Associations between classroom quality and children's vocabulary and executive function skills in an urban public prekindergarten program

doi:10.1016/j.ecresq.2012.12.002

Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Volume 28, Issue 2, 2nd Quarter 2013, Pages 199-209

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2012.12.002 Get rights and content

Abstract

Despite evidence that high-quality preschool programs have substantial, long-lasting impacts on young children's developmental outcomes, associations between preschool quality measures and children's cognitive outcomes within preschool programs are generally small or null. Using data from a large urban prekindergarten program, we examined associations between children's receptive vocabulary and executive function skills and several indicators of classroom quality. Ours is the first such study within a program that has been shown to have small-to-large causal impacts on children's language, literacy, mathematics, executive function, and emotional development outcomes. Consistent with prior literature, we found small or null associations between quality predictors and children's outcomes and we found that some of these relationships were curvilinear. Findings are discussed in light of several hypotheses in the literature regarding the general pattern of small or null associations, including the psychometrics of commonly used quality measures and possible range restriction of quality indicators.

Highlights

► We examine associations between prek quality measures and children's outcomes. ► Analyses included linear, curvilinear, and threshold modeling approaches. ► We find small or null associations and some evidence of curvilinear relationships. ► Findings are discussed in light of several hypotheses in the literature.

Section snippets

Why classroom quality may impact young children's language and executive function

From a theoretical perspective, higher early childhood classroom quality – as characterized by rich learning opportunities, positive peer interactions, positive student–teacher relationships, adequate staff–child ratios, adequate learning materials, and safe, clean facilities – is hypothesized to promote positive child development, including improved child language and executive function skills. In terms of mechanisms, high-quality classrooms build student language by providing ample oral

Participants and setting

The study sample included 414 children attending the Boston Public Schools public prekindergarten program in 2009–2010. All programs were located in the public schools, and all teachers were BPS employees with the same compensation and requirements as their K-12 peers. Study children were nested within 83 classrooms in 46 schools, an average of about 5 children per classroom and 1.8 classrooms per school. The prekindergarten program was open to any 4-year-old in the district; there were no

Descriptive statistics – correlations between classroom quality predictors

As shown in Table 3, CLASS, ECERS and ELLCO quality rating scales were moderately to highly and statistically significantly correlated, ranging from 0.39 (ECERS Provisions and CLASS Instructional Support) to 0.86 (CLASS Emotional Support and CLASS Classroom Organization). Scales generally were more highly correlated within the same measure versus across different measures.

Linear and quadratic model results

In Table 4, we display results from modeling the relationship between quality indicators and children's receptive vocabulary

Discussion

Taken together, our results are largely consistent with previous findings in the literature that suggest that classroom quality indicators have small or null associations with gains in children's developmental outcomes in preschool (Burchinal et al., 2010, Burchinal et al., 2011a, NICHD and Duncan, 2003, Zaslow et al., 2010, Zaslow et al., 2011). In linear models, we found null associations between changes in children's receptive vocabulary and seven quality rating scales from three different

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^☆: Special thanks to participating families, teachers, principals, BPS NAEYC coordinator Karen Silver, early childhood coaches, the Wellesley Centers for Women, and district staff.

¹: Christina Weiland and Hirokazu Yoshikawa's work on this study was funded by the Institute for Education Sciences.

View full text

Associations between classroom quality and children's vocabulary and executive function skills in an urban public prekindergarten program☆

Abstract

Highlights

Section snippets

Why classroom quality may impact young children's language and executive function

Participants and setting

Descriptive statistics – correlations between classroom quality predictors

Linear and quadratic model results

Discussion

Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Intelligence

Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Opening the World of Learning: Features, effectiveness, and implementation strategies

Early Childhood Services

Promoting academic and social–emotional school readiness: The Head Start REDI program

Child Development

School readiness: Integrating cognition and emotion in a neurobiological conceptualization of children's functioning at school entry

American Psychologist

Relating effortful control, executive function, and false belief understanding to emerging math and literacy ability in kindergarten

Child Development

The effect of child care characteristics on child development

Journal of Human Resources

Self-regulation as a key to school readiness: How early childhood teachers can promote this critical competency

The ecology of developmental processes

Predicting child outcomes at the end of kindergarten from the quality of pre-kindergarten teacher–child interactions and instruction

Applied Developmental Science

How well do our measures of quality predict child outcomes? A meta-analysis and coordinated analysis of data from large-scale studies of early childhood settings

Effects of early intervention on intellectual and academic achievement: A follow-up study of children from low-income families

Child Development

Individual differences in inhibitory control and children's theory of mind

Child Development

SRA real math, prek-building blocks

Effects of a preschool mathematics curriculum: Summative research on the Building Blocks project

Journal for Research in Mathematics Education

Mathematics learned by young children in an intervention based on learning trajectories: A large-scale cluster randomized trial

Journal for Research in Mathematics Education

Preschool children's performance in task switching on the dimensional change card sort task: Separating the dimensions aids the ability to switch

Developmental Neuropsychology

Development of an aspect of executive control:Development of the abilities to remember what I said and to “do as I say, not as I do”

Developmental Psychobiology

Supporting language and literacy development in the preschool classroom

Peabody picture vocabulary test-third edition

Teachers’ education, classroom quality, and young children's academic skills: Results from seven studies of preschool programs

Child Development

Verbal ability and executive functioning development in preschoolers at Head Start

Developmental Psychology