Classroom composition and quality in early childhood education: A systematic review

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Highlights

  • Review of research on the association between classroom composition and quality.

  • Few publications about the association between classroom composition and quality.

  • Greater focus on classroom minority status and socioeconomic composition.

  • Greater focus on indexes of homogeneity in classroom composition.

Abstract

High-quality early childhood education appears to be particularly beneficial for disadvantaged children, since it may help reduce an initial achievement gap. Yet, these children are frequently enrolled in disadvantaged classrooms with lower quality levels. Thus, classroom composition and quality may be associated, but evidence is scarce. In this review, we gathered evidence regarding classroom composition indexes and their association with observed classroom quality, reported in 25 studies that met the inclusion criteria. The majority of studies were conducted in the United States, with disadvantaged samples of children. Classroom composition indexes used were mainly calculations of the percentage, proportion, and average/mean of a particular type of characteristic at the classroom level, that generally captured classroom homogeneity. Most studies focused on minority and socioeconomic status. ECERS and CLASS were the most frequently used standardized observation measures of classroom quality. Evidence suggests that in classrooms with a high concentration of children with minority status and from low income families, quality tends to be lower, particularly on the CLASS emotional and instructional support domains. Additional research, particularly outside the USA, focused primarily on the association between different types of classroom composition and ECE quality is warranted.

Introduction

School systems of Western countries are serving an increasingly diverse student population (Vervaet, Van Houtte, & Stevens, 2018). Simultaneously, access to early childhood education (ECE) programs has been expanded (Vervaet et al., 2018). As a result, many young children, from diverse backgrounds, spend a considerable proportion of their days in ECE classrooms, where they experience interactions that shape their development (Pianta & Hamre, 2009).

High-quality ECE typically provides more opportunities for children to establish stimulating, warm, and supportive interactions (Mashburn et al., 2008, Votruba-Drzal et al., 2004) with teachers and peers (Purtell & Ansari, 2018), and experience adequate and planned instruction (Pianta & Hamre, 2009). Attending high-quality classrooms in ECE has been associated with better outcomes for children in terms of cognitive, linguistic (e.g., Pianta & Hamre, 2009), social, and behavioral development (e.g., Mashburn et al., 2008). There is also evidence suggesting that the benefits of attending high-quality classrooms may be long lasting and still visible in elementary school (Sylva, Melhuish, Sammons, Siraj-Blatchford, & Taggart, 2011). Moreover, placement in special education and grade retention seem to be lower and high-school graduation rates seem to be higher among students who were enrolled in high-quality ECE programs (McCoy et al., 2017).

Attending high-quality classrooms may function as a protective factor for socially disadvantaged children, by providing positive experiences (Clements, Reynolds, & Hickey, 2004), that contribute to the development of self-regulation skills and pro-social behaviors (Sylva et al., 2011). Thus, high-quality ECE may have the potential to reduce initial achievement gaps (Bridges, Fuller, Rumberger, & Tran, 2004). However, there is evidence that these children are often enrolled in ECE classrooms with a high concentration of other disadvantaged children (Reid & Kagan, 2015), and in classrooms with lower quality (Buyse, Verschueren, Doumen, Van Damme, & Maes, 2008). This suggests that there may be an association between the composition of the classroom and ECE quality levels. However, research on how variations in classroom composition are associated with variations in classroom quality is still relatively underexplored and dispersed. Hence, with this review we intend to gather and systematize findings reported in the ECE literature about the associations between classroom composition and observed classroom quality.

We examined the association between classroom composition and classroom quality through the lens of the (bio)ecological theory, which postulates that child development is shaped by interaction patterns, that evolve over time, such as those that occur in ECE settings between children and their teachers (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006) as well as the transactional model (Sameroff, 2009), that emphasizes the bidirectional and interdependent effects of the developing child’s experience and his/her social environment (Sameroff, 2009). Thus, when applied to ECE, we consider that, during their interactions, children (individually and as a group) and teachers influence each other’s behaviors. This means that children’s characteristics, measured at the classroom level, and behaviors may affect teachers’ responses and vice-versa (DiLalla & Mullineaux, 2008), with an impact on quality (Buyse et al., 2008).

Classroom quality can be defined as encompassing: (i) structural features, which refer to regulable characteristics (Slot, Leseman, Verhagen, & Mulder, 2015), such as class size, children-to-teacher ratio, and teacher education (Howes et al., 2008); and (ii) process quality, which relates to children’s daily experiences in the classroom context, including their interactions with teachers and peers and their engagement in school activities (Howes et al., 2008, Phillipsen et al., 1997). In ECE, process quality seems to be a stronger and more direct predictor of children’s linguistic, cognitive, and social development than structural features, which seem to influence children’s development indirectly, through process quality (Friedman and Amadeo, 1999, Howes et al., 2008). Improving classroom process quality has therefore been the main goal of quality improvement programs (Pianta et al., 2014).

Since structural features tend to be easier to regulate (Cryer, Tietze, Burchinal, Leal, & Palacios, 1999), a growing body of research has focused on how these features impact process quality and how they can be used to promote positive change (Cryer et al., 1999). However, the evidence base about the association between structural features and process quality has been relatively inconsistent (Slot et al., 2015). Like other classroom structural features involving group characteristics, such as class size and children-to-teacher ratio, we propose that classroom composition, which encompasses the aggregated personal and family characteristics of the children in each classroom (Cueto et al., 2016, Jones, 2016), should also be examined as structural feature of ECE classrooms potentially subject to regulation.

Most literature about classroom composition effects in ECE settings has focused on the association with children’s achievement and has used children’s characteristics such as ability (e.g., Steenbergen-Hu, Makel, & Olszewski-Kubilius, 2016), age (e.g., Bell et al., 2013, Guo et al., 2014, Purtell and Ansari, 2018), gender (e.g., Gottfried and Graves, 2014, Whitmore, 2005), ethnicity/race (e.g., Denton, Germino-Hausken, & West, 2000), and SES (e.g., Li et al., 2016, Reid and Ready, 2013, Weiland and Yoshikawa, 2014), to compute indexes of classroom composition. Fewer studies have focused on the associations between classroom composition and classroom quality in ECE settings.

Although scarce, there is evidence in the ECE literature supporting the idea that classroom composition may be associated with ECE quality levels. For example, some evidence suggests that children from disadvantaged backgrounds (e.g., Burchinal et al., 2002, den Brok et al., 2010, Raver et al., 2009) can be at higher risk of developing more conflictual and distant interactions with their teachers (Saft & Pianta, 2001), when compared with their peers, as a consequence of contextual factors hindering their social and behavioral development (Raver et al., 2009). Thus, a high concentration of socially disadvantaged children in the classroom and, therefore, at higher risk of exhibiting behavioral problems can be associated with lower quality (Buyse et al., 2008). There is similar evidence for boys (e.g., Baker, 2006, Hamre & Pianta, 2001) and younger children (e.g., Shaw, Lacourse, & Nagin, 2005). In this sense, classroom composition can be an important structural feature of ECE (Reid & Ready, 2013), particularly when considering the impact of economic, sociocultural, and ethnic diversity or homogeneity on teacher-child interactions (Dronkers & Van der Velden, 2013).

Classroom composition can be analyzed to ascertain levels of heterogeneity or homogeneity. Heterogeneity or diversity is determined by the amount of differences on a given characteristic among members within a social group/community, while homogeneity is related with sameness on a given characteristic (Harrison and Sin, 2006, Solanas et al., 2012).

There are indexes created specifically to determine within-group distribution of differences, such as the mean Euclidean distance, the standard deviation, Teachman’s index, Blau’s index, the coefficient of variation, and the Gini coefficient of concentration (see Solanas et al., 2012). These indexes are used to ascertain levels of diversity, within three parameters: separation (i.e., differences in position or values), variety (i.e., differences in categorical values), and disparity (i.e., differences in concentration of resources) (see Harrison & Klein, 2007).

To our knowledge, thus far, it is not common to find such conceptualizations of diversity (see Harrison & Klein, 2007) nor the calculation of such composition indexes in the education literature. In studies conducted in ECE settings, as well as in other education levels, the most common practice seems to be the calculation of the percentage/proportion and the average/share of children with a given characteristic in classroom (Veerman, Van de Werfhorst, & Dronkers, 2013). A few exceptions can be found in studies, mostly at the primary and secondary levels of education, that used adaptations of the Hirschman-Herfindahl Index (Dronkers et al., 2012, Hirschman, 1964), first used in the economy literature, and Simpson’s diversity index (Simpson, 1949; see Graham, 2004), first used in the ethology literature, to ascertain the school/classroom ethnic and sociocultural compositions. Both indexes vary between 0 (minimum diversity) and 1 (high diversity), but while the Herfindahl Index does not consider multiple possible categories within a given characteristic (e.g., distinguish between particular countries of origin [Stolle, Soroka, & Johnston, 2008]) (Schaeffer, 2013), Simpson’s diversity index considers both the number of categories and the share of each category within a group (Graham, 2004).

This distinction between diversity and share is of importance since, in the education literature, results from average/share calculations are sometimes presented as being indicative of school/classroom diversity on a given characteristic (Veerman et al., 2013). Despite a possible overlap (Veerman et al., 2013), there are fundamental conceptual differences since the average/share involves the proportion of children within a group who share a particular characteristic (e.g., migration background), being a potential indicator of homogeneity (e.g., high proportion of migrant children in class from the same ethnic group), while diversity addresses the variety of a certain characteristic within the group (e.g., number and size of distinct ethnic groups) (Veerman, 2015). Therefore, there may be a disconnection between how diversity has been conceptualized and its operationalization, which may impact the validity of findings (see Harrison & Klein, 2007).

Hence, gathering data about how group composition has been measured in education and, particularly, in the ECE literature, can contribute to further clarification on how variations in classroom composition in ECE may be associated with classroom quality (Steinberg & Garrett, 2016). Furthermore, it may help inform future research with guidelines for an integrated conceptualization and operationalization of classroom composition, and also for avoiding key pitfalls, so knowledge about classroom composition effects can be enhanced.

Classroom quality can be measured with a multitude of assessment tools, with emphasis on standardized observational measures. Observation measures typically focus on global quality, that is, on both the physical aspects of the environment and the social interactions in the classroom. However, there are also process quality measures, which focus primarily on teacher-child interactions and content specific measures, that focus on instructional quality within specific content areas (Burchinal, 2011). A description of standardized observation measures of classroom quality typically used in the literature is presented in Table 1. No single standardized observation measure covers all aspects of children’s experiences in the classroom (Bryant, 2010), but most have demonstrated good reliability (Burchinal, 2011) and are believed to produce more valid assessments of teachers’ effectiveness (Goldring et al., 2015), than non-standardized measures.

Some studies that focused on the association between classroom structural features and standardized observation measures of process quality reported a significant association, for example, between classroom quality and teacher’s education and training (e.g., Burchinal, Cryer, Clifford, & Howes, 2002), teacher-child ratios, and group size (e.g., Cryer et al., 1999). However, evidence is mixed (see Resnick, 2010).

High-quality ECE has been consistently linked to children’s positive developmental outcomes (e.g., Burchinal et al., 2011, Camilli et al., 2010, Pianta et al., 2009), with some studies suggesting that this association may be more significant for particular groups of children, specifically, for those in social and economic disadvantage (e.g., Zaslow, Anderson, Redd, Wessel, Tarullo, & Burchinal, 2010). Further, child characteristics and classroom composition may influence teacher behavior and classroom quality, in an apparent two-way interaction (DiLalla & Mullineaux, 2008).

Existing reviews and meta-analysis addressing classroom composition effects have focused on its association with student outcomes at different school levels. We identified a review about the effects of within-class grouping in primary and secondary schools (Kutnick et al., 2005); another about between-class ability grouping (i.e., tracking/streaming), in grades 6–12 (Belfi, Goos, De Fraine, & Van Damme, 2012); and two meta-analyses on the relationship between peer group composition and students’ achievement in primary and secondary schools (Van Ewijk and Sleegers, 2010a, Van Ewijk and Sleegers, 2010b).

Despite the potential practical and research implications, to our knowledge, there are no other reviews addressing the associations between classroom composition and classroom quality in ECE. Therefore, in this systematic review, we aimed to identify classroom composition indexes used in the ECE literature and to examine the associations between classroom composition in ECE and observed classroom quality. By systematically gathering and examining the current evidence base on classroom composition in ECE, we aimed to inform future research on existing gaps in knowledge regarding the associations between structural features of ECE classrooms and process quality and help inform decision-making processes regarding the organization of classrooms.

Section snippets

Eligibility criteria

Inclusion and exclusion criteria were defined using the SPIDER tool (Sample, Phenomenon of Interest, Design, Evaluation, and Research type; Cooke, Smith, & Booth, 2012). To be eligible for qualitative synthesis, studies had to meet the following criteria:

  • i.

    Sample: Focus on teachers of children aged between 3 and 5/6 years old, enrolled in ECE center-based programs (i.e., preschool or kindergarten).

  • ii.

    Phenomenon of Interest: Classroom composition, including ethnic, racial, sociocultural,

Description of studies

Information extracted from selected studies is presented in Table 2, Table 3, Table 4, Table 5, Table 6. The level of detail in the information presented in the tables matches that of the included studies. For each study, we presented the terminology used by the respective authors regarding sample characteristics used to compute classroom composition indexes and covariates, so that data extraction was as truthful as possible.

Most studies (n = 18, 72%) were published after 2010 and only one (

Discussion

We set out to identify the types of classroom composition indexes used in the ECE literature and their association with observed classroom quality, based on the premise that the characteristics of the children in the classroom shape their experiences (e.g., Pianta et al., 2005). Even though there is a growing interest in classroom composition effects, particularly over the last two decades, most screened studies focused on the association between classroom composition and children’s outcomes

Limitations and implications

First, we discuss limitations associated with the review process. This review may have been limited by the search strategy used. Although we defined a multitude of key terms and search strings regarding the most commonly studied classroom composition indexes, we limited this search to the title, abstract, key terms, and topic of studies. Thus, while we did this to ensure both sensitivity and specificity in our approach (Hempel et al., 2016), we might have failed to capture literature that could

Author note

This work was funded by Portuguese National Funds, via FCT — Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, through PhD research grant PD/BD/135346/2017, and was completed by the first author in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of PhD in Psychology.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Ana Lúcia Aguiar: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Writing - original draft. Cecília Aguiar: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - review & editing, Supervision.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

We want to thank Joana Albuquerque for her cooperation in screening and assessment of eligibility of studies.

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