Spanish-speaking preschoolers’ effortful control and their English vocabulary and letter-word skills
Section snippets
Children’s EC, vocabulary, and literacy skills
EC is an aspect of temperament defined in part as the “efficiency of executive attention” (Liew, 2012, Rothbart and Bates, 2006, p. 129). It involves the ability to voluntarily regulate emotions, behaviors, and attention according to environmental demands. Even after accounting for socioeconomic status, home learning environments, and children’s cognitive abilities, EC has been shown to be a key correlate of academic skills: children with high EC generally exhibit greater vocabulary and
The mediating role of teacher-child relationships and classroom engagement
The contribution of EC to children’s academic performance is likely to operate indirectly. Eisenberg et al.’s (2010) theoretical framework posits that the association between EC and academic skills such as vocabulary and literacy operate indirectly through intervening classroom socioemotional mechanisms – namely, teacher-child relationships and classroom engagement. Support for this idea comes from theoretical models suggesting that self-regulation abilities contribute to the quality of the
The moderating role of english use at home
The Eisenberg et al. (2010) framework is useful for understanding how EC may support children’s early learning. One limitation of this framework, however, is that it does not consider DLL’s varying English experiences before entering preschool. This is important because Spanish-speaking children’s English experiences at home vary considerably, and these variations contribute to their English vocabulary and letter-word skills (Branum-Martin, Mehta, Carlson, Francis, & Goldenberg, 2014; Palermo
The present study
Theory and research led us to test a conditional process (i.e., moderated-mediation) path model examining the association between Spanish-speaking preschoolers’ EC and their English vocabulary and letter-word skills, whether close teacher-child relationships and classroom engagement mediated that association, and whether the mediated associations varied by parents’ and children’s English use at home (see Fig. 1). We expected that EC would be positively associated with children’s English
Participants
Participants were Spanish-speaking preschoolers from 10 Head Start classrooms in a U.S. southwest metropolitan area. All the classrooms were half-day programs that operated five days a week and used the creative curriculum (Dodge, 2016). The number of students per classroom ranged from each with 15–20 students. The percentage of Spanish-speaking students per classroom ranged from 70% to 100% (M = 84%, SD = 7%). All the teachers were female. At least one teacher per classroom (the lead teacher
Preliminary analyses
We conducted preliminary analyses to assess gender differences, describe missing data, and examine bivariate correlations. Teachers perceived girls (M = 3.82, SD = .73) as exhibiting greater EC than boys (M = 3.35, SD = .79), F (1, 127) = 12.75, p = .001. Teachers also reported having closer relationships with girls (M = 4.09, SD = .48) than boys (M = 3.81, SD = .61), F (1, 114) = 7.46, p = .007. Girls (M = 3.18, SD = .62) exhibited greater classroom engagement than boys (M = 2.90, SD = .66), F
Discussion
Consistent with the Eisenberg et al. (2010) framework and the notion that children’s self-regulation contributes to the relationships that they develop with teachers (Pianta, 1999), we found a positive association between Spanish-speaking preschoolers’ EC and close teacher-child relationships. We also found that close teacher-child relationships were positively associated with children’s classroom engagement and, in turn, their English vocabulary and letter-word skills. Notably, the association
Study limitations
Several limitations of this study are notable. First, although our home English use measure included items gauging children’s English use, it did not gauge children’s English oral language skills. Second, we used teacher reports to assess EC, close teacher-child relationships, and classroom engagement, which may have inflated the associations among those variables. Third, our sample consisted of Spanish-speaking children in Head Start preschool classrooms serving mostly Spanish-speaking
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Francisco Palermo: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing - original draft, Funding acquisition. Rachel Thibodeau: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - original draft. Seunghee Han: Formal analysis, Writing - review & editing. Ariana M. Mikulski: Writing - review & editing, Funding acquisition.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, grant number 90YF0062, awarded to Ariana M. Mikulski, Richard A. Fabes, Carol Lynn Martin, Laura D. Hanish, and Francisco Palermo.
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