Family Stress Processes and Children's Self-Regulation.

Economic hardship can affect children's development through child-caregiver interactions, which may mediate cascading effects of other family stress processes. This study examined, simultaneously, the relations of financial strain, caregiver general stress, and child-caregiver conflict-each measured at two time points-with child self-regulatory outcomes in a high-poverty sample (age 5-7 years; n = 343). Increase in child-caregiver conflict mediated negative relations between other processes and development of executive function. In contrast, only increase in financial strain had direct, negative association with development of delay of gratification and did not significantly mediate relations between any other process and children's outcomes. Results have implications for understanding effects of family stress on self-regulatory outcomes and for interventions with low-income families.

Perceptions of Relatedness with Classroom Peers Promote Adolescents' Behavioral Engagement and Achievement in Secondary School.

Secondary school is a vulnerable time where stagnation or declines in classroom behavioral engagement occur for many students, and peer relationships take on a heightened significance. We examined the implications of adolescents' perceptions of relatedness with classroom peers for their academic learning. Participants were 1084 adolescents (53% female) in 65 middle and high school classrooms. Multilevel cross-lagged path analyses found that adolescents' perceived relatedness with classroom peers subsequently predicted their increased self-reported behavioral engagement in that classroom from fall to winter and again from winter to spring. Higher engagement in spring predicted higher end of year objective achievement test scores after statistical control of prior year test scores. Implications are discussed for increasing classroom peer relatedness to enhance adolescents' achievement.

How teacher emotional support motivates students: The mediating roles of perceived peer relatedness, autonomy support, and competence.

Multilevel mediation analyses test whether students' mid-year reports of classroom experiences of autonomy, relatedness with peers, and competence mediate associations between early in the school year emotionally-supportive teacher-student interactions (independently observed) and student-reported academic year changes in mastery motivation and behavioral engagement. When teachers were observed to be more emotionally-supportive in the beginning of the school year, adolescents reported academic year increases in their behavioral engagement and mastery motivation. Mid-year student reports indicated that in emotionally-supportive classrooms, adolescents experienced more developmentally-appropriate opportunities to exercise autonomy in their day-to-day activities and had more positive relationships with their peers. Analyses of the indirect effects of teacher emotional support on students' engagement and motivation indicated significant mediating effects of autonomy and peer relatedness experiences, but not competence beliefs, in this sample of 960 students (ages 11-17) in the classrooms of 68 middle and high school teachers in 12 U.S. schools.

Preschool center quality and school readiness: quality effects and variation by demographic and child characteristics.

This article examines associations between observed quality in preschool center classrooms for approximately 6,250 three- to five-year-olds and their school readiness skills at kindergarten entry. Secondary analyses were conducted using data from four large-scale studies to estimate the effects of preschool center quality and interactions between quality and demographic characteristics and child entry skills and behaviors. Findings were summarized across studies using meta-analytic methods. Results indicate small, but statistically significant associations for preschool center quality main effects on language and mathematics outcomes with little evidence of moderation by demographic characteristics or child entry skills and behaviors. Preschool center quality was not reliably related to socioemotional outcomes. The authors discuss possible explanations for the small effect sizes and lack of differential effects.

Does the timing of kindergarten absences matter for children's early school success?

Although we know that children who are more frequently absent from school do less well academically, we know little about whether absences matter for other domains of development and whether the timing of their absences matter. In order to address these gaps in knowledge, we examined the experiences of 1,131 kindergartners (64% Hispanic, 7% Black, 17% Asian/other, 12% White) from a mid-Atlantic state. Covariate-adjusted regression analyses showed that children who missed school more frequently did less well in terms of their academic achievement and executive function skills both in kindergarten and through the end of first grade. Importantly, however, there were no consistent differences in children's social behavior nor did outcomes vary as a function of whether their absences occurred in the fall as compared with spring. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Persistence and convergence: The end of kindergarten outcomes of pre-K graduates and their nonattending peers.

The present investigation examined the benefits of pre-K through the end of kindergarten for children from low-income homes who lived in a large and diverse county (n = 2,581) as well as factors associated with a reduction in benefits during the kindergarten year. Results revealed that pre-K graduates outperformed nonattenders in the areas of achievement and executive functioning skills at the end of kindergarten, and also that the benefits of pre-K at the start of the year diminished by a little more than half. This convergence between groups' performance was largest for more constrained skills, such as letter-word identification, and was attributed to the fact that nonattenders made greater gains in kindergarten as compared with graduates of pre-K. Importantly, convergence in the groups' performance in kindergarten was not attributed to pre-K children's classroom experiences in kindergarten. Convergence was, however, attributable to preexisting individual differences, and there was support for the notion that even though children's skills are susceptible to improvement as a result of pre-K, their longer-term outcomes are likely to be impacted by factors that are outside the scope of early schooling. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Focused Classroom Coaching and Widespread Racial Equity in School Discipline.

We examined the effects of a teacher coaching program on discipline referrals using records from 7,794 secondary U.S. classrooms. Some classroom teachers took part in a trial: They were randomized to receive intensive coaching in a focal classroom or to form a business-as-usual control group. The remaining teachers taught in the same schools. Previous research suggested that the coaching program was associated with increasing equity in discipline referrals in focal coached classrooms (Gregory et al., 2016). The current study addressed the generalizability of effects from teachers' focal coached classrooms to diverse classrooms in their course load. Results suggested that the coaching program had no generalized effects on reducing referrals with African American students or racial referral gaps in classrooms with coached teachers, relative to the control teachers and the other teachers in the schools. We offer implications for coaching programs and directions for equity-oriented efforts to reduce racial discipline gaps.

Student Engagement as a General Factor of Classroom Experience: Associations with Student Practices and Educational Outcomes in a University Gateway Course.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate a model for considering general and specific elements of student experience in a gateway course in undergraduate Financial Accounting in a large university on the East Coast, USA. Specifically, the study evaluated a bifactor analytic strategy including a general factor of student classroom experience, conceptualized as student engagement as rooted in flow theory, as well as factors representing specific dimensions of experience. The study further evaluated the association between these general and specific factors and both student classroom practices and educational outcomes. The sample of students (N = 407) in two cohorts of the undergraduate financial accounting course participated in the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) measuring students' classroom practices, perceptions, engagement, and perceived learning throughout the one-semester course. Course grade information was also collected. Results showed that a two-level bifactor model fit the data better than two traditional (i.e., non-bifactor) models and also avoided significant multicollinearity of the traditional models. In addition to student engagement (general factor), specific dimensions of classroom experience in the bifactor model at the within-student level included intrinsic motivation, academic intensity, salience, and classroom self-esteem. At the between-student level, specific aspects included work orientation, learning orientation, classroom self-esteem, and disengagement. Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling (MSEM) demonstrated that sitting in the front of the classroom (compared to the sitting in the back), taking notes, active listening, and working on problems during class had a positive effect on within-student variation in student engagement and attention. Engagement, in turn, predicted perceived learning. With respect to between-student effects, the tendency to sit in front seats had a significant effect on student engagement, which in turn had a significant effect on perceived learning and course grades. A significant indirect relationship of seating and active learning strategies on learning and course grade as mediated by student engagement was found. Support for the general aspect of student classroom experience was interpreted with flow theory and suggested the need for additional research. Findings also suggested that active learning strategies are associated with positive learning outcomes even in educational environments where possibilities for action are relatively constrained.

Focusing on teacher-student interactions eliminates the negative impact of students' disruptive behavior on teacher perceptions.

This study tests the impact of a randomly assigned professional development coaching intervention (MyTeachingPartner-Secondary; MTP-S) on teacher projections of their students' educational attainment. Results indicate that students who report more behavior problems in the Fall of the academic year are projected by teachers to have lower future educational attainment in the Spring of the academic year. However, analyses further indicate that participation in the MTP-S intervention moderates the association between Fall student behavior problems and teachers' Spring projections for student attainment, such that this link is not significant for students in classrooms where the teacher is participating in MTP-S. In fact, results indicate that teachers who participate in the intervention project better educational attainment for their students than teachers who are in a business-as-usual control condition, regardless of their students' behavior. Findings are discussed in terms of the role that interventions targeting classroom interactions may play in altering teachers' internal view of students, thus ultimately promoting adolescent development.