Pre-kindergarten teachers’ use of transition practices and children's adjustment to kindergarten

Abstract

This study describes pre-kindergarten teachers’ use of kindergarten transition practices and examined the extent to which these practices were associated with kindergarten teachers’ judgments of children's social, self-regulatory, and academic skills upon their entry into kindergarten. Participants were 722 children from 214 pre-kindergarten classrooms participating in the National Center for Early Development and Learning's (NCEDL) Multi-State Pre-kindergarten Study. Of nine transition practices intended to promote children's adaptation to kindergarten, pre-kindergarten teachers reported implementing, on average, six transition practices, with notable variation across pre-kindergarten classrooms. Children were judged by their kindergarten teachers to have more positive social competencies and fewer problem behaviors when they attended pre-kindergarten classrooms in which more transition activities were implemented and, specifically, in which teachers discussed curricula or specific children with kindergarten teachers. In addition, positive associations between kindergarten teachers’ perceptions of children's social competence and pre-kindergarten transition activities (total number of activities and activities that children experience directly) were stronger for children who experienced social and economic risks. Implications of these findings related to alignment across the pre-kindergarten to kindergarten settings to improve children's school readiness are discussed.

Introduction

Given evidence that high-quality, comprehensive pre-kindergarten experiences can ameliorate the negative effects of poverty on young children's emerging academic, social and self-regulatory competencies (e.g. Consortium for Longitudinal Studies, 1983, Peisner-Feinberg et al., 2001, Reynolds, 2000; Reynolds, Temple, Robertson, Mann, 2001; Schweinhart & Weikart, 1997), early childhood education has received increased funding and is being offered to growing numbers of American children as a means of promoting their readiness for kindergarten. However, as Pianta (1999) describes, successful entry into elementary school requires more than ensuring that children have the requisite competencies to carry with them into a kindergarten setting. Smooth transitions from pre-kindergarten to kindergarten are also a function of linkages that are made between systems, such as connections between schools and families and between pre-kindergarten and kindergarten teachers and classrooms. The need for purposeful coordination between the pre-kindergarten and elementary setting has recently drawn attention as an underutilized avenue that can maintain and potentially maximize gains for children achieved in pre-kindergarten (Bogard & Takanishi, 2005). There is evidence that suggests children may be at greater risk for school failure and social adjustment problems when experiencing an ineffective transition between pre-kindergarten and kindergarten (Conyer, Reynolds, & Ou, 2003; Goal One Ready Schools Resource Group, 1995), and attention is needed to understand the mechanisms that facilitate smooth transitions and successful child adjustment to the start of formal schooling.

One approach to help children's transition to and adaptation within kindergarten is the use of specific practices that facilitate connections between children, families, pre-kindergarten and kindergarten teachers and classrooms to foster adaptive and supportive experiences (Bogard & Takanishi, 2005; Kagan, 1991; Zigler & Kagan, 1982). School transition practices aimed at enhancing this supportive link may include visits to kindergarten classes by pre-kindergarten children and teachers, orientation programs for children and parents, or individual meetings between pre-kindergarten teachers and parents and pre-kindergarten teachers and kindergarten teachers. Although there have been widespread attempts to incorporate such transition practices into teachers’ yearly routines (e.g., Head Start Performance Standards), Schulting, Malone, and Dodge (2005) recently presented the first and only known empirical study actually linking improved outcomes for kindergarten children to transition activities provided by their kindergarten teachers. Noting the benefits when kindergarten transition planning is evident, there is a need to expand this empirical research base, particularly as it relates to pre-kindergarten teachers’ efforts to provide coherent, supportive transition practices to create more successful kindergarten experiences for children. To address this in the current study, we used data from the National Center for Early Development and Learning's (NCEDL) Multi-State Study of Pre-Kindergarten to describe the frequency with which pre-kindergarten teachers use transition practices and examine the extent to which pre-kindergarten teachers’ use of transition practices are associated with kindergarten teachers’ judgments of children's social, self-regulatory, and academic skills upon their entry into kindergarten.

When the National Education Goals Panel set forth the goal that “all children in American will start school ready to learn” (National Education Goals Panel [NEGP], 1995; Shore, 1998), school readiness implied that a child possessed a certain set of skills that determined if he or she was ready to start school. Ramey and Ramey (1999) identified this view of school readiness as “severely flawed by a disproportionate focus on the child's skills” (p. 218). Although child level factors clearly play a part in school performance (Gutman, Sameroff, & Cole, 2003), La Paro and Pianta (2000) found that less than one-fourth of children's kindergarten performance is accounted for by their preschool abilities.

Instead of focusing exclusively on the child as the school readiness indicator, new models encompass a transition to school or “ready schools” framework, seeing the child and his or her abilities as situated within and dependent on a broader contextual perspective (Ramey & Ramey, 1999). These recent models of school readiness emphasize the dynamic nature of relational and informational linkages that provide a web of support for children during a time of immense change (Belsky & MacKinnon, 1994; Downer, Driscoll, & Pianta, 2006; Mashburn & Pianta, 2006; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). Specifically, Rimm-Kaufman and Pianta (2000) note that, in a developmental ecological model, child, family, school, peer, and community factors are interconnected and interdependent throughout the transition period and can be aligned in ways that support children's adjustment to early schooling. Coherent connections within and between these multiple contexts in a child's life leads to stability in relationships and consistency in information-sharing, particularly between pre-kindergarten and kindergarten teachers, and teachers and families, which may promote greater early school success. Efforts to create a continuous, seamless experience across settings through curriculum and policy-level issues are often referred to as alignment, whereas transitions practices are the actual intentional attempts to create support and familiarity across pre-kindergarten and kindergarten. Linkages can be forged in different ways, like district initiatives and federal transition policies that attempt to regulate development of school, family, and community connections. At a more proximal level, pre-kindergarten teachers’ practices can create a bridge of support for children as they transition to kindergarten; it is these transition efforts that are the focus of our study.

A developmental ecological transition to kindergarten model implies that the use of transition practices will be most effective when aimed at enhancing the linkages between people and settings during early schooling. Specifically, Rimm-Kaufman and Pianta (2000) describe effective teacher-initiated transition practices as those that involve reaching out proactively to families and other teachers, and doing so with a high level of intensity, prior to the actual physical move into a new classroom. However, studies of teachers’ use of transition practices (e.g., Love, Logue, Trudeau, & Thayer, 1992; Pianta, Cox, Taylor, & Early, 1999; Rathbun & Germino-Hausken, 2001) consistently find a very different reality; teachers’ and schools’ use of transition practices tend to take place after the start of school and/or involve low intensity, generic contact such as flyers, brochures, or group open-houses. On the whole, findings from teacher surveys suggest that the typical transition for children consists of contact with their new school that is too little, too late, and too impersonal—a conclusion that is highly consistent with what parents report about the kindergarten transition experience (Pianta & Kraft-Sayre, 2003).

In the only study known to date that connects children's transition experience with outcomes, Schulting et al. (2005) examined kindergarten transition practices and children's academic outcomes at the end of the kindergarten year. Using the ECLS-K data, this study examined the experience of over 17,000 children in nearly 1000 schools. The authors concluded that more transition activities at the beginning of kindergarten were associated with academic gains on standardized tests over the kindergarten year, even after controlling for other factors, including family socio-economic status. Further, the effect was stronger for children of lower financial means, suggesting transition activities provided a moderating effect between poverty status and child outcomes. The use of transition practices, then, has the potential to improve children's abilities to adapt to kindergarten classrooms, particularly for children who experience social and economic risks and enter school lagging behind their peers (Schulting et al., 2005). Similar to what has been found in other studies (Pianta et al., 1999), however, transition practices are used less frequently and are less intensive in communities with higher concentrations of racial/ethnic minorities and poverty, leaving a potentially positive resource untapped.

Recent initiatives, such as the School Readiness Pathway from the Pathways Mapping Initiative of the Project on Effective Interventions at Harvard University (www.PathwaysToOutcomes.org), apply the developmental ecological model to school transition, focusing on pre-kindergarten and school transition policies and practices that may better meet children's needs through the creation of early, individualized linkages between homes-schools and pre-kindergarten–kindergarten classrooms. The School Readiness Pathway makes explicit what families, schools and communities can do to link together children's experiences to optimize their ability to start school successfully. There is evidence that parents and teachers both benefit from and want more of these types of transition practices that emphasize connections between systems (Pianta & Kraft-Sayre, 2003), particularly in comparison with more traditional static and impersonal transition efforts. Despite these reports of satisfaction, empirical evidence that links developmental ecological pre-kindergarten transition practices with children's adjustment to kindergarten is lacking. Given that a major goal of transition practices is to support children's early school adjustment, there is clearly a need to examine pre-kindergarten teachers’ use of specific transition practices in relation to children's kindergarten socio-emotional and academic competencies.

Effective transition planning is expected to connect a child's support systems as a way to offer social and emotional support to the child during a potentially challenging time, as well as build coherence and consistency in curriculum, expectations and experiences across settings (Pianta & Cox, 1999). Specifically, children whose pre-kindergarten teachers use many of the transition practices will gain familiarity with their kindergarten classroom and teacher ahead of time, will have parents who understand what kindergarten will be like and can speak about it regularly in a positive manner, and will have kindergarten teachers who know something about them already from conversations with parents and pre-kindergarten teachers. These occurrences are expected to provide a comfortable, supportive adjustment period for children during the days leading up to kindergarten and through the first weeks of school, thus resulting in higher ratings of social and emotional competence at the beginning of the year than for children whose teachers did not use as many transition practices. Academic skills, in contrast, are not expected to be related to these types of transition practices at the beginning of kindergarten, because most of the practices are not focused on exposing children to academic learning opportunities that mirror kindergarten expectations. Instead, as could be the case in Schulting et al.'s study (2005), it is more likely that transition practices facilitate quicker social and emotional adjustment to kindergarten, which then allows them to take better advantage of learning opportunities in the classroom. As a result, by the end of the kindergarten year they are doing better academically than their peers who did not experience the benefits of transition practices. Pre-kindergarten transition practices are designed then, to increase a child's ability to function successfully within the classroom, a precursor for later school success that sets the stage for academic skill development (Burgess & Ladd, 1999; Ladd & Price, 1987).

In a survey of a national sample of kindergarten teachers, one-third of teachers reported that half their class or more begin kindergarten with difficulties following directions, demonstrating academic skills, and working independently, while one sixth faced more severe adjustment problems (Rimm-Kaufman, Pianta, & Cox, 2000). Teachers’ judgments of children's abilities are particularly important as they are used to refer children for special services, place children into ability groupings and inform parents, administrators and other teachers about children's competencies that establish expectations for their performance (Harlen, 2005). Additionally, there is evidence that teachers’ perceptions of children's abilities are strong predictors of future social and academic functioning (Badian, 1976; Hamre & Pianta, 2001; Hoge & Butcher, 1984; Kenoyer, 1982; Pianta, Steinberg, & Rollins, 1995; Quay & Steele, 1998).

Of greatest concern is evidence from recent nationally representative assessments of children's readiness skills clearly demonstrating that differences attributable to family income/poverty are present at the very start of children's schooling (National Center for Education Science [NCES], 2000) and that the gap persists throughout the early grades (NCES, 2004). As Entwisle and Alexander (1993) underscore, social stratification emerges at the earliest stages of a child's school career, which is particularly significant given the consistent link between children's early school adjustment and later educational success (Alexander & Entwisle, 1988; Reynolds, 2000, Reynolds et al., 2001). Because of this relative stability, some theorists have suggested that the transition into kindergarten and first grade is a “critical” period for children's school success (Entwisle, 1995) and that additional supports to children during this time are likely to hold great benefits, particularly for children from families with lower incomes (Schulting et al., 2005).

The NCEDL Multi-State Study of Pre-Kindergarten provides a unique opportunity to examine the association between pre-kindergarten teachers’ use of transition practices and kindergarten teachers’ initial perceptions of children's social and academic adjustment to the kindergarten setting. Pre-kindergarten teachers reported the extent to which they used nine different transition practices in their classrooms throughout the pre-kindergarten year. During the following fall, kindergarten teachers made independent ratings of how well the study children were adjusting to the kindergarten classroom, including displays of social competence (e.g., frustration tolerance, peer social skills, task orientation), problem behaviors (e.g., conduct problems, learning problems), and language and literacy skills.

In this study, three research questions were addressed. First, to what extent do pre-kindergarten teachers use transition practices? Second, is the use of transition practices during pre-kindergarten associated with kindergarten teachers’ perceptions of children's socio-emotional and academic competencies at the start of kindergarten? Finally, does pre-kindergarten teachers’ use of transition practices moderate the associations between child risk factors (family poverty, race/ethnicity, less educated mothers) and kindergarten teachers’ perceptions of children's academic and social competencies? It is expected that there will be considerable variability in the types and number of transition practices that pre-kindergarten teachers report. In addition, it is hypothesized that teachers’ use of more transition activities during the pre-kindergarten year will moderate the association between risk and children's positive school adjustment in kindergarten.