Abstract
Childhood socioeconomic status (SES) is strongly predictive of math achievement in early childhood and beyond. In this study, we aimed to further our understanding of the mechanisms underpinning the SES-achievement gap by examining whether two aspects of self-regulation—executive functions (EF) and behavioral self-regulation (BSR)—mediate between SES and math achievement. Using data from a longitudinal study in Singapore (n = 1,257, 49% males), we examined the predictive link from SES to math achievement at entry to formal education (age 7), and the role of EF (child-assessed) and BSR (child-assessed and teacher-rated) as mediators of the SES-math achievement relationship. After accounting for children’s non-verbal reasoning and prior math achievement, EF and BSR (both child-assessed) emerged as significant partial mediators between SES and math. A key contribution of our study is in demonstrating that both components of self-regulation play a small role in explaining SES disparities in math achievement. Our findings further suggest that a balanced focus on enhancing EF and BSR skills of children from low-SES families may help to attenuate the SES-math achievement gap. More generally, our research contributes new insights to the ongoing debate about the theoretical distinctions between EF and BSR.
Highlights
Socioeconomic status (SES) is negatively associated with the development of children’s mathematics skills
We considered whether direct performance measures and teacher ratings of behavioral self-regulation (BSR) uniquely account for math achievement at Primary 1
We found that executive functions (EF) and child-assessed BSR represent distinct constructs of self-regulation that partially mediated the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and math achievement at Primary 1, it should be noted that the mediation effects were very small
Summary
Socioeconomic status (SES) is negatively associated with the development of children’s mathematics skills. A growing body of evidence suggests that two domaingeneral factors related to self-regulation, executive functions (EF; Ellefson et al, 2020; Waters et al, 2021) and behavioral self-regulation (BSR; Sektnan et al, 2010) play a mediating role between SES and math achievement. These studies have considered the role of EF and BSR in isolation. We examine whether EF and BSR, representing different aspects of self-regulation, uniquely mediates the SES-achievement gap in math at entry to primary school. Findings would add to the literature about the distinction between EF and BSR, as well as our understanding of the skills that underlie early academic disparities
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