Disparities in School Readiness

How Families Contribute to Transitions into School

Alan Booth, Ann C. Crouter

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780805859812
• eBook ISBN: 9781136677465
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Cognitive Psychology & Cognition
• Index: Psychology

Significant disparities exist in children's behavioral and learning capacities that support successful transitions into school. In this new volume, leading researchers from a variety of disciplines review the latest data on how families influence their children's transitions into school. The inequalities that exist in school readiness, the roots of

IV

Effects of Child Risk Characteristics and Family Processes on the Development of Children's Behavioral Control

14

CHILD CHARACTERISTICS AND FAMILY PROCESSES THAT PREDICT BEHAVIORAL READINESS FOR SCHOOL

Susan B. Campbell

Camilla von Stauffenberg

University of Pittsburgh

Behavioral Challenges for Young Children During the Transition to School

Between the ages of 4 and 6, young children are expected to make a major life transition from the relative safety of the home, family day care, childcare center or preschool to elementary school. This transition involves many changes and challenges. Children must become integrated into a new and larger group of peers, build relationships with a new set of adults who have different roles and different expectations for the child's behavior than did caregivers or preschool teachers, and move into a new physical setting (and with bussing and magnet schools, sometimes even a new community). For some children, this transition may also involve riding on the school bus alone without the company of family members or familiar peers—a potentially intimidating experience. Despite the fact that most children today in North America have experienced some form of out-of-home care before they enter kindergarten, the demands placed on young children to adapt to far-reaching changes in their daily lives occasioned by the transition to school are daunting.

Children must possess a variety of regulatory strategies and social skills to cope successfully with these changing demands and expectations. For example, the transition to kindergarten or first grade requires a degree of independence and self-reliance that is not expected in child care or preschool, and often children must be able to function in a much larger group of peers with substantially less adult supervision. Children also must relate to a new peer group, make new friends, and learn to work cooperatively with others in a more focused and goal-directed way than in preschool. They must follow teacher directions and inhibit impulses not to call out, push ahead in line, demand teacher attention, or be aggressive with peers. They must be able to follow a lesson and focus attention on challenging cognitive tasks. Many children also must cope with shyness and anxiety as they make the transition to school. Although children gradually develop these social and regulatory skills in preschool and childcare, the transition to kindergarten or first grade sometimes taxes young children's abilities in these areas.

Moreover, children's entry into the school system is more often determined by age than by the acquisition of skills and competencies that indicate social and cognitive readiness for school. Thus, children enter school with widely varying social and self-regulatory skills, and not all children are behaviorally and emotionally ready for the transition to school. The successful transition from the more protected environment of childcare or preschool to primary school will in part be determined by child characteristics and also by how supportive the family is—by how well parents have prepared the child, both explicitly and implicitly, for the demands of school (Alexander & Entwisle, 1988; Ladd, Birch, & Buhs, 1999; NICHD Early Child Care Research Network [ECCRN], 2003a, b; 2004). The school environment will also matter (NICHD ECCRN, 2003b), as some classrooms provide more emotionally and academically supportive environments than others. Since classroom and teacher characteristics also have implications for children's early school adjustment (NICHD ECCRN, 2003b; Pianta, Steinberg, & Rollins, 1995), Pianta (1999) argued that we need to ask not only when children are ready for school, but which schools are ready for children. In addition, the peer group is an important contributor to early school adjustment; children with early peer difficulties have a harder time adjusting to school than do those who fare well in the peer group (Ladd, Kochenderfer, & Coleman, 1996, 1997). For example, Ladd and colleagues (Ladd, 1990; Ladd et al., 1996) have demonstrated that having a familiar and liked peer in the same classroom facilitates children's transition to kindergarten, presumably because a familiar peer serves as an additional source of social support in a new and challenging environment. Despite the importance of the network of relationships that may facilitate children's school adjustment (Ladd et al., 1999), children are called upon to be quite independent as they make the transition to school. Furthermore, their adaptation to the demands of kindergarten and first grade will be strongly determined by their prior adjustment and social skills (NICHD ECCRN, 2003b).

Although there has been an increased focus on school readiness over the last several decades, the recent emphasis has shifted almost exclusively to children's cognitive and academic readiness for school, defined in terms of language development, pre-literacy skills, and developing number concepts (Dorn, 1998; Wesley & Buysse, 2003). It is also well-recognized that children's control of attention and emotions, social competence, and overall regulatory skills are necessary components of school readiness (Kagan, Moore, & Bredekamp, 1995; Lin, Lawrence, & Gorrell, 2003; McClelland & Morrison, 2003; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000; Wesley & Buysse, 2003). Indeed, much of the focus in preschool settings is on facilitating the behavioral and emotional control needed to meet the demands of the classroom once formal schooling begins. Preschool and kindergarten teachers emphasize skills and competencies such as following directions and classroom rules, focusing and maintaining attention, sitting still, controlling aggression and other impulses, and sharing and cooperating with other children. For example, McClelland and Morrison (2003) identified a set of behaviors that they called “learning-related social skills”. These include independence, responsibility, self-regulation, and cooperation. They argue that these behaviors are fostered in preschool, are relatively stable, and are necessary for early school success. Teachers also recognize that they will be able to teach basic literacy and numeracy skills only to young children who have both the motivation and interest to acquire these academic competencies, and also the behavioral competencies that are necessary prerequisites for learning. It is obvious that children will not be able to learn to read if they cannot sit still, pay attention, and follow the teacher's directions. Certainly teachers cannot teach if they are spending their time trying to control a classroom of fidgety, noisy, unruly, and inattentive children.

There are, however, wide individual differences in children's self-regulatory skills when they enter school (e.g., Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, 1999; Gadow, Sprafkin, & Nolan, 2001; NICHD ECCRN, 2003a, b; Pianta & McCoy, 1997) as kindergarten and first grade teachers will attest. Rimm-Kaufmann, Pianta, and Cox (2000) specifically recruited a large national sample of kindergarten teachers and assessed their perceptions of school readiness and problem behavior as exhibited by children entering their classrooms. Teachers reported that 52% of the children in their classrooms made a smooth transition to kindergarten from preschool, 32% had a few transition problems, and 16% were seen as having serious adjustment problems. In terms of specific difficulties, over 30% of the teachers reported that the majority of entering kindergarten children in their classrooms had problems following directions, working independently, and cooperating as part of a group; a similar proportion of teachers noted that over half the children in their classrooms entered kindergarten behind in basic academic skills. Teachers also noted a high prevalence of social skill and communication deficits. Not surprisingly neighborhood poverty and the proportion of minority children in the school population predicted all of these problems at kindergarten entry. These results highlight not only the fact that kindergarten teachers are quite concerned about entering children's regulatory skills, but also that problems with social interaction, self-regulation in the classroom, and academic deficits co-occur, a finding that is consistent with the clinical literature which shows that behavior problems tend to occur in tandem with learning problems (especially language delays and reading problems) and peer difficulties in young children (Campbell, 2002; Cohen, Davine, & Meloche-Kelly, 1989; Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, 1992; Hinshaw, 1992; Spira & Fischel, 2005).

Individual Differences in Children's Behavior and Self-Regulation

Individual differences in children's ability to appropriately control their emotions, attention, and behavior emerge in the context of the family, and are also related to earlier indicators of temperament, especially individual differences in reactivity and regulation that may be manifest in high levels of arousal, poor regulation of negative affect, difficulty focusing and maintaining attention, and poor control over impulses (Rothbart & Bates, 1998; Rothbart, Posner, & Hershey, 1995). A somewhat related construct is effortful control (Kochanska & Knaack, 2003; Kochanska, Murray, & Harlan, 2000), an individual difference dimension that involves effortful attention and the suppression of a dominant response. Kochanska and colleagues have demonstrated that effortful control develops over the course of the preschool years, becomes more stable and traitlike with development, and is related to other aspects of self-control. These individual difference dimensions are considered to be biologically based and to reflect personality characteristics that influence behavior in a range of contexts, although they also can be modified by environmental input (Kochanska et al., 2000). Clearly young children who are highly reactive and poorly regulated, or to use Kochanska's terminology, low in effortful control, are likely to have a harder time adjusting to school, presumably because their poor impulse control, difficulty waiting their turn, fidgetiness, inattention, and tendency to be uncooperative will conflict with teacher expectations, classroom demands, and success in the peer group (Campbell et al., 1994; Denham et al., 2000; Zahn-Waxler et al., 1996).

Defined in terms of inhibiting a prepotent response, effortful control includes response inhibition, resistance to temptation, and delay of gratification. Other related constructs include controlling and maintaining attention (NICHD ECCRN, 2003a; Rothbart & Bates, 1998; Ruff & Rothbart, 1996). Research indicates that deficits in these skills are related to higher levels of behavior problems during the transition to school (Campbell et al., 1994; Denham et al., 2000; Eisenberg et al., 1996). For example, Campbell et al. (1994) studied a group of hard-to-manage preschool boys identified at age 4 on the basis of teacher and maternal reports of symptoms of attention deficit disorder. Children so identified were observed to be more non-compliant with the teacher and more disruptive with peers in preschool. At age 4, hard-to-manage boys also differed from controls on laboratory measures of resistance to temptation and delay of gratification, as well as measures of activity level (observer ratings, counts of out-of seat behavior, and actometer counts) during structured tasks and inattention (disorganized and unfocused play with frequent activity shifts) to toys during free play. When followed up at age 6, hard-to-manage boys were still more impulsive than controls on two measures of inhibition and more fidgety and active, as assessed by observer ratings and actometer scores. Inattention to toys during free play and activity level during structured tasks at age 4, and more impulsive responses on a delay task all predicted persistent problems at age 6 (Campbell et al., 1994). These data and those of others confirm that early difficulties controlling attention and delaying responses in age-appropriate contexts may be signs of more persistent regulatory problems that can interfere with adjustment to the demands of school, as children are expected to sit still, control impulses, and focus attention (see Campbell, 2002, for a review). In addition, studies indicate clearly that individual differences in these regulatory skills are related to individual differences in families (NICHD ECCRN, 2003a,b, 2005).

Family Predictors and Correlates of Behavioral School Readiness

Although individual differences in children's regulatory skills are important predictors of school readiness, they are also associated with individual differences in families that are likewise linked to school readiness. Both distal family characteristics and specific aspects of parenting are important to consider when predicting children's adjustment to school, as illustrated by Farkas and Hibel (in press).

Distal Family Characteristics

Children with poorer regulatory skills often come from less advantaged home environments characterized by a lower educational level, more poverty, unemployment or low occupational level, and single parenthood, and many children living in these family contexts are minority group members; children in such family environments also live in less desirable neighborhoods and often attend schools with fewer resources, compounding their problems with lower levels of academic and social readiness for school (e.g., Barbarin, 1999; Duncan, Brooks-Gunn, & Klebanov, 1994; Farkas & Hibel, in press; Kohen, Brooks-Gunn, Leventhal, & Hertzman, 2002; Yeung, Linver, & Brooks-Gunn, 2002). Although small neighborhood effects have been detected in some studies of young children's adjustment (e.g., Chase-Lansdale & Gordon, 1996), process models tend to implicate maternal stress and depression, and specific styles of parenting as factors accounting for the links between low income and low education and children's social, emotional, and academic functioning during the transition to school (e.g., McLoyd, 1990, 1998; Yeung et al., 2002). McLoyd (1990, 1998) suggested that sociodemographic risk may lead to high levels of depressive symptoms in mothers, which in turn can undermine sensitive, involved parenting. It is to these more proximal family processes that we now turn.

Proximal Family Processes

Maternal Depression

Although proximal family processes are especially relevant to understanding the mechanisms by which sociodemographic risk translates into poorer regulatory skills in children, these are to some degree confounded. Research has emphasized maternal self-reports of stress and depression and there are numerous studies showing that depressive symptoms are correlated with lower educational and occupational status, low income, and single parenthood (Kohen et al., 2002; NICHD ECCRN, 1999; Yeung et al., 2002)....

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• I Inequalities in children’s school readiness at school entry
• II Effects of family processes on earlybrain development and academic skills acquisition
• III Parental conceptualization and organization of non-familial experiences for children
• IV Effects of child risk characteristics and family processes on the development of children’s behavioral control
• SUBJECT INDEX
• AUTHOR INDEX