Trajectories of social-emotional development across pre-primary and early primary school

Abstract

Social-emotional (SE) skills grow rapidly during the preschool years and support children's ability to manage stress and form positive relationships. Yet little research exists on how SE skills develop over time, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. We examined the development of prosocial SE skills with four waves of data over three years in a sample of Ghanaian preschoolers (N = 1916; 47.6% female). We used factor analysis and vertical scaling to assess the dimensionality of prosocial SE skills and latent growth mixture modeling to identify subgroups as defined by different trajectories. We found two distinct subgroups—normative, in which children gained SE skills over time, and low-growth, in which children had lower initial skill levels and acquired skills at a slower rate over time. Group membership was associated with demographic characteristics and children's first grade academic outcomes, as well as other important non-academic skills.