation between mobility and spring math and literacy was partially explained by lower scores on fall inhibitory control and academic skills. Practice or Policy: The current study contributes to the existing literature by specifying pathways linking frequent moves and achievement for young children. Policy implications are discussed.     

Parental estimates of children's receptive vocabulary

Samples of 13 mothers and fathers of normal preschool children and 11 mothers of high-risk preschool children estimated their children's vocabulary ability by predicting their child's responses to individual PPVT-R items and by making a global rating of their child's vocabulary ability. Prior to the parental estimations, the children had been administered the PPVT-R. Accuracy of parental estimates, as measured by d', was low, although the mothers' average estimates were significantly higher than zero and higher than fathers' estimates. Accuracy of estimation was similar for mothers of normal preschoolers and for mothers of high-risk preschoolers. Time spent reading to the child, mothers' employment, and children's ability level were not related to parental accuracy. Although correlations between the children's scores and parental estimates all were significant, parents tended to overestimate their children's abilities by approximately 9 to 10 points on the average. Overall, parental estimates of their children's vocabulary ability, using a global rating scale, provide a somewhat useful measure for placing their children in a broad classification range.     

INFORMANT EFFECTS ON BEHAVIORAL AND ACADEMIC ASSOCIATIONS: A LATENT VARIABLE LONGITUDINAL EXAMINATION

Discrepancies among informants’ ratings of a given child's behavior complicate the study of linkages between child behavior and academic achievement. In the current study, we examined the potential moderating effect of informant type on associations between behavior and two types of achievement in a longitudinal growth model that captured children's development from 54 months of age through fifth grade. Latent internalizing and externalizing behavioral constructs, as separately measured by mothers and teachers, were modeled as time‐varying predictors of achievements to capture changes that occur as children progress through different developmental stages. Behavioral ratings obtained by both informants explained largely equivalent levels of reading achievement variance, and teachers’ ratings of child behavior explained more variance in analytic type achievements than did those of mothers.     

Self-perceptions,temperament, socioemotional adjustment and the perceptions of parental support of chronically underachieving children

Several studies suggest that children who chronically underachieve are, like children with learning disorders, at risk for negative outcomes and are more likely to experience adjustment problems than are their typically developing peers. This study compares children's self-esteem, perceived competence, negative perfectionism and beliefs of peer acceptance, temperament-based factors (parent-rated), and socioemotional adjustment (parent and teacher rated) of underachieving and non-underachieving elementary school children. It also explores whether children's perceptions of parental support act as a protective factor in children's self-perceptions and socioemotional adjustment. The sample includes 309 fifth and sixth graders 55 underachievers (31 boys and 24 girls), 217 standard achievers (90 boys and 127 girls) and 37 overachievers (16 boys and 21 girls) from the same classes. Significant intergroup differences are found in children's self-perceptions and in teachers’ report of socioemotional adjustment but no difference is observed in parental reports. Children's perceptions of parental support do not differ between groups and do not significantly mediate the association between level of achievement and socioemotional adjustment. Results underscore that whatever the achievement classification of children, their perception of parental support has a unique contribution to their self-perceptions and socioemotional adjustment.     

Socio-economic status has major effects on math achievement,educational aspirations and future job expectations of elementary school children in Thailand

This study was designed to investigate the effects of specific variables on the math achievement of 5th-grade children. It involved a random sample of 373 families (parents and children) from a larger pool of 685 families residing in Bangkok, Thailand. We utilized Walberg's productivity model by analyzing the interconnections among a diverse set of family prcesse, family structure, and SES variables within the home environment section of the model. Campbell's differential socialization paradigm was used to analyze the gender differences. The results of the study show that certain family processes (support and intellectual resources) had positive effects on math achievement, while other processes (excessive pressure and help) had negtive effects. Another key finding is that Walberg's home environment factor was found to contain a mix of SES, family structure variables, and family processes. These variables have strong effects on children's overall academic achievement, academic self-concepts, and math achievement. The SES variables were found to be especially important in Thailand. The authors propose the establishment of parent training programs, particularly for low SES families, as a way to increase children's math achievement, aspirations, and future job expectations.     

Achievement goals,academic self-concept,and school grades in mathematics: Longitudinal reciprocal relations in above average ability secondary school students

This study examined the longitudinal reciprocal relations between academic self-concept, achievement goals (i.e., performance-approach, performance-avoidance, and mastery), and achievement (i.e., self-reported grades) in mathematics. The research aim was twofold. First, we examined the confound hypothesis, which states that performance-approach goals do not feature any incremental validity in predicting achievement over and above students' competence perceptions (i.e., academic self-concept). In addition, we expanded research on the confound hypothesis by also investigating performance-avoidance and mastery goals. Second, we investigated the predictive validity of all three achievement goals for changes in academic self-concept. Seven hundred sixty-nine students (50.78% female) attending the highest track of the German three-tier secondary school system participated in three waves of measurement in Grades 5, 6, and 8. Our findings confirmed the confound hypothesis: Performance-approach goals did not explain achievement over and above academic self-concept. The same findings applied to performance-avoidance and mastery goals. Furthermore, performance-approach goals were positively related to academic self-concept changes, whereas performance-avoidance goals showed a negative relation to academic self-concept changes over time. Mastery goals were not associated to changes in academic self-concept. Academic self-concept and achievement showed positive reciprocal relations. To conclude, our results point to complex relations between achievement goals, academic self-concept, and academic achievement over time.     

Head Start Children: School Mobility and Achievement in the Early Grades

Abstract

The relationship of 2 school mobility indices (school changes and parental perceptions of mobility effects) to 2nd-grade academic achievement was examined. The sample comprised 90 children who had attended Head Start and had made the transition to public school. Data also were obtained from the children's mothers. School mobility was defined as the number of school transfers over 3 years (kindergarten to Grade 2). Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that frequent school changes in the primary grades were related to lower achievement levels even after controlling for the child's sex and the effects of achievement prior to the school moves.     

Teacher-student attachment relationship,variables associated,and measurement: A systematic review

This systematic review offers an overview of the results of research from the last 10 years concerning the teacher-student relationship and its connection with other attachment theory constructs and child development variables. An exhaustive search of Web of Science, SCOPUS, and PsycINFO was performed, finding a total of 24 studies that met the established eligibility criteria. The evidence accumulated between 2010 and 2020 suggests that: 1) early care experiences have an effect on the formation of new relationships at primary school, although it is possible that children will construct new mental representations based on interactions in day to day life, 2) at the level of the teacher's characteristics, attachment style and the availability towards children's needs seem to be associated with school adjustment and problematic behaviour in children, and 3) the quality of the teacher-student relationship is significantly associated with externalizing and internalizing behaviour, school liking, peer acceptance, academic performance, self-concept and emotional regulation in children. For its part, when evaluating the quality of the teacher-student relationship, STRS continues to be widely used to study the teacher's perspective. However, in recent years other measurement instruments have become available that explore the perspective of the student, most notably CARTS and SPARTS. Advances in the study of the teacher-student relationship as a bond with important implications for the development of children in the primary education stage are discussed.