Children's Social-emotional Competence Research Articles

The socialization of social–emotional behaviour in early childhood classrooms: child outcomes moderated by socioeconomic risk

ABSTRACT Early childhood educator's emotional socialization may contribute crucially to young children's social–emotional competence. Here, we examined the contributions of self-reported reactions to children's emotions and beliefs about emotional socialization of 90 teachers to the social–emotional competence of 334 pre-schoolers. Teacher-reported emotion socialization, especially as moderated by classroom socioeconomic risk, often predicted pre-schoolers’ end-of-year social–emotional behaviours, independent of child covariates, including children's beginning-of-year premeasures. Only three findings resembled the parent emotion socialization literature, however, and two appeared unique to the pre-school environment. Most were specific to classrooms where children experienced socioeconomic risk. The pattern of moderation findings highlights the importance of context in teachers’ emotional socialization. Suggestions are given for expanded research on the topic and potential applications to assist teachers in their role as emotion socializers.

"Our Generation Is Trying to Break Some of That Resistance to Emotions"-A Mixed-Methods Pilot Examination of Tuning in to Kids for Black Parents of Preschoolers in the United States.

A growing body of literature examines the utility of emotion-focused parenting programs, as behaviorally based programs currently dominate the parenting literature. Few of those studies examine differences in how Black parents may benefit. This mixed-methods pilot study examined preliminary fidelity, efficacy, and acceptability of Tuning in to Kids (TIK), an emotion-focused parenting program targeting parenting practices and children's emotion regulation through a strengths-based approach. Pre, post, and one-month follow-up measurements were collected from 21 parents in the United States who were randomly assigned to a treatment (i.e., TIK) or waitlist control group. They were assessed across several self-report parent measures (parental emotion regulation, emotion socialization parenting practices and beliefs) and parent-report of children's social-emotional competence. Parents in the TIK group completed interviews to further understand their experience participating in the intervention. Descriptive analyses showed general improvements and positive change in parenting practices, beliefs, parental emotion regulation, and children's self-regulation. Large effect sizes indicate reductions of parents emotion dismissing and distressed reactions to children's negative emotions. TIK was overall rated as a highly acceptable intervention. Parent interviews offer essential information to provide context to Black parents' experiences utilizing TIK as well as themes related to challenges in raising Black children with self-regulation difficulties. Overall, these preliminary mixed-methods outcomes suggest that TIK is a promising parenting program to improve Black parents' emotion regulation, emotion coaching beliefs and positive parenting practices. Further research is needed to investigate the effectiveness of TIK and other emotion-focused parenting programs with Black parents and assess the necessity of future cultural adaptations.

유아의 사회정서적 유능감과 자조기술, 유아-교사의 상호작용과의 관계 및 영향

Objectives The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship and influence of children's social-emotional competence, self-help skills, and child-teacher interaction. Methods The subjects of the study were 140 3-year-old children attending a kindergarten in Gyeonggi-do. Data were collected through questionnaires, and correlation analysis and stepwise multiple regression analysis were performed to analyze the collected data. Results First, it appears that there is a positive correlation between children's social-emotional competence, self-help skills, and child-teacher interaction, and the higher the child's social-emotional competence, the higher the self-help skills and child-teacher interaction. Second, children's social-emotional competence was found to have a significant impact on self-help skills, and among the sub-factors of children's social-emotional competence, emotional recognition and understanding, emotional expression, emotional regulation, social understanding, interpersonal skills, and social problem solving. It was found to have a positive effect on. And among the sub-factors of children's social-emotional competence, emotional recognition and understanding, emotional expression, emotional regulation, social understanding, interpersonal skills, and social problem solving were found to have a positive effect on the child-teacher interaction. Conclusions Through this study, we were able to confirm the importance of developing children's self-help skills and social-emotional competence to increase child-teacher interaction, and suggested that teachers' efforts are needed to help children's social-emotional competence.

TIAP: an observational procedure for assessing family relationships: a clinical case from the parenting evaluation context.

TIAP is an observational procedure to assess family functioning detecting simultaneously the role of each participant and the interdependence of relational behaviors. In particular, the procedure requires family members to play according to different interactive configurations (parent1-children; parent2-children, all together, children and parents as separate units) and therefore different microtransitions from one configuration to another. As such, the procedure allows to study how family members coordinate to maintain stability, promote change, and encourage members to explore different interactive configurations within the family system. TIAP has been validated through several studies conducted with different non-clinical groups of families that have highlighted the salient aspects of family functioning, and significant correlations with variables external to the family system, such as children's social-emotional competence in the educational context. This paper focuses on the use of TIAP in the contexts of assessing parental competence. Specifically, the article aims to describe, through the reference to a clinical case, the results emerged from a study conducted with 33 families involved in a parenting assessment process. The study is part of a broader collaborative project between the Child and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry Clinic of the Italian National Health Service in Parma, the University of Parma, and the Bologna Family Therapy Center. TIAP was administered to all the families involved as a complement to other tools routinely used for all cases handled by the professionals of the clinic. The coding system includes different indices. Some analyze the interactive family modes: family coordination (mutual attention and responsiveness), the responses to potentials for change (disregard, absorption, amplification), and intra-familiar exploration. Other indices concern the quality of the interactions: the relational triadic dynamic of microtransition (detaching-entrusting-welcoming-joining) and the consistency/inconsistency of the communication channels. The results highlighted how TIAP makes it possible to identify the specific interactive modalities of the different members and their interdependence and reciprocity, favoring the identification of both family weaknesses and family resources, including the children's contribution. Furthermore, the general data trend showed that TIAP indices detect some important prognostic elements capable of guiding the court's decisions.

The influence of the PATHS curriculum on children's social-emotional competence

The influence of the PATHS curriculum on children's social-emotional competence

Art Learning for Children as a Social Emotional Learning Program

Attitude is an aspect that needs attention because it is a polemic problem in children today. This article aims to initiate the concept of art learning as a social emotional learning program. It can be said that art education has a further meaning than just a process of transferring knowledge and skills, but art education can be used as an effort to develop Emotional Intelligence (EQ) and Intellectual (IQ) this is because art education itself is based on mental (moral), analysis, and synthesis, besides that art is seen as having the essential value to touch one's emotional plain. Literature review is the method in this research with data collection techniques from keyword searches: (1) social emotional learning and (2) art learning for children through Google Scholar. The results of the study found that social emotional learning through art education is seen as something interesting and crucial to be studied and further formulated into a formulation, where the concepts of Art Learning and Social Emotional Learning are used as a foothold and then analyzed, and led to the finding that art learning can be used as a social emotional learning program to be able to improve the five domains of children's social emotional competence. This research has implications for children's social emotional development including awareness and appreciation skills as a form of affection that can be applied later in social life.

부모코칭역량이 유아의 사회정서능력에 미치는 영향

Objectives The purpose of this study is to investigate the mediating effect of positive psychological capital and the moderating effect of parents' emotional coaching style in the effect of parental coaching competency on early children's social-emotional competence.
 Methods The subjects of the study were 306 parents of 3-5 year old children at early childhood educational institutions located in G Metropolitan City and J Province. As a measurement tools, young children’s social-emotional competence scale developed by Lee Eun-jeong(2015) and the parent coaching competency scale developed by Do Mi-hyang, Kim Geun-ju, and Lee Gyeong-ju(2019) were used. In addition, the positive psychological capital scale developed by Luthans, Avolio, and Orman(2006) and translated into the Korean version by Lim Tae-hong(2013) was used. For statistical analysis of the collected data, SPSS 21.0 and Amos 21.0 Program were used.
 Results First, parental coaching competency had a statistically significant positive effect on early children's social-emotional competence, and among these variables, parental positive psychological capital played a partial mediating role. Second, parents' emotional coaching style moderated the relationship between parental coaching competency and positive psychological capital statistically significantly, and moderated the relationship between parental coaching competency and early children’s social-emotional competence statistically significantly.
 Conclusions This study reveals that parental variables are important in improving early children's social-emotional competence. In particular, the more parents used the emotional coaching style, the more parents’ positive psychological capital was enhanced, and it had a positive effect on the development of their early children's social-emotional competence. This suggests that it is necessary to develop various parent-support programs so that parents can form an emotional coaching style.

Effectiveness and mechanisms of change of a mindfulness-based intervention on elementary school children: A cluster-randomized control trial

Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) in the school context are increasingly widespread worldwide. The present study evaluates the effectiveness of a school-MBI (GrowingUp Breathing program) on children's socio-emotional and academic development. Three hundred thirteen elementary students from 7 to 12 years old from two schools in Madrid (Spain) participated. A cluster-randomized control trial was designed, assigning eight classrooms to the MBI-group (N = 155) and eight classrooms to the waiting-list control group (N = 158). Measures were evaluated at pre- and post-intervention in both groups and a 3-month follow-up was collected in the MBI-group. Children self-reported their mindfulness skills (i.e., dispositional mindfulness and psychological inflexibility) and well-being (i.e., anxiety and life satisfaction) and teachers evaluated children's social-emotional competence (i.e., emotion regulation, peer-relationship problems, and prosociality), well-being (i.e., emotional symptoms), and academic competence (i.e., student engagement and academic achievement). Mindfulness skills and emotional regulation were examined as potential mediators. Results revealed that children who received the MBI, compared to children in the WLC-group, improved their mindfulness skills, emotion regulation, prosociality, and emotional and behavioral engagement and decreased anxiety and peer-relationship problems. Positive changes in dispositional mindfulness led to reductions in children's anxiety and psychological inflexibility. Positive changes in emotional regulation led to improvements in prosociality and student engagement and decreased peer-relationships problems and emotional symptoms. Therefore, the results showed that a brief-MBI integrated in the Spanish regular school curriculum enhanced children's socio-emotional and academic development. Dispositional mindfulness and emotion regulation work as processes of change that underlie the intervention's impact.

How to promote the social-emotional competence of rural left-behind children? An empirical study based on propensity score matching.

Social-emotional competence (SEC) played an important role in promoting the physical and mental development of children, but there exist huge gaps in SEC development between rural left-behind children. This study used propensity score matching (PSM) to investigate 578 rural children about the effects of being left behind as well as individual characteristics and teacher support on their development of SEC. The results showed that being left behind had significant negative effects on the SEC of rural children. The development of SEC varies among left-behind children of different genders and length of left-behind duration. Teacher support had a significant moderating effect on the influence path of SEC, which could effectively mitigate the negative effects of left-behind children. Therefore, this study played an implicative role in studying the development of left-behind children's SEC. The government and society should provide adequate cultural capital by completing the support system for compensating the lack of cultural capital. Schools and teachers should pay more attention to the development of left-behind children's SEC through curriculum development and performance evaluation to create a positive atmosphere. Parents should promote SEC development for left-behind children by improving their communication and family parenting styles.

How the home learning environment contributes to children's social-emotional competence: A moderated mediation model.

The home learning environment is the earliest contact learning environment in early childhood development, which plays an important role in the development of children's social-emotional competence. However, previous studies have not clarified the precise mechanisms by which the home learning environment influences children's social-emotional competence. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to explore the relationship between the home learning environment and its intrinsic structure (i.e. structural family characteristics, parental beliefs and interests, and the educational processes) and children's social-emotional competence, and whether gender plays a moderating role in the relationship. The study randomly selected a sample of 443 children from 14 kindergartens in western China. The Home Learning Environment Questionnaire and the Chinese Inventory of Children's Social-emotional competence scale were used to investigate the home learning environment and social-emotional competence of these children. (1) Structural family characteristics and parental beliefs and interests both had a significant positive predictive effect on children's social-emotional competence. (2) The educational processes fully mediate between structural family characteristics, parental beliefs and interests, and children's social-emotional competence. (3) Gender moderated the effect of the home learning environment on children's social-emotional competence. Gender moderates not only the indirect effects between parental beliefs and interests and children's social-emotional competence, but also the indirect effects between structural family characteristics and children's social-emotional competence. At the same time, gender also moderated the direct effects between parental beliefs and interests and children's social-emotional competence. The results emphasize the crucial role of the home learning environment in the development of children's early social-emotional competence. Therefore, parents should pay attention to the home learning environment and improve their ability to create a home learning environment that promotes the positive development of children's social-emotional competence.

Children's social emotional competence in Pakistan and Sweden: Factor structure and measurement invariance of the Social Competence Scale (teacher edition).

Social emotional competence is fundamental to the positive development of children and youth. Accurately understanding and assessing children's social emotional competencies, using psychometrically sound instruments, are essential to global efforts to support children's social emotional learning, academic achievements, and health. This study examined the psychometric properties of a teacher-reported measure of young children's social emotional competence, the Social Competence Scale - Teacher edition (SCS-T), in two samples of children growing up with varied economic resources/conditions, cultural norms, and educational experiences, namely Pakistan (N = 396) and Sweden (N = 309). Participants were aged 4-6 years old. The study design was cross-sectional. Using structural equation modelling, bi-factor confirmatory factor analysis models implying shared variance, among all items and domain-specific shared variance, among the prosocial items, emotion regulation items, and academic skills items resulted in good fitting models in each respective sample. Invariance testing across samples revealed a subset of items from each factor structure with partial scalar invariance, whereby five items had equal thresholds and could be comparable across the two samples. Thus, results provided partial support for hypotheses 1, 2, and 3, in that the posited three factor model (H1) was not clearly supported and a bi-factor model evidenced the best fit, among tested models, for both samples. Further, partial scalar invariance (H3) was found for five items out of 25 items, concerning social competence and academic skills. In regards, to the posited research question, the results of Z-tests showed significant (p < 0.001) latent mean differences between the samples. Compared to the Swedish sample, the Pakistani sample was 1.80 units lower on social competence (z = -6.41, p < 0.001) and 1.86 units lower on academic skills (z = -7.87, p < 0.001). The implications of these findings in light of efforts to promote positive child development in diverse parts of the world are considered.

유아 사회정서역량 척도 개발 및 타당화

Objectives The purpose of this study is to develop and validate a social emotional competence scale for young children aged 3 to 5 years that can be measured by early childhood teachers in early childhood education institutions.&#x0D; Methods To this end, first, a review of literature and previous studies and an open survey were conducted to derive the constituent factors of the concept definition and scale of young children social emotional competency, and a draft of scale questions was prepared based on this. Second, the content validity was verified by conducting Delphi surveys twice. Third, to validate the scale, this survey was conducted on 322 infants aged 3 to 5, and 144 of the collected data were surveyed for exploratory factor analysis, and the remaining 178 were verified for Confirmatory Factor Analysis.&#x0D; Results First, as a result of reviewing literature and previous studies and an open survey, seven sub-factors and a total of 133 questions were derived. Second, as a result of the Delphi survey, four sub-factors and a total of 59 questions were selected. Third, as a result of exploratory factor analysis, four sub-factors and a total of 33 questions were derived. Fourth, as a result of confirmatory factor analysis, the young children social emotional competence scale consisted of 26 questions, including 4 sub-factors of self-awareness (6 questions), self-management (5 questions), social consciousness (7 questions), and relationship management (8 questions). Fifth, the reliability range of the sub-factors was .878 to .923, which was an appropriate level.&#x0D; Conclusions First, it was confirmed that the young children social emotional competence scale developed in this study was suitable for reliability and validity. Second, this study is meaningful in that it developed a scale that can measure social and emotional capabilities for young children aged 3 to 5. Third, it is expected that programs that can improve the social and emotional capabilities of young children can be developed and used in various studies by accurately measuring the social and emotional capabilities of young children.

Effects of philosophical ethics in early childhood on preschool children's social–emotional competence and theory of mind

Although social–emotional learning (SEL) and ethics education are important, it remains a challenging issue to effectively implement these practices. In this study, a Philosophical Ethics in Early Childhood approach is proposed for developing children's social–emotional competence and Theory of Mind. To evaluate the effectiveness of this expanded intervention, an experiment was conducted by assigning 73 children aged 3–5 to an experimental group (N = 37) and a comparative group (N = 36). Parents and teachers completed Head Start Competence Scales, the Theory of Mind Inventory and parent and teacher questionnaires. Teacher and Child Interviews were conducted. According to the teachers’ reports, the experimental group children demonstrated significantly increased social–emotional competence skills and increased understanding of their own and others’ emotions compared to the comparative group children. This program includes games, extension activities, and dialogue to support children in deeply thinking about social and emotional dilemmas, sharing their ideas, and creating solutions.

WITHDRAWN: Recognizing the children depressive state to develop the children social competence

A significant development challenge and depressive state in childhood and teenagers recognize the stage of social skills such as social competence. The parent's inclination to handle the child as a willing participant has shown supports for the growth of a child's awareness and a stable connection. Still, recognizing the depressive state of children is a challenging task. Therefore, this paper proposes a Systematic Prediction Model (SPM) to recognize the children's depressive state and develop social competence. SPM explores the individual impact on children's social-emotional, cognitive, and social competence to overcome the depressive experiences in their families' impact. The personal state is projected and reduced daily assumed social competence outside the various forms of victimization. The relationship between childhood victimization and relative moral integrity has been moderated through instructional violence. SPM has been important to recognize the children's depressive state to develop social competence. The experimental result suggests that SPM has been evaluated based on depression rate recognition compared with other existing methods. The obtained prediction accuracy of SPM is 92.38%, and the efficiency of SPM is 89.27% which is good attainment compared to other approaches. • Identification of the factors that influence depression • Design of SPM to identify the depressive state of the children • Evaluation of the SPM based on the predictive measure

Parent-to-child aggression, intimate partner aggression, conflict resolution, and children's social-emotional competence in early childhood.

Early childhood is critical to the development of children's social-emotional competence, which predicts peer relations and school adjustment in later periods of childhood. The effects of experiencing or witnessing aggression on children's social-emotional development are well known, yet the role of conflict resolution within the family has not been sufficiently studied. Social information processing models suggests that children who experience positive forms of conflict resolution within the family are likely to generalize these experiences and related skills outside the family, and thus develop greater social-emotional competence. In this longitudinal study, 128 parents (representing 79 families) participated in four quarterly telephone interviews in which they described aggressive conflicts that occurred in their family for which their children were present, including the degree to which each conflict was resolved. They also reported on the frequency of intimate partner aggression (IPA) and parent-to-child aggression (PCA) that occurred while the child was in toddlerhood and preschool as well as children's social-emotional competence at the end of the study. Multi-level models reveal that parents' reports of positive conflict resolution mitigated the concurrent and longitudinal negative effects of children's exposure to both IPA and PCA on their social-emotional competence. These findings reinforce prevention scientists' emphasis on conflict resolution skills as an essential component of parent education programs.

The Relationship between Parenting Style and Preschool Children's Social-Emotional Development

Parents or primary caregivers play a vital role in fostering children’s healthy development. Parenting style is one of the foremost thought of approaches to grasp the impact of parents on children's development. Children perceive how their parents exhibit emotions and interact with others in a family context. They make a replica of what their parents do to control emotions. By displaying different emotions, moderately expressive parents give children information about the type of emotional state they express and are likely to cause more personal conditions and causes. Therefore, parenting styles are valuable for knowing complex attitudes and behaviors associated with children's outcomes. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between parenting styles and preschool children’s social-emotional development. The data were collected from 340 randomly selected private and government preschool children using the parenting dimensions questionnaire (PSDQ) and the social-emotional teacher rating questionnaire. The data analysis was carried out with the help of descriptive and inferential statistical methods. In particular, Two –way ANOVA was used. The results revealed that preschool children who belonged to the authoritative parents and the intact family were better in social- emotional development than their counterparts. Moreover, the results indicated that private preschool children achieved better results in social-emotional than government preschool children. However, there were no statistically significant differences between male and female participants in social-emotional development. It is therefore plausible to conclude that authoritative parenting style and intact family contributed positively to children’s social-emotional competence. The current researcher can conclude that children of authoritative and intact families are sociable, emotionally competent and can play with their peers and manage emotions effectively. Moreover, it can be concluded that private preschool children have more social-emotional skills such as managing emotions, playing skills, communication skills, understanding others' feelings and emotions appropriately. Finally, early childhood development has not yet been thoroughly examined and this study has contributed, particularly in the Ethiopian context, to the literature on parenting style in relation to family structure on children's social-emotional competence.

Effects of a Teacher-Training Violence Prevention Program in Jamaican Preschools on Child Behavior, Academic Achievement, and School Attendance in Grade One of Primary School: Follow up of a Cluster Randomized Trial.

Objective: We evaluated the effect of a universal, teacher-training, violence-prevention program implemented in preschool, on high-risk children's behavior, achievement, and attendance in grade one of primary school.Methods: A cluster-randomized trial was conducted in 24 preschools in Kingston, Jamaica. Three children from each class with the highest level of teacher-reported conduct problems were recruited for evaluation of outcomes (n = 225 children). For this study, to increase power, we recruited an additional two children from each class with the next highest teacher-reported scores for conduct problems in preschool. In the final term of grade one of primary school, we assessed children's: (1) conduct problems and social skills at home and school, (2) academic achievement, language, and self-regulation skills, and (3) school attendance.Results: 214/225 (95.1%) of the children evaluated in preschool were assessed in grade one of primary school; an additional 150 children were recruited to give 364 children (181 intervention, 183 control). Significant benefits of intervention were found for child academic achievement (Effect size (ES) = 0.23, p = 0.02), oral language (ES = 0.28, p = 0.006), self-regulation (ES = 0.25, p = 0.007), and school attendance (ES = 0.30, p = 0.003). No significant benefits were found for observed conduct problems (ES = −0.13, p = 0.16), and parent-reported conduct problems (ES = 0.10, p = 0.31) and social skills (ES = −0.07, p = 0.52). Benefits to teacher-reported conduct problems and social skills were significant at p < 0.1 (ES = −0.16, p = 0.09, and ES = 0.19, p = 0.06, respectively).Conclusion: A scalable intervention involving training preschool teachers in classroom behavior management and how to promote child social-emotional competence led to positive outcomes in primary school across multiple child developmental domains for high-risk children.

The Irie Classroom Toolbox, a universal violence-prevention teacher-training programme, in Jamaican preschools: a single-blind, cluster-randomised controlled trial

SummaryBackgroundViolence is a leading global public health problem, and interventions in early childhood are important in the primary prevention of violence. We tested whether the Irie Classroom Toolbox, a violence-prevention teacher-training programme reduced violence against children by teachers and reduced class-wide child aggression in Jamaican preschools (catering to children aged 3–6 years).MethodsWe did a single-blind, cluster-randomised controlled trial in 76 preschools in Kingston and St Andrew, randomly selected, using simple randomisation, from 120 eligible preschools. Inclusion criteria were two to four classes of children; at least ten children per class; and located in an urban area. We randomly assigned preschools (1:1) to either the Irie Classroom Toolbox intervention or waiting-list control that received no intervention, using a computer-generated randomisation sequence by an independent statistician masked to school identity. The Toolbox involved training teachers in classroom behaviour management and promoting child social-emotional competence. All assessors were masked to group assignment. All teachers and classrooms in the selected schools participated in the study. Within each school, we used simple randomisation to randomly select up to 12 children aged 4 years for evaluation of child outcomes. The Toolbox intervention was implemented from August to April the following year. Teacher and classroom measures were done at baseline (the summer school term; ie, May to June), post-intervention (after 8 months of intervention; ie, May to June of the following year), and 1-year follow-up (ie, May to June 2 years later). The primary outcomes were observations of violence against children (including physical violence and psychological aggression) by teachers occurring across one full school day, and class-wide child aggression occurring over five 20-min intervals on another school day, all measured at post-intervention and 1-year follow-up and analysed by intention to treat. This trial is registered with ISRCTN, number ISRCTN11968472.FindingsBetween June 22, 2015, and April 29, 2016, (after baseline measurements were completed), we assigned 38 preschools (with 119 teachers) to the Toolbox intervention and 38 preschools (with 110 teachers) to control. 441 children in the intervention schools and 424 in the control schools were included in the evaluation. All schools were included in the post-intervention and follow-up analyses. There were fewer counts of violence against children by teachers in the intervention schools compared with control schools at post-intervention (median counts 3 [IQR 0–11] vs 15 [3–35]; effect size −67·12%, 95% CI −80·71 to −53·52, p<0·0001) and 1-year follow-up (median counts 3 [IQR 0–9] vs 6 [1–16]; effect size −53·86, 95% CI −71·08 to −36·65, p<0·0001). No differences between groups were found for class-wide child aggression at post-intervention (effect size 0·07, 95% CI −0·16 to 0·29, p=0·72) or 1-year follow-up (−0·14, −0·42 to 0·16, p=0·72).InterpretationIn Jamaican preschools, the Irie Classroom Toolbox effectively reduced violence against children by teachers. The Toolbox was designed for use with undertrained teachers working in low-resource settings and should be effective with early childhood practitioners in other LMICs. Additional research is needed to further develop the Toolbox to reduce class-wide child aggression.FundingMedical Research Council, Wellcome Trust, UK Aid, and the National Institute of Health Research.

Exclusionary discipline practices in early childhood settings: A survey of child care directors

The current study examined the use of suspensions and expulsions in child care settings in Pennsylvania. Among 345 center directors, 82.9% of directors reported at least one suspension request, and 64.0% reported at least one expulsion request in response to challenging behavior in the previous 12 months. Across all directors, a total of 6,884 suspensions and expulsions were reported. Negative binomial regressions were conducted to examine predictors of director-reported exclusionary discipline. Directors who were more satisfied in their current job reported fewer expulsions. Expulsions were also reported less frequently at centers that reported using the Pyramid Model for Promoting Young Children's Social Emotional Competence. Interestingly, higher center-wide use of other types of supports for children with challenging behavior, including using additional staff members, was associated with more expulsions, suggesting that these supports may be used as a tool during the process of expelling a child. These findings have implications for policy and prevention efforts, including the potential value in attending to director well-being and encouraging the use of Pyramid Model strategies in efforts to prevent suspensions and expulsions. Future research is still needed to better understand relations between center-, director-, and teacher-level factors and the use of exclusionary discipline practices.

Improving social-emotional competence in internationally adopted children with the Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up intervention.

Children adopted internationally experience adverse conditions prior to adoption, placing them at risk for problematic social-emotional development. The Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC) intervention was designed to help internationally adoptive parents behave in ways that promote young children's social-emotional competence. Participants included 131 parent-child dyads randomly assigned to receive either ABC (n = 65) or a control intervention (n = 66). In addition, 48 low-risk biologically related parent-child dyads were included as a comparison group. At follow-up assessments conducted when children were 24 to 36 months old, internationally adopted children who received the ABC intervention had higher levels of parent-reported social-emotional competence than children who received a control intervention. In addition, observational assessments conducted when children were 48 and 60 months of age showed that internationally adopted children who received ABC demonstrated higher social-emotional competence than children who received a control intervention. Adopted children who received the control intervention, but not the ABC intervention, displayed more difficulties with social-emotional competence than low-risk children. Finally, postintervention parent sensitivity mediated the effect of ABC on observed child social-emotional competence in parent interactions, controlling for preintervention parent sensitivity. These results demonstrate the efficacy of a parenting-focused intervention in enhancing social-emotional competence among children adopted internationally.