Elsevier

Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Volume 54, 1st Quarter 2021, Pages 260-270
Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Spanish-speaking preschoolers’ effortful control and their English vocabulary and letter-word skills

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2020.09.009Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Spanish-speaking children’s effortful control in preschool was indirectly and positively associated with their later English vocabulary and letter-word skills.

  • The association between Spanish-speaking children’s effortful control and English vocabulary and letter-word skills was mediated through close teacher-child relationships and classroom engagement.

  • Effortful control was positively associated with Spanish-speaking preschoolers’ vocabulary and letter-word skills in English.

Abstract

We examined the association between Spanish-speaking preschoolers’ (N = 137; M age = 53 months; SD = 4 months; 53% boys) effortful control (EC) and English vocabulary and letter-word skills. We also examined whether close teacher-child relationships and classroom engagement mediated the association between EC and English vocabulary and letter-word skills and whether that mediated association varied based on parents’ and preschoolers’ English use at home. Data were gathered using teacher and parent surveys and child standardized assessments. The results revealed a positive association between preschoolers’ EC in the fall of preschool and their English vocabulary and letter-word skills in the following spring. The association was mediated through close teacher-child relationships and classroom engagement, but only at certain levels of parents’ and preschoolers’ English use at home. The findings highlight the important role that EC may play in fostering Spanish-speaking preschoolers’ English skills and the classroom socioemotional processes by which that association operates as a function of their linguistic experiences in English at home.

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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