Effective behavior management in preschool classrooms and children's task orientation: Enhancing emergent literacy and language development

This study investigated the relations among preschool teachers’ behavior management, children's task orientation, and children's emergent literacy and language development, as well as the extent to which task orientation moderated the relation between teachers’ behavior management and children's emergent literacy and language development. Participants included 398 children and 67 preschool teachers from preschool programs serving an at-risk population. Teachers’ behavior management was observationally assessed and children's task orientation was measured via teacher-report. Children's language and emergent literacy skills were directly assessed in the fall and in the spring of the preschool year. Hierarchical linear models were used to predict children's residualized gain in emergent literacy and language (i.e., Spring scores with Fall scores as covariates) from their task orientation and their teachers’ behavior management. Task orientation and behavior management each positively predicted children's emergent literacy development, but not language development. There was a significant interaction between teachers’ behavior management and children's task orientation in predicting children's language development, such that high scores on both variables were associated with the most optimal language outcomes. Implications for research and early education are discussed.     

The effects of children's communicative status and task on parents' teaching strategies

The two goals of the study were to examine factors affecting parents' teaching strategies with their children and to identify the effectiveness of different teaching strategies for engaging children in tasks. It was hypothesized that teaching strategies would vary as a function of parent status (mother/father), children's communicative status (nonhandicapped-NCH/handicapped-CH) and different tasks (origami/book reading). Each of the 120 families included a target child (M = 4.5 years old), a mother, and a father; 60 families had a CH child and 60 matched families had an NCH child. Each parent engaged in book-reading and origami tasks with their target child. Parents' teaching strategies were recorded and categorized according to levels of cognitive demand. In addition, children's level of task engagement was rated. Results indicated that parents varied their teaching strategies according to both task and children's communicative status. Generally, they were more demanding and less directive of the more competent, NCH, children than of the CH children. Further, parents used different strategies with their NCH and CH children in both tasks to keep them engaged. Results are discussed in terms of Vygotsky's theory of the zone of proximal development.     

Longitudinal associations among interest,persistence, supportive parenting,and achievement in early childhood

This study investigates two facets of children's school readiness: interest in new cognitive tasks (interest) and persistence in task completion (persistence). Little attention has been paid to the early development of these learning behaviors, although they might prove susceptible to intervention even before school entry. Using data from the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project, a sample of low-income children (N = 1771) was followed to model bidirectional associations among interest and persistence and maternal supportive parenting between ages 1 and 3, and estimate associations between children's interest and persistence at age 3 and their academic skills at age 5. Results indicate that maternal supportive parenting influences children's interest and persistence more strongly and consistently than interest or persistence influences parenting, and that interest but not persistence transacts with parenting over time. Interest and persistence were equally predictive of children's early academic skills. Findings affirm that both interest and persistence during toddlerhood predict children's academic standing at school entry.     

Linking parental scaffolding with self-regulated learning in Chinese kindergarten children

The current study aimed to examine the relationships between dimensions of parental scaffolding and children's self-regulated learning (SRL). One hundred and thirty Chinese kindergarten children participated in a range of problem-solving tasks with their parents and independently. Parent-child interactions and child-alone behaviours were video-recorded for an in-depth observational analysis. Parental cognitive support, emotional support, and contingency were coded in parent-child interactions. Children's cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational strategic behaviours and task performance were coded and assessed within the context of child-alone tasks. Results showed that contingency was particularly important for children's SRL. Parental contingency was the only independent predictor of children's SRL among the three aspects of parental scaffolding and mediated the effect of parent education levels on children's SRL.     

School Readiness: Are There Social Prerequisites?

The position advocated within this article is that the construct of "school readiness" has a social component, and that attempts to evaluate children's interpersonal readiness for kindergarten should be judged in relation to their likely success at mastering specific social school entry tasks. Social school entry tasks, which most likely stem from diverse sociocultural sources, are conceptualized here as interpersonal challenges that children confront as they enter formal schooling—challenges that are inherent within kindergarten classrooms and predictive of children's future school adjustment. A related contention is that attempts to enhance children's readiness for kindergarten should be guided by research on the prerequisites of social task mastery—that is, evidence gathered during the preschool years that forecasts children's later success at social school entry tasks. Evidence bearing on these premises is reviewed as a means of considering the validity and heuristic utility of these propositions for future research on school readiness.     

“Is there an equal (amount of) juice?” Exploring the repeated question effect in conservation through conversation

The aim of this paper is to highlight and discuss advantages and constraints of different methods applied within the field of children's thinking studies, through the test of the repeated question hypothesis validity, using the conservation of liquid task. In our perspective, the Piagetian interview is an ecologically valid context for externalization and modification of children's thinking. We used an experimental procedure organized in standard and modified tasks, involving primary school children in Serbia. The results of quantitative and qualitative analyses show that the repeated question is not the unique cause of children's misleading in demonstrating to understand conservation. Other dimensions explain why children change their answers when they are tested by the two tasks we used, which offers an insight into the influence of research procedures on children's answers.     

Preliminary construct and concurrent validity of the Preschool Self-regulation Assessment (PSRA) for field-based research

This study introduces a portable direct assessment of young children's self-regulation—the Preschool Self-Regulation Assessment (PSRA). The PSRA was designed to assess self-regulation in emotional, attentional, and behavioral domains by using a brief, structured battery of tasks in conjunction with a global report of children's behavior. Factor analyses from a pilot sample (N = 63) of Head Start children revealed two self-regulation factors reflecting children's performance on tasks of impulse control and tasks of compliance/executive control. Assessor report of children's behavior during the assessment was reduced into two additional factors reflecting children's global attention/impulse control and positive emotion. Moderate correlations between self-regulation factors and children's social competence, behavior problems, and early academic skills, provide preliminary evidence of the new measure's validity, and additional empirical evidence for bivariate relations between academic and self-regulatory competence.     

Conservation development in the partially sighted child

A comparative study of conservation development in partially sighted, sighted, and sighted blindfolded children at four age levels (6–7, 8–9, 10–11, and 12–15 yrs.) was assessed. Conservation on tasks of mass, weight, and volume were evaluated using Piaget and Inhelder's (1941) prediction, judgment, and explanation questions. The significant differences were found between groups, task, and age level. Visually impaired children's performance was inferior to sighted children at all age levels, while little difference was found between partially sighted and blindfolded children's performance. For all three groups, conservation of mass was easiest, followed by conservation of weight, then volume. The findings support the notion of a developmental lag in cognitive skills for partially sighted children.     

The role of social competence in predicting gifted enrollment

The purpose of this study is to examine how children's starting level and development of social competence (i.e., task orientation and peer sociability) during kindergarten and first grade predict gifted program enrollment by third grade, even after considering children's cognitive ability. A second purpose is to examine the extent to which the relationship between children's social competence and gifted program enrollment differs depending on children's socioeconomic status (SES), ethnicity, and gender. Latent growth curve analyses conducted on 347 children revealed that students enrolled in gifted programming were not only those high in cognitive ability, but also those showing early task orientation. Neither peer sociability's initial status nor growth was a significant predictor of gifted enrollment. Multigroup comparisons demonstrated different predictive paths for higher versus lower SES groups. Implications are discussed including important questions raised by this study and the need for teacher training in the identification of giftedness. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Children's Engagement Within the Preschool Classroom and Their Development of Self-Regulation

This study used an observational measure to examine how individual children's engagement with teachers, peers, and tasks was associated with gains in self-regulation. A sample of 341 preschoolers was observed, and direct assessments and teacher reports of self-regulation were obtained in the fall and spring of the preschool year. Research Findings: Children's positive engagement with teachers was related to gains in compliance/executive function, and children's active engagement with tasks was associated with gains in emotion regulation across the year. Engaging positively with teachers or peers was especially supportive of children's gains in task orientation and reductions in dysregulation. Practice or Policy: Results are discussed in relation to Vygotsky's developmental theory, emphasizing that psychological processes are developed in the context of socially embedded interactions. Systematically observing how a child interacts with peers, teachers, and learning tasks in the preschool classroom has the potential to inform the creation of professional development aimed at supporting teachers in fostering individual children's development within the early education environment.     

Children's conception of changes in the state of matter: From liquid (or solid) to gas

This research examines children's (ages 9–15) conception of changes in the state of matter from liquid or solid to gas, as well as their understanding of the reversibility of this process. Children were tested for their ability to conserve matter, its identity, and its weight in tasks using evaporation of acetone and sublimation of iodine. It was found that children who recognized weight conservation in one of the tasks did not necessarily recognize the same in the second task. Students believed that gas has no weight, or that gas is lighter than the same material in its liquid or solid state. In addition, students who recognized weight conservation were not always aware of the reversibility of the process. Until the age of 12 specific perceptual input from the task (e.g., color) dramatically influenced students' responses to the conservation of weight task. The relationship between children's intuitive ideas about matter, as observed in this study, and their logical ability to conserve weight, as observed in this study, is discussed.     

Bugs,butterflies, and spiders: Children's understandings about insects

This article explores elementary children's ideas about insects. The study involved 20 children from each grade level, kindergarten through fifth-grade, for a total of 120 children. The data collection procedure was designed to investigate what an insect means to children, through the use of three different tasks: draw and explain, interview about instances, and the formulation of a general rule. Considering children's responses to the three tasks, I found that their ideas about insects reflect understandings based on physical characteristics of size and shape, arthropod characteristics, insect characteristics, human-insect interactions, life habits of insects, feeding habits of insects, and means of locomotion. Children's understandings are juxtaposed to that of a scientific perspective, elucidating implications for curriculum development and instructional practice.     

Young Children's Depiction of Contrast in Human Figure Drawing: standing and walking

Children aged 4 to 10 years old were asked to draw a person standing absolutely still and a person walking very fast so that someone not present would know from the pictures alone what had been depicted. Even at four some children were able to convey the difference to a viewer and there was increasing success with age. The number of differentiating cues increased with age and there was an age‐related trend in the order in which specific cues appeared in the drawings. The ability of the children to respond flexibly to the task gives no support to notions of rigid mental representations determining what young children can draw. It is argued that contrast tasks are a useful tool for investigating problem solving skills in the domain of drawing and could be used to extend children's skill by providing an occasion for explicit dialogue about how representational information is conveyed to a viewer.     

What's got two heads and no nose? Young British and Chinese children's representations of unreality

In this study, two samples of 4‐year‐old Chinese children were given two drawing tasks, one very familiar task and one novel and challenging task. The first sample was drawn from a nursery that taught art in a similar way to that widely used in the West, with an emphasis on individual expression. The second sample was from a nursery where drawing was taught explicitly and directly in the traditional Chinese way. Results were compared between the two groups and with a British sample given the same task. Some very significant differences were found with both tasks, and these are discussed in the context of different ideas about young children's drawing and art education.     

Relations Between Effective Emotional Self-Regulation,Attentional Control,and Low-Income Preschoolers' Social Competence with Peers

Relations between children's emotional self-regulation, attentional control, and peer social competence (as reported by both teachers and peers) were examined for 51 low-income, preschool-aged children enrolled in Head Start. Using a short delay-of-gratification task administered at Head Start sites, children's use of self- distraction was found to be positively associated with their success in handling the delay, replicating previous, laboratory-based research. Contrary to our expectations, children's use of self-distraction was found to be unrelated to their attentional control, as assessed during a computer task. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that children's use of self-distraction predicted significant variance in both peer- and teacher-reports of childrem's competence with peers, even after children's attentional control was statistically taken into account. These findings are discussed in light of current models of reactivity and regulation in predicting young children's social behavior, as well as in the context of early intervention efforts for children facing socioeconomic risk.     

Differentiation of Children's Competence Beliefs and Achievement Values,and their Relations to Children's Performance and Choice of Different Activities

ABSTRACT

Results of two studies of children's competence beliefs and achievement values for mathematics and reading are summarized. Approximately 1700 children and adolescents participated in the studies; the participants were in first through 12th grades. The studies were based on an expectancy — value model of achievement choice proposed by Eccles et al. (1983). Results indicated that children's competence beliefs and achievement task values are distinctive belief systems, even in first grade children. During the elementary school years, the strength of relations between children's competence beliefs and adult evaluations of children's competence increased across grade. Children and adolescents’ competence beliefs predict their mathematics performance, whereas their task values predict their intentions to continue taking mathematics.     

The Attention Skills and Academic Performance of Aggressive/Rejected and Low Aggressive/Popular Children

Research Findings: Aggressive/rejected children are at risk for continuing conduct and school problems. Some limited research indicates that these children have attention problems. Previous research has linked attention problems with academic performance. The current study investigated group differences in attention skills and the role of these skills in children's academic performance. Kindergarten and 1st-grade children (n = 54, 52% female) were identified as either aggressive/rejected or low aggressive/popular by peer sociometric interviews. Attention was assessed with a novel computer task, the Children's Space Game, as well as parent and teacher report. Teachers reported on children's academic performance. Aggressive/rejected children had lower adult-reported attention skills and academic performance than low aggressive/popular children. Aggressive/rejected children also had lower skills on the computer task. Support was found for an additive model of the influence of children's status and attention skills on their academic performance even after controlling for maternal education and family income but no evidence was found that attention moderated the relation between children's status and their academic performance. Practice or Policy: Aggressive/rejected children appear at significant risk for attention problems and these problems predict their academic performance. Future research should investigate whether these children would benefit from additional support of their attention skills.     

Task persistence mediates the effect of children’s literacy skills on mothers’ academic help

This longitudinal study aimed at examining the relationship between children's task persistence, mothers' academic help, and the development of children’s literacy skills (reading and spelling) at the beginning of primary school. The participants were 870 children, 682 mothers, and 53 class teachers. Data were collected three times – at the beginning and the end of Grade 1 and at the end of Grade 2. Better literacy skills predicted higher persistence in completing school tasks and, correspondingly, higher persistence was related to better subsequent skills. Also, lower task persistence at the end of Grade 1 corresponded to more frequent academic help from mothers in Grade 2. Moreover, children’s literacy skills predicted mother’s later academic help via task persistence: the lower the children’s literacy skills were, the less task persistence children exhibited, and the more mothers engaged in academic help later on.     

Developmental changes in children's choices of practice strategies

This study investigated children's choices of deliberate practice strategies. Six-to 11-year-olds (n = 85) were presented with three outwardly similar motor tasks that varied only in the precision of the motor response required to succeed. Children then had the opportunity to practice these tasks before a “test” in which they had to complete all three tasks in the fastest overall time. While children of all ages spent relatively more time practicing the hardest task, only 10- and 11-year-olds scored more successes on the hardest task than the other tasks during the initial practice period. After verbal instruction, however, children of all ages scored more successes on the hardest task during practice, and younger children became more likely to persevere with the hardest task rather than switching tasks after a success. Children's practice choices may vary as a function of age and verbal instruction.