Early Elementary School Research Articles

The intersection of teacher-child language & ethnic match for Hispanic/Latine dual language learners in early elementary school

Hispanic/Latine dual language learners (DLLs) - Hispanic/Latine children who speak languages besides English at home - compose 20% of the U.S. young child population. Yet this large and growing group of children remains minoritized along both linguistic and ethnic lines, resulting in intersecting opportunity gaps that stem in part from a mismatch between their developmental needs and what schools provide: this includes a lack of access to teachers who share their backgrounds, broadly referred to as teacher-child demographic match. This study is the first to examine teacher-child match for Hispanic/Latine DLLs, concentrating on their intersecting demographic characteristics: Spanish bilingualism and Hispanic/Latine ethnicity. Data are drawn from an ongoing study, focusing on Spanish-speaking, Hispanic/Latine DLLs from economically-disadvantaged families in early elementary school. In this context, the current study explores associations between having a Spanish-speaking teacher, as well as whether that teacher is Hispanic/Latine, during the first two years of elementary school (grades 1-2), and children's academic skills and executive functions at the start of third grade. Controlling for children's baseline skills, school fixed effects, and a host of family and child characteristics, results indicate that having had a linguistically-matched teacher earlier in elementary school was associated with greater third-grade English literacy, attention, and memory skills. Findings highlight the potential role of teacher-child demographic match in closing opportunity gaps and enhancing school success for Hispanic/Latine DLLs.

The Effect of Long-Term Tooth Brush Instruction (TBI) Conditions on Early Elementary School Students’ Oral Health and Habits

The Effect of Long-Term Tooth Brush Instruction (TBI) Conditions on Early Elementary School Students’ Oral Health and Habits

School Readiness Test and Intelligence in Preschool as Predictors of Middle School Success: Result of an Eight-Year Longitudinal Study.

Research has shown that the development of cognitive and social skills in preschool predicts school readiness in kindergarten. However, most longitudinal studies are short-term, tracking children’s development only through the early elementary school years. This study aims to investigate the long-term impact of preschool predictors, intelligence, and mothers’ education on grade six school performance. This study presents the results of an eight-year-long longitudinal study. The sample includes 202 Hungarian children (89 boys) from a disadvantaged region of southeastern Hungary. The independent variables were the preschool measures: DIFER (Diagnostic System for Assessing Development), a widely used, standardized school readiness test that measures cognitive and social skills; the Raven intelligence test; and socioeconomic status. The dependent variables in grade six were: National Standardized tests in math and reading (NABC, National Assessment of Basic Competencies) and school grades (GPA). Cronbach’s alpha reliability of each test is above 0.76. Correlations and a series of multiple regressions were used for analysis. All three independent variables have significant predictive power for school performance in sixth grade. DIFER skills were the best predictors for reading achievement, intelligence for math achievement, and GPA was best predicted by mothers’ education. The results show that developing preschool skills, mothers’ education and IQ in preschool are essential to long-term learning success.

Kindergarten academic and social skills and exposure to peers with pre-kindergarten experience

Pre-kindergarten (pre-k) is thought to have both direct and indirect effects on children's outcomes in early elementary school. Direct pre-k effectsconsistently include moderate to large gains in academic skills and sometimes include increases in problem behaviors that affect acquisition of skills in school. Indirect pre-k effects assume that having more pre-k attenders in classrooms motivates teachers to provide more challenging instruction and provide children with more academically skilled, but perhaps behaviorally challenged peers with whom they interact. To date, these indirect effects have not been carefully examined. This study used a district-wide cohort study of a pre-k program (n = 2572 children, 482 kindergarten classrooms) to examine whether the proportion of children in kindergarten classrooms with pre-k experience related to gains in children's academic, executive function, and social skills during kindergarten. Results indicated that schools with more pre-k attenders served more children from low-income families and children of color. The quality of instruction in classrooms with more pre-k attenders was rated as slightly higher in terms of instructional support and focus on abstract learning when school composition was not considered. Teachers reported less focus on teachers-parent coordination of home learning in classrooms with more pre-k attenders. Children with more classmates who attended pre-k, regardless of their own pre-k attendance histories, showed slightly larger gains in vocabulary and inhibitory control skills but also showed smaller increases in ability to manage frustration. When taken together, findings may indicate that peers influence young children's verbal and social skills, but do not support speculation that increasing pre-k exposure would improve reading or math skills overall or lead to more externalizing behavior problems.

Creating Compassion: Creatively-Focused Explicit Behavioral Instruction for Empathy Development

Creating Compassion is an empathy-focused creative arts curriculum designed to provide short-term, low-cost, high-quality social–emotional learning (SEL) to communities and settings with limited resources. The present study sought to determine whether Creating Compassion was effective for increasing displays of prosocial behaviors and broad SEL skills for early elementary school students (n = 9) through a multiple baseline single-case design, as empathy has previously been posited as a core factor in global social–emotional skill development. Results from this study confirmed the hypothesis that Creating Compassion would increase observed prosocial behaviors with moderate effectiveness for children in first, second, and third grades, including those with identified social–emotional skill deficits. Participant scores on a pre/post assessment of global SEL competence also increased after intervention. Ultimately, findings from this study suggest the Creating Compassion intervention might be used by school psychologists and other group interventionists to expose their school communities to arts programming and engage them in a fun and creative approach to accessible early SEL intervention. Impact Statement This paper presents results from a combined arts and empathy training intervention, Creating Compassion. As an empathy-focused intervention, implementation of Creating Compassion led to increases in displays of prosocial behavior with moderate effectiveness. Increases in participants’ levels of overall SEL skill competence were also observed. Results from this study support the provision of a high-quality, low-cost, arts-based SEL program to benefit Low-Income and Economically Marginalized (LIEM) communities within educational settings.

Exploring COVID-19-Related Educational Disruption of Early Elementary Students and Their Families: A School Counselor Case Example

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused myriad issues for early elementary students and their families. Those early in their educational careers, particularly pre-K–2 students, are especially vulnerable developmentally to abrupt disruptions. School counselors, in turn, are being called upon to respond to crises and provide trauma-informed care for these students and their families, often virtually. This article explores COVID-19-related educational disruption of early elementary students, their families, and school counselors through the use of a case example.

Parents' responses to children's math performance in early elementary school: Links with parents' math beliefs and children's math adjustment.

A new parent-report measure was used to examine parents' person and process responses to children's math performance. Twice over a year from 2017 to 2020, American parents (N=546; 80% mothers, 20% other caregivers; 62% white, 21% Black, 17% other) reported their responses and math beliefs; their children's (Mage =7.48 years; 50% girls, 50% boys) math adjustment was also assessed. Factor analyses indicated parents' person and process responses to children's math success and failure represent four distinct, albeit related, responses. Person (vs. process) responses were less common and less likely to accompany views of math ability as malleable and failure as constructive (|r|s=.16-.23). The more parents used person responses, the poorer children's later math adjustment (|β|s=.06-.16).

Does kindergarten instruction matter for sustaining the prekindergarten (PreK) boost? Evidence from individual- and classroom-level survey and observational data.

The sustaining environments hypothesis theorizes that the lasting effects of PreK programs are contingent on the quality of the subsequent learning environment in early elementary school. The current study tests this theory by leveraging data from students (N = 462) who did and did not enroll in the Boston Public Schools (BPS) prekindergarten (PreK) program as well as features of their kindergarten instruction measured at the child- and classroom-levels using surveys and observations. Taken together, findings revealed limited evidence for the sustaining environments hypothesis. The bulk of the results were null, indicating that in general, associations between enrollment in BPS PreK and language, literacy, and math skills through the spring of kindergarten did not vary by kindergarten instructional experiences. When examining distinct types of instructional experiences, there were some inklings that child-level observational measures of kindergarten learning experiences-particularly those capturing constrained versus unconstrained instruction-were more predictive of PreK persistence than observed global classroom quality measures or survey-based measures of advanced instruction. However, these associations were not always specific to outcomes matching the content delivered during this instruction (math vs. literacy), consistent with the possibility of either cross-domain effects or that instructional variables are proxies for more general instructional practices. Findings for future research and theory are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Sources of individual differences in early elementary school science achievement among multilingual and English monolingual children in the U.S.

Using the public use file of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten class of 2010–2011, this study is the first to examine the extent to which science achievement is distinct from math and reading in kindergarten, first, and second grade; and the utility of kindergarten language proficiency and executive functioning (EF) for predicting science achievement among multilingual (n = 1022) and English monolingual (n = 12,343) children at each grade level. The results demonstrate that science is separable from math and reading achievement, though highly correlated. The results also indicate that kindergarten language proficiency and EF support science achievement similarly across elementary school for both groups. These results coupled with large correlations among science, math, and reading achievement suggest that integrated instruction that takes advantage of domain interconnectedness may reduce redundancies and help children connect with science content.

Parent–child conflict during homeschooling in times of the COVID-19 pandemic: A key role for mothers’ self-efficacy in teaching

To contain the COVID-19 pandemic schools have been closed in many countries. Children stayed at home and were assisted by their parents with their schoolwork. Evidently, homeschooling puts extra demands on parents. We presumed that parents’ sense of efficacy in teaching would play a key role in how they cope with this extra task of homeschooling. In particular, we hypothesized that parental characteristics (level of parental education and stress) and social contextual factors (household chaos and school support) would contribute to parents’ teaching self-efficacy and that, in turn, a lower efficacy would result in more parent–child conflict during home schooling. Participants were 173 mothers of children in kindergarten or early elementary schools, who provided information for one of their children about interpersonal conflicts around schoolwork before and during school closure. Additionally, they reported on their self-efficacy in teaching, perceived stress during lockdown, home chaos, and school support. Path analyses indicated that mothers’ perceived stress and household chaos were associated with a lower sense of efficacy in teaching, whereas school support, but not level of parental education, was related to a higher level of teaching self-efficacy. Higher levels of self-efficacy beliefs, in turn, were associated with a lower degree of mother–child conflict during schoolwork, even after controlling for prior levels of conflict. We discuss how the results of this study might be used to foster parents’ self-efficacy in teaching and thereby decrease the amount of parent–child conflict during parents’ support with schoolwork.

Racial/ethnic match and student–teacher relationships

AbstractThis paper explores the role of teacher race/ethnicity in the teacher‐perceived relationships with kindergarten and early elementary school students. Employing a model with both student and teacher fixed effects, we discover a positive link between the racial/ethnic match and the teacher‐reported relationships with students. Specifically, minority students tend to have closer relationships with their teachers when they are taught by a minority teacher. Our analyses also provide suggestive evidence that the effects on the teacher–student relationships could not be driven by differential racial discrimination between white and minority teachers. Particularly, white and minority teachers are not differentially biased in judging their relationships with minority students, implying that the source of the racial/ethnic interaction effects is likely to come from the role modeling of behaviors. Given the importance of the relationships between young children and nonparental adults in their early stages of life, these findings have crucial policy implications.

Lexical Access Speed and the Development of Phonological Recoding during Immediate Serial Recall

ABSTRACT A recent Registered Replication Report (RRR) of the development of verbal rehearsal during serial recall revealed that children verbalized at younger ages than previously thought, but did not identify sources of individual differences. Here, we use mediation analysis to reanalyze data from the 934 children ranging from 5 to 10 years old from the RRR for that purpose. From ages 5 to 7, the time taken for a child to label pictures (i.e. isolated naming speed) predicted the child’s spontaneous use of labels during a visually presented serial reconstruction task, despite no need for spoken responses. For 6- and 7-year-olds, isolated naming speed also predicted recall. The degree to which verbalization mediated the relation between isolated naming speed and recall changed across development. All relations dissipated by age 10. The same general pattern was observed in an exploratory analysis of delayed recall for which greater demands are placed on rehearsal for item maintenance. Overall, our findings suggest that spontaneous phonological recoding during a standard short-term memory task emerges around age 5, increases in efficiency during the early elementary school years, and is sufficiently automatic by age 10 to support immediate serial recall in most children. Moreover, the findings highlight the need to distinguish between phonological recoding and rehearsal in developmental studies of short-term memory.

Why does visual working memory ability improve with age: More objects, more feature detail, or both? A registered report.

We investigated how visual working memory (WM) develops with age across the early elementary school period (6-7 years), early adolescence (11-13 years), and early adulthood (18-25 years). The work focuses on changes in two parameters: the number of objects retained at least in part, and the amount of feature-detail remembered for such objects. Some evidence suggests that, while infants can remember up to three objects, much like adults, young children only remember around two objects. This curious, nonmonotonic trajectory might be explained by differences in the level of feature-detail required for successful performance in infant versus child/adult memory paradigms. Here, we examined if changes in one of two parameters (the number of objects, and the amount of detail retained for each object) or both of them together can explain the development of visual WM ability as children grow older. To test it, we varied the amount of feature-detail participants need to retain. In the baseline condition, participants saw an array of objects and simply were to indicate whether an object was present in a probed location or not. This phase begun with a titration procedure to adjust each individual's array size to yield about 80% correct. In other conditions, we tested memory of not only location but also additional features of the objects (color, and sometimes also orientation). Our results suggest that capacity growth across ages is expressed by both improved location-memory (whether there was an object in a location) and feature completeness of object representations.

A Phenomenology of the Job-Related Experiences of Early Career Catholic Elementary School Principals

This qualitative phenomenology investigated the job-related experiences of early career Catholic elementary school principals (N = 13) in the Mideastern region of the United States. Data were collected from an introductory survey, semi-structured interviews, two focus groups, and a participant designed plan for professional development. The findings indicated that Catholic elementary principals in their early career are motivated by a calling to a vocation in Catholic school leadership as well as the ability to develop and implement a vision for their school. Principals reported being challenged by limited resources, balancing the demands of the position, and navigating relationships. Finally, principals believed they are supported by diocesan administrators in the areas of human resources and student issues, particularly if the concerns have legal implications.

A Seasonal Analysis of Disparities in Academic Skills for Early Elementary School Children with Disabilities

Studies examining seasonal variation in academic skills for children have focused on learning loss or stagnation during the summer, particularly for students from low-income or minoritized racial and ethnic backgrounds. In this study, we expand the literature to focus on another student population that may be susceptible to summer learning loss: children with disabilities. Using nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010–2011 (ECLS-K:2011), we examined changes in the academic skills of children with disabilities—defined in terms of having an individualized education plan or receiving special education services—relative to peers without disabilities during the school year and summer months. Results indicate that inequality in learning rates between both groups tends to widen more during the early school years, particularly in kindergarten, than summer. One policy implication of the findings is schools may need to focus more on kindergarten transition for children with disabilities.

Parents' daily involvement in children's math homework and activities during early elementary school.

This research examined parents’ involvement in children’s math homework and activities. During 2017 to 2019, American parents (N = 483; 80% mothers; 67% white) of young elementary school children (M age = 7.47 years; 50% girls) reported on their math helping self‐efficacy; they also reported on their involvement in children’s math homework and activities daily for 12 days. At this time and a year later, children’s math motivation and achievement were assessed. Parents’ involvement in homework (vs. activities) was more affectively negative (d = .34), particularly among parents low in self‐efficacy (d = .23). The more affectively negative parents’ involvement, particularly in homework, the poorer children’s later math motivation and achievement (βs = −.09 to .20).

Efficacy of an Adaptive Game-Based Math Learning App to Support Personalized Learning and Improve Early Elementary School Students’ Learning

This study investigates whether using My Math Academy, which provides personalized content and adaptive embedded assessments to support existing curricula, can improve learning outcomes and engagement for kindergarten and first grade students (N = 505 treatment, 481 control). Findings indicate that students using My Math Academy made significant learning gains in math relative to children who did not. More skills mastered in My Math Academy was associated with greater learning gains on the external assessment, with the greatest impacts among students with lower levels of math knowledge, where there was more room for growth and on the most difficult skills. Teachers surveyed found My Math Academy easy to use in their classrooms and recognized it as a valuable learning resource that supplemented their existing curricula to improve students’ engagement, motivation, and confidence in learning math.

What Is the Role of Executive Function in the Early Elementary School Achievement of Latino Students?

ABSTRACT The early elementary years are foundational for future academic achievement, and, as the number of Latino students in U.S. schools continues to rise, more attention has been given to the academic performance of these young learners. Yet little is known about the cognitive skills, such as executive function (EF), that may underlie Latinos’ academic performance in the early grades. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010–11 (ECLS-K:2011; N = 4,220), the current study examines the role that kindergarten EF plays in the second grade academic achievement of Latino students, after accounting for SES and English oral language skills. Specifically, it: (1) examines the influence of SES and English oral language skills on the growth of EF in the early elementary grades; and (2) investigates whether kindergarten EF predicts second grade academic achievement and mediates the influence of SES and English oral language skills. Results suggest that kindergarten EF plays a role in second-grade reading and math. Working memory, in particular, is predictive of future achievement, mediating the relationship between both kindergarten-entry English oral language skills and SES and second-grade achievement. Implications for practice and research are discussed.

Fluctuations of aeroallergen-specific immunoglobulins and children's allergic profiles: Japan Environment & Children's Study of a pilot cohort

BackgroundAllergen-specific immunoglobulins have a crucial role in allergic diseases. Most wheeze episodes develop before school age, and allergic rhinitis later develops during early elementary school years. However, the clinical background and cytokine/chemokine profiles associated with changes in immunoglobulins during early school-age are poorly understood. MethodsThis study used blood samples from children participating in the JECS Pilot Study. We examined nineteen kinds of aeroallergen-specific immunoglobulins (IgE, IgG1, IgG4, and IgA) levels in patients at age 6 and age 8. Fluctuations of Der f 1- and Cry j 1-specific immunoglobulins levels during the two periods were compared to assess the frequency of allergic statuses and clusters of cytokine/chemokine profiles. ResultsThe medians of aeroallergen-specific IgE levels did not fluctuate, and almost all IgG1 and IgG4 decreased. In IgA, four (e.g., Der f 1) increased, whereas the other four (e.g., Cry j 1) decreased. The ratio of the Der f 1-specific IgG1 level at age 8 to that at age 6 was higher in children with poor asthma control than in children with better asthma control. Moreover, the cytokine/chemokine cluster with relatively lower IL-33 and higher CXCL7/NAP2 was associated with lower Der f 1- and Cry j 1-specific IgG4 levels, but not IgE levels. ConclusionsThe cluster of cytokine/chemokine profiles characterized by lower IL-33 and higher CXCL7/NAP2 was associated with the maintenance of aeroallergen-specific IgG4 levels. This result provides a basis for considering the control of aeroallergen-specific immunoglobulins.

THE EFFECT OF SERVANT LEADERSHIP, EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE, AND PURPOSE IN LIFE ON ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR IN XYZ EARLY CHILDHOOD YEARS – ELEMENTARY

<p class="abstrak">To prepare the students with the demand of life in the future, teachers must continuously develop mastery of new knowledge, skills, competencies, and aptitudes. Education has entered a period of profound disruptive transition. It requires teachers to have organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). The purpose of this quantitative study is to examine the effect of servant leadership, emotional intelligence, and purpose in life on organizational citizenship behavior in XYZ Early Childhood Years and Elementary School. Fifty-five teachers of XYZ Early Childhood Years and Elementary School completed the online questionnaires. Path analysis through PLS SEM method is employed to test the proposed hypotheses. The results showed that servant leadership has positive effect on purpose in life and organizational citizenship behavior. It was found that emotional intelligence has positive effect on purpose in life. Purpose in life also has positive effect on organizational citizenship behavior. In contrast, it was found that emotional intelligence does not have positive effect on organizational citizenship behavior.</p><p class="abstrak"><strong>Bahasa Indonesia Abstrak: </strong>Siswa perlu dipersiapkan untuk menghadapi tuntutan kehidupan masa mendatang, guru harus terus mengembangkan penguasaan pengetahuan, keterampilan, kompetensi, dan bakat baru. Pendidikan telah memasuki masa transisi yang penuh disrupsi. Hal ini menuntut guru untuk memiliki organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Tujuan dari penelitian kuantitatif ini adalah untuk menguji pengaruh servant leadership, emotional intelligence dan purpose in life terhadap organizational citizenship behavior di TK-SD XYZ. Lima puluh lima guru TK dan SD XYZ menyelesaikan kuesioner online. Perhitungan penelitian menggunakan analisis jalur melalui metode Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS SEM) digunakan untuk menguji hipotesis yang diajukan. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa servant leadership berpengaruh positif terhadap organizational citizenship behavior. Ditemukan juga bahwa servant leadership berpengaruh positif terhadap purpose in life dan emotional intelligence berpengaruh positif terhadap purpose in life. Purpose in life juga berpengaruh positif terhadap organizational citizenship behavior. Sebaliknya, emotional intelligence tidak berpengaruh positif terhadap organizational citizenship behavior.</p><p class="abstrak"> </p>