Elsevier

Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology

Volume 46, September–October 2016, Pages 73-83
Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology

The effect of peers' self-regulation on preschooler's self-regulation and literacy growth

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2016.09.001Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The effects of pre-k peers' self-regulation on individual school readiness were examined.

  • The moderating role of an individual's sex and self-regulation skills was explored.

  • Higher peer self-regulation was linked to higher individual self-regulation.

  • Higher peer self-regulation was linked to decoding but not letter knowledge gains.

  • Children with lower self-regulation are more impacted by peer self-regulation.

Abstract

Peer effects, or the effect of peer skill levels on an individual's skills, are important predictors of school achievement, with recent research suggesting that they are also predictive of preschool skills. This study investigates the effect of peer levels of self-regulation on two aspects of school readiness: self-regulation and early literacy; and whether peer effects differ based on individual child skills and sex. Peer effects were assessed for 629 preschool children in 56 classrooms. Utilizing multilevel models within a structural equation modeling framework, peer self-regulation predicted self-regulation and letter word decoding growth, but not letter word knowledge. This suggests that peers can play a role in children's individual learning. Additionally, girls demonstrated higher spring self-regulation than boys. Peer effects were more predictive of spring self-regulation for children with low, rather than high, levels of fall self-regulation. These findings highlight the importance of preschool social/interactional environments.

Section snippets

Defining self-regulation

The definition and conceptualization of self-regulation is frequently debated, in part, because of its relevance to many fields of study including developmental (effortful control; Aksan & Kochanska, 2004), educational (McClelland et al., 2007), and cognitive research traditions (executive function; Zelazo et al., 2003). That said, there is general consensus that self-regulation refers to a multiple component construct that broadly represents the volitional ability to respond to the environment

Peer effects, self-regulation, and early literacy

Previous empirical studies clearly indicate that peer effects, often operationalized by aggregating children's individual characteristics at the classroom (mean) level, influence the manifestation of individual skills (Bulotsky-Shearer et al., 2012, Domínguez et al., 2011, Henry and Rickman, 2007, Justice et al., 2011, Mashburn et al., 2009). For instance, peer levels of self-regulation predict first graders' literacy gains above and beyond the individual child's self-regulatory skills (Skibbe

Sex and peer effects

Interactions between boys and girls at school often play a role in skill manifestation and development (Lavy & Schlosser, 2011). Findings based on individuals tend to favor girls when it comes to levels of self-regulation and academic achievement, particularly literacy achievement (Duckworth and Seligman, 2006, Educational Testing Service, 2001, Matthews et al., 2009, Ready et al., 2005; although see Montroy et al., 2014). However, few studies have examined the role of a child's sex in relation

Current study

Our research aims focused on both replicating and extending the growing literature on peer effects within the preschool classroom. The first aim was to determine whether fall classroom peers' levels of self-regulation are associated with two key aspects of school readiness: growth in self-regulation and aspects of early literacy. Based on previous findings, it was expected that children in classrooms where peers demonstrated a higher average level of self-regulation would exhibit greater growth

Participants

Children (N = 629) from 56 classrooms were assessed as part of an ongoing larger study: the Michigan Longitudinal Study of Early Literacy Development (removed for review process) which included preschool students from four Midwestern preschools across three years. Two preschools were public, one was a private, NAEYC accredited preschool associated with a university, and one was a joint public/university preschool that was also NAEYC accredited. Data were collected across three years with some

Results

Means and standard deviations are listed in Table 1. Correlations for the predictor, outcome and covariates are presented in Table 2. To investigate whether classroom levels of peer self-regulation predicted growth in self-regulation and early literacy skills, we used multilevel modeling within a structural equation modeling framework to account for the fact that children are nested within classrooms, and therefore may have a shared classroom variance (Peugh, 2010, Singer and Willett, 2003).

Discussion

In accordance with an ecological systems approach, peers' competencies play a role in the development of complex individual skills (e.g., Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 2006, Hattie, 2002, Justice et al., 2011, Skibbe et al., 2012). The goal of the current study was to evaluate the association between classroom peer levels of self-regulation and growth in aspects of school readiness skills across preschool. Results indicated that the self-regulation skills of classroom peers moderated children's

Conclusions

Findings from this study contribute to the growing literature suggesting the importance of classroom peers in the development and manifestation of a subset of key school readiness skills. The present study indicates that peer levels of self-regulation within preschool significantly predicted self-regulation and early letter word decoding gains, and that being in classrooms with peers who have higher levels of self-regulation provides children with lower levels of initial individual

Funding

The research reported here was partially supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305A100566 to Oregon State University. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute of the U.S. Department of Education.

Acknowledgments

We thank the families who participated in this study. We also wish to thank a large number of student staff and volunteers who managed and assisted with the data collection. Finally we appreciate the comments and suggestions provided by our anonymous peer reviewers.

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