Elsevier

Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Volume 48, 3rd Quarter 2019, Pages 303-316
Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Supporting preschool children with developmental concerns: Effects of the Getting Ready intervention on school-based social competencies and relationships

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2019.03.008Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Children with cumulative risk at preschool entry require targeted intervention that creates positive experiences across home and school.

  • Parent engagement and partnerships establish important opportunities for children’s growth.

  • Getting Ready early childhood educators use significantly more advanced strategies with parents than comparison teachers.

  • Getting Ready improves social skills, student–teacher relationships, and parent–teacher relationships for children with cumulative risk.

Abstract

The current study reports the results of a randomized controlled trial examining the impact of the Getting Ready parent engagement intervention on young children’s social–emotional competencies and the quality of the student–teacher and parent–teacher relationships. Participants were 267 preschool-aged children and their parents, as well as 97 preschool teachers. All children attended publicly funded preschool programs and were low income. In addition, all were considered educationally at risk due to developmental concerns in the areas of language, cognition and/or social–emotional development. Parent and teacher surveys were administered twice per academic year (fall and spring) for two academic years. Findings indicated that children in the treatment group were rated by their teachers to have greater improvement in social skills over two years of preschool as compared to their peers in the comparison condition. Teachers in the treatment condition reported significantly greater increases in their relationships with children as compared to children in the comparison group. Teachers in the intervention group also reported significant increases in their overall relationships with parents. The current findings illustrate the efficacy of Getting Ready at improving the social skills and important relationships for preschool children experiencing developmental risk.

Introduction

The relationships that children form with significant others (i.e., parents, teachers, peers) early on represent the foundation necessary for healthy development and learning. Through relationships with key adults (i.e., parents and educators) formed early in life, children learn the skills necessary to explore their environments, seek out and engage in learning opportunities, interact prosocially, manage frustration, and solve problems, to name a few (Denham, Bassett, & Wyatt, 2007; Edwards, Sheridan, & Knoche, 2010). As children mature and interact with larger networks of individuals, they develop important social skills (e.g., cooperation, help-giving, sharing, problem-solving) that contribute to immediate and long-term behavioral and academic success (Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2011). Additionally, positive relationships among the primary adults within children’s social worlds are important for broadening support networks; these relationships are particularly useful when they facilitate seamless and positive transitions (e.g., between home, school, and peer cultures, over developmental periods; Crosnoe et al., 2010).

Children growing up at socioeconomic and developmental disadvantage are at risk for deleterious life outcomes, in part because of the related challenges this creates for the formation of healthy relationships and social skills (Brooks-Gunn and Duncan, 1997, DiPerna and Elliott, 2002). Although recent trends are suggesting a modest improvement in both parent investment and school readiness among low-income families and children (Reardon & Portilla, 2016), a large gap remains relative to other socioeconomic groups (Bassok, Finch, Lee, Reardon, & Waldfogel, 2016). Gaps between children living in poverty and their non-impoverished peers in social–emotional, behavioral, and cognitive functioning appear very early in life and continue throughout school (Duncan, Magnuson, Kalil, & Ziol-Guest, 2012).

Rates of developmental concern are often higher in children experiencing socioeconomic risks (Ramanathan, Balasubramanian, & Faraone, 2017). Children living at or below the poverty line are more than twice as likely to be at high risk for developmental delays as their peers living at more than twice the poverty line (19 and 7%, respectively; Child Trends, 2013). Early educational risks manifested by early delays in language, literacy, and social–emotional/self-regulation skills tend to maintain throughout school, with achievement and social gaps widening over time. Despite the efforts of early intervention programs to bolster readiness, inequalities tend to be reduced but not eliminated, especially for children at greatest risk due to developmental delays (Magnuson & Votruba-Drzal, 2009). Programs that aim to promote early readiness skills among children experiencing the cumulative risk of developmental concern and low income are necessary.

The prognosis for children’s early development is influenced in large part by forms of parental caregiving support (Luby et al., 2013) in the early childhood period. Parental caregiving patterns that are characterized by responsiveness, encouragement, and support are important for fostering children’s feelings of safety and security (Edwards et al., 2010), which are prerequisite to their capacity to interact effectively in school and other learning environments. Early, positive interactions between parents and young children that are stimulating and nurturing promote neural connections essential for young children’s academic success and emotional competence (Landry, Smith, & Swank, 2003; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000).

Interventions promoting parent engagement and relationships are grounded in ecological theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1977, Bronfenbrenner, 1992), which views children’s learning as a result of the child/family system interacting in reciprocal fashion with the school/schooling system (educational childcare and preschool services). Accordingly, a child’s learning experiences are highly responsive to the quality of the microsystem of home and preschool, and the interactions that occur between children and the adults in those systems. Beyond sole consideration of the immediate setting, however, relationships of individuals and supports across social contexts (i.e., teachers and parents; homes and schools), are also strong predictors of subsequent school success. Thus, the mesosystem of home and school in relationship to one another is recognized as a significant influence on early learning. Parental engagement in the context of the mesosystem has been found to be motivated primarily by features of the social context, especially parents’ interpersonal relationships with children and early childhood educators (ECEs). Furthermore, specific ECE invitations significantly predict parents’ engagement in learning at home (Green, Walker, Hoover-Dempsey, & Sandler, 2007), highlighting the unique and important role of educators in establishing and promoting parent–child relationships. By extension, ECEs’ perspectives of relationships within and outside of the classroom are important to explore.

In addition to interactions children experience in their homes, schools represent a primary context for developing social competencies. Social competencies in the preschool environment involve the display of prosocial behaviors and restraint around disruptive and antisocial behaviors, and are positively related to peer acceptance, achievement motivation, and academic success (Wentzel, 2009). Social and behavioral skills are widely considered precursors to achievement (DiPerna & Elliott, 2002; Kwon, Kim, & Sheridan, 2012); they enable young students to interact prosocially in classrooms and other social settings, engage adaptively in academic environments, and respond appropriately to ECE instruction.

Not all children develop basic social and emotional competencies prior to school entry (Rimm-Kaufman, Pianta, & Cox, 2000). Young children with delayed development manifest heightened social-behavioral problems as young as age 3 (Baker, Blacher, Crnic, & Edelbrock, 2002) and behavioral concerns that emerge in early childhood tend to be stable over time (Shaw, Lacourse, & Nagin, 2005). Poor children are more likely than other children to score very low in the areas of learning-related and externalizing behaviors (Isaacs, 2012). Findings from the Head Start Impact Study (Administration for Children & Families, 2010) reported limited impact of Head Start on children’s social–emotional development, highlighting the need for interventions that can positively affect social–emotional competence in young children, especially those who are low income and enter school at risk for educational delays.

Comprehensive school readiness interventions including attention to social–emotional development have found significant effects on children’s problem-solving and emotional understanding (Bierman et al., 2008) and self-regulation and conduct problems (Webster-Stratton, Reid, & Stoolmiller, 2008). Many of these interventions include manualized parenting interventions focused on families as recipients of services. Two examples include the Research-based Developmentally Informed Parent Program (REDI-P; Bierman, Welsh, Heinrichs, Nix, & Mathis, 2015) and ParentCorps (Brotman et al., 2011); both demonstrate immediate benefits across a host of school readiness domains, including social competence (Bierman et al., 2015) and problem behaviors (Brotman et al., 2011). In both cases, program delivery is the responsibility of intervention staff primarily (e.g., community- or university-based mental health professionals), and intentional connections between home and school are not prioritized. REDI-P uses a 10-week program for preschool children, wherein home visitors deliver a carefully specified curriculum, followed by six home-based sessions during kindergarten. Bierman et al. (2015) found significant improvements in child literacy skills, academic performance, self-directed leaning, and social competence. Studies exploring the efficacy and maintenance effects of ParentCorps, a 13-week universal intervention have reported that the culturally responsive, structured group sessions with families resulted in significant positive behavioral outcomes for prekindergarten students (Brotman et al., 2011, Brotman et al., 2013). Whereas these interventions are focused on families, they are scripted and require professionals to implement the curricula in a standardized way. Furthermore, the home visitor-parent working alliance was found to be a strong predictor of REDI’s long-term growth (Nix et al., 2018), pointing to the importance of parent–ECE relationships.

Also influential to children’s development are student–ECE interactions and relationships. Empirical support documents the benefits of positive student–teacher relationships on young children’s social and emotional development (Denham, Bassett, & Zinsser, 2012; Hamre & Pianta, 2001). Work by Hughes and colleagues demonstrates the benefits of positive student–teacher relationships on a number of outcomes including peer relationships (Hughes & Im, 2016) and achievement (Spilt, Hughes, Wu, & Kwok, 2012). Benefits related to classroom engagement (Lee & Bierman, 2015) and language and literacy skills (Schmitt, Pentimonti, & Justice, 2012) are also evident. For children experiencing early developmental vulnerabilities or behavioral concerns, the student–ECE relationship may be particularly important for facilitating positive outcomes and can moderate the effect of child characteristics on school outcomes (Hamre & Pianta, 2001).

In addition to interactions in which children have a direct part, ecological theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1977) posits that relationships among significant individuals across systems or settings (i.e., at the level of the mesosystem) are positively related to student achievement and behavior (Patrikakou & Weissberg, 1999). ECEs are often the first professional providing formal instructional and developmental support to children, and as such are uniquely positioned to establish constructive roles and relationships with parents. Specifically, positive and constructive parent–ECE relationships characterized by mutuality, warmth, and respect are associated with young children’s academic performance and social-behavioral outcomes (Elicker et al., 2013). Furthermore, partnerships in early childhood greatly enhance the amount, quality, and scope of services available to assist children in meeting their learning and behavioral goals (Clarke, Sheridan, & Woods, 2009). Such relationships have been found to establish trajectories of early achievement in children living in socioeconomic disadvantage (Crosnoe et al., 2010) and improve developmental trajectories for those showing early signs of educational delay (Jung, 2010). In potentially challenging or high-risk situations, the establishment of positive, constructive relationships among family–school partners provide a “window of opportunity” for dialogue and problem-solving that is not present when home and school systems operate in isolation from or counter to one another.

The importance of partnering with parents as children begin to show developmental delays is acknowledged in federal policy and research. Part B of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires involvement of parents on decision making teams for children as young as 3 years of age with identified disabilities. A number of programs establish meaningful roles and shared responsibilities among professionals and parents, recognizing that partnerships may amplify the benefits of early intervention for children with early signs of developmental delay (Kaczmarek, Goldstein, Florey, Carter, & Cannon, 2004; Weiss, Caspe, & Lopez, 2006). Indeed, collaborative practices between parents and their child’s educators (e.g., providing structure for assessing children’s needs, setting goals, developing plans across settings, monitoring progress) are useful for targeting the specific needs of children at educational risk (Buysse & Wesley, 2005). The use of planful, coordinated practices is particularly salient during the preschool years when parents are forming roles in their children’s education (Raffaele & Knoff, 1999).

The Getting Ready intervention (GR) is a relationally based parent engagement intervention promoting school readiness for young children from birth to age 5 (Sheridan, Marvin, Knoche, & Edwards, 2008; Sheridan, Knoche, Edwards, Bovaird, & Kupzyk, 2010). Grounded in ecological theory, it focuses on enhancing relationships within and between systems (homes, schools) and strengthening collaborative partnerships between ECEs and parents. Rather than a parenting curriculum or universal parent training program delivered by external research-based implementers (e.g., Bierman et al., 2015; Brotman et al., 2011), GR is conceptualized as an individualized approach by which ECEs support parents’ engagement in ways that promote parental warmth, sensitivity, and active participation in supporting children’s early learning. GR is procedurally operationalized via a set of strategies used flexibly and responsively by ECEs in natural parent–child and parent–educator interactions, including those that are unstructured (e.g., drop-off/pick-up times, notes home) and structured (e.g., home visits, parent–ECE conferences) to establish and strengthen relationships between parents and children, as well as support a strong partnership between parents and ECEs (McCollum & Yates, 1994). In formal interactions between ECEs and parents (e.g., home visits), the strategies are implemented in the context of a structured collaborative planning approach to guide shared goal setting and decision-making and create consistency for the child across home and school settings. Improvements in child outcomes are hypothesized to occur via improvements in the parent–ECE partnership, which ultimately supports effective parenting practices and enhanced parent–child relationships. The GR strategies are in Table 1.

In a previous randomized controlled trial of 220 preschool children, GR yielded positive results on children’s social–emotional skills, behavioral competencies, and language and early literacy; parental engagement; and family–school partnerships. Relative to a comparison group of children receiving typical preschool services, children receiving GR were reported to demonstrate increased attachment behaviors with adults, improved initiative, and reduced anxiety/withdrawal behaviors (Sheridan et al., 2010) and observed to show significant decreases in overactive behaviors with parents (Sheridan et al., 2014). Likewise, relative to the comparison group, children in the GR intervention group demonstrated significantly improved rates of change in their language and literacy skills: oral language, early reading, and early writing. Language and literacy outcomes were moderated by ECE- or parent-reported developmental concerns upon preschool entry; when concerns were noted by parents or ECEs, the effects of the intervention on direct language assessments and ECE reports of language and literacy were greater than for their peers without concerns, and for the comparison group (Sheridan, Knoche, Kupzyk, Edwards, & Marvin, 2011).

Previous research with the GR intervention tested its effects on a general sample of low-income children attending publicly funded preschool programs, but not children exclusively at educational risk, defined by measured delays in performance. Whereas previous studies found moderated effects for children whose parents or ECEs expressed developmental concern, the direct effect of GR with a sample of children with observed delays has not been tested. The current study is a replication of previous research and aims to determine whether the GR intervention is effective as an intervention for children at socioeconomic disadvantage who are entering preschool with additional educational risk due to early signs of developmental delay. Relative to previous research, this study explores the efficacy of GR with children who, upon entry into preschool, are at educational risk due to measured delays in language, cognitive, or social–emotional domains. This study is concerned with social–emotional functioning and relationships; thus, we explored the efficacy of GR on growth in (a) children’s social competencies (including increases in social skills and decreases in problem behaviors), (b) student–ECE relationships, and (c) parent–ECE relationships. We expect the individualized and targeted GR approach that addresses simultaneously both parent–child interactions and parent–ECE connections will be effective for strengthening social competencies and relationships for children who are doubly disadvantaged due to low income and developmental delays.

Section snippets

Setting

The study took place in 94 public preschool classrooms operated through 13 public school systems or Head Start agencies in a rural Midwestern state. Classrooms were housed in 62 school/agency sites located in communities ranging in population from 269 to 258,379. Classrooms averaged between 18 and 20 children, ranging in age from 3 to 5 years and operated during the academic year for 4 or 5 days each week, for 4 h each day. Children were in the same classroom with the same ECE for the two years

Results

Baseline equivalence between treatment and comparison groups and results addressing each of our research questions are reported next.

Discussion

Relationships of all kinds are important for children’s healthy development and learning. Children’s development occurs across a number of social contexts where interacting and relating with others is a primary source for learning essential skills. For some children, environmental and developmental characteristics create challenges to the formation of healthy and stimulating relationships. In the GR intervention, ECEs engage with parents in a way that is intended to strengthen the parent–child

Conclusions

The present study builds upon the existing literature that demonstrates the GR intervention is effective at supporting young children and their families. Getting Ready is an empirically based intervention that supports the development of young children, particularly those with developmental concerns within the context of early childhood education settings. Cost to agencies or publicly funded programs for GR is minimal; its implementation approach requires simply altering the manner in which

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    The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R324A120153 to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute of Education Sciences or the U.S. Department of Education. We extend special appreciation to the participating families, teachers, schools and agencies for their willingness to cooperate and learn with us throughout the project.

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