Mothers' scaffolding of children's problem solving: Establishing a foundation of academic self-regulatory competence.

The study examined relations between dimensions of mothers' scaffolding and children's academic self-regulatory behaviors in school. Mothers and their preschool children (68 dyads) were visited in their homes the summer before the child entered kindergarten. Mothers' metacognitive content and manner of instruction, emotional support, and transfer of responsibility were coded as mothers provided assistance to their children during 4 problem-solving tasks. Children's self-regulatory behaviors were assessed the following school year. Metacognitive content and manner of instruction were predictors of child behaviors related to cognitive awareness and management: metacognitive talk, monitoring, and help seeking. Emotional support and transfer of responsibility were related to children's task persistence and behavior control in school. Mothers' scaffolding appears to lay the foundation for children's subsequent academic self-regulatory competence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Maternal scaffolding of children's problem solving and children's adjustment in kindergarten: Hmong families in the United States.

The study examined relations between maternal scaffolding of children's problem solving and children's adjustment in kindergarten in Hmong families living in the United States. Mothers and their children (63 dyads) were visited the summer before kindergarten. Mothers' years in the United States, age, education, reasoning skills, and parenting beliefs were assessed. Maternal scaffolding (cognitive support, directiveness of instruction, praise, and criticism) was coded while mothers helped their children with school-like tasks. Children's reasoning skills, conscientiousness, autonomous behavior, and task persistence in kindergarten were reported by teachers at the end of kindergarten (54 children). Maternal cognitive support of children's problem solving predicted children's reasoning skills in kindergarten even after controlling for maternal education and reasoning skills. Maternal directive instruction positively predicted children's conscientious behavior and negatively predicted children's autonomous behaviors after controlling for maternal education and parenting beliefs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relationship between peer-play interactions in the family context and dimensions of school readiness for low-income preschool children.

Relationships between parental report of children's peer play at home and indicators of children's school readiness were examined. Behavior ratings and observational data were collected for 242 preschool children from a large urban Head Start program. Relationships between children's home-based, peer-play behaviors and 4 measures of children's classroom behaviors (i.e., school-based peer play, approaches to learning, self-regulation, and behavior problems) were analyzed using bivariate correlational and multivariate methods. Play competencies exhibited in the home environment were significantly associated with prosocial behavior in the classroom, motivation to learn, task persistence, and autonomy. Disruptive or disconnected play behaviors were significantly related to patterns of disruptive and dysregulated experiences in the classroom with peers and with the learning process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interparental conflict and children's school adjustment: The explanatory role of children's internal representations of interparental and parent-child relationships.

This study examined how children's insecure internal representations of interparental and parent-child relationships served as explanatory mechanisms in multiple pathways linking interparental conflict and parent emotional unavailability with the emotional and classroom engagement difficulties the children had in their adjustment to school. With their parents, 229 kindergarten children (127 girls and 102 boys, mean age = 6.0 years, SD = .50, at Wave 1) participated in this multimethod, 3-year longitudinal investigation. Findings revealed that children's insecure representations of the interparental relationship were a significant intervening mechanism in associations between observational ratings of interparental conflict and child and teacher reports on children's emotional and classroom difficulties in school over a 2-year period. Moreover, increased parental emotional unavailability accompanying high levels of interparental conflict was associated with children's insecure representations of the parent-child relationship and children's difficulties in classroom engagement at school entry. The findings highlight the importance of understanding the intrinsic processes that contribute to difficulties with stage-salient tasks for children who are experiencing interparental discord. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reading and believing: Beliefs, attributions, and reading achievement in Moroccan schoolchildren.

This article reports data collected in Morocco. Measures of beliefs (metacognitive knowledge of reading skills and strategies, causal attributions, and conceptions of good readers) and reading performance were collected on a cohort of 350 first-grade children over a 5-year period, and on a second cohort of 464 fifth-grade children over a 3-year period. Metacognitive and causal attribution measures predicted significant portions of variance of subsequent reading achievement beyond the effects of background variables and cognitive skills. First-graders' conception of good readers was an important predictor of beginning reading, but metacognitive knowledge of particular reading skills was not. However, among fifth and seventh graders, both metacognitive knowledge about skilled reading and causal attributions to internal factors predicted reading performance. This study is one of the first cross-cultural demonstrations that metacognitive knowledge and other beliefs affect young children's reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of classroom quality in ameliorating the academic and social risks associated with difficult temperament.

The present study examines the moderating role first grade classroom quality may have on the relations between children's difficult temperament (assessed in infancy) and their academic and social outcomes in early elementary school (first grade). Using data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, 1032 children were rated by their mothers at 6 months of age on difficult temperament. The quality of first grade classroom environments were then observed and rated along three domains: emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support. Regression analyses examined the statistical interactions between difficult temperament and classroom quality domains on children's academic and social outcomes. Results indicate high-quality classroom environments may ameliorate the academic and social risks associated with having a difficult temperament. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Effects of Family, School, and Classroom Ecologies on Changes in Children's Social Competence and Emotional and Behavioral Problems in First Grade.

This study tested the independent and interactive influences of classroom (concentrations of peer prosocial behaviors and victimization), family (household moves, mothers' education), and school (proportion of students receiving income assistance) ecologies on changes in children's social competence (e.g., interpersonal skills, leadership abilities), emotional problems (e.g., anxious, withdrawn behaviors), and behavioral problems (e.g., disruptiveness, aggressiveness) in first grade. Higher classroom concentrations of prosocial behaviors and victimization predicted increases in social competence, and greater school disadvantage predicted decreases. Multiple household moves and greater school disadvantage predicted increases in behavioral problems. Multiple household moves and low levels of mothers' education predicted increases in emotional problems for children in classrooms with few prosocial behaviors. Greater school disadvantage predicted increases in emotional problems for children in classrooms with low prosocial behaviors and high victimization. Policy implications of these findings are considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual differences and the development of perceived control

Research on individual differences demonstrates that children's perceived control exerts a strong effect on their academic achievement and that, in turn, children's actual school performance influences their sense of control. At the same time, developmental research shows systematic age-graded changes in the processes that children use to regulate and interpret control experiences. Drawing on both these perspectives, the current study examines (1) age differences in the operation of beliefs-performance cycles and (2) the effects of these cycles on the development of children's perceived control and classroom engagement from the third to the seventh grade. Longitudinal data on about 1,600 children were collected six times (every fall and spring) over 3 consecutive school years, including children's reports of their perceived control and individual interactions with teachers; teachers' reports of each student's engagement in class; and, for a subset of students, grades and achievement tests. Analyses of individual differences and individual growth curves (estimated using hierarchical linear modeling procedures) were consistent, not only with a cyclic model of context, self, action, and outcomes, but also with predictors of individual development over 5 years from grade 3 to grade 7. Children who experienced teachers as warm and contingent were more likely to develop optimal profiles of control; these beliefs supported more active engagement in the classroom, resulting in better academic performance; success in turn predicted the maintenance of optimistic beliefs about the effectiveness of effort. In contrast, children who experienced teachers as unsupportive were more likely to develop beliefs that emphasized external causes; these profiles of control predicted escalating classroom disaffection and lower scholastic achievement; in turn, these poor performances led children to increasingly doubt their own capacities and to believe even more strongly in the power of luck and unknown causes. Systematic age differences in analyses suggested that the aspects of control around which these cycles are organized change with development. The beliefs that regulated engagement shifted from effort to ability and from beliefs about the causes of school performance (strategy beliefs) to beliefs about the self's capacities. The feedback loop from individual performance to subsequent perceived control also became more pronounced and more focused on ability. These relatively linear developmental changes may have contributed to an abrupt decline in children's classroom engagement as they negotiated the transition to middle school and experienced losses in teacher support. Implications are discussed for future study of individual differences and development, especially the role of changing school contexts, mechanisms of influence, and developmentally appropriate interventions to optimize children's perceived control and engagement.     

Parent styles associated with children's self-regulation and competence in school.

This study assessed three dimensions of parent style, autonomy support, involvement, and provision of structure in 64 mothers and 50 fathers of elementary-school children in Grades 3–6, using a structured interview. Construct validity data for the interview ratings suggested that the three parent dimensions were reliable, relatively independent, and correlated with other parent measures in hypothesized ways. Aspects of children's self-regulation and competence were measured through children's reports, teacher ratings, and objective indices. Parental autonomy support was positively related to children's self-reports of autonomous self-regulation, teacher-rated competence and adjustment, and school grades and achievement. Maternal involvement was related to achievement, teacher-rated competence, and some aspects of behavioral adjustment, but no significant relations were obtained for father involvement. The structure dimension was primarily related to children's control understanding. Results are discussed in terms of the motivational impact of the parent on school competence and adjustment and in terms of transactional models of influence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Motivation in the classroom: Reciprocal effects of teacher behavior and student engagement across the school year.

On the basis of a new model of motivation, the authors examined the effects of 3 dimensions of teacher (n?=?14) behavior (involvement, structure, and autonomy support) on 144 children's (Grades 3–5) behavioral and emotional engagement across a school year. Correlational and path analyses revealed that teacher involvement was central to children's experiences in the classroom and that teacher provision of both autonomy support and optimal structure predicted children's motivation across the school year. Reciprocal effects of student motivation on teacher behavior were also found. Students who showed higher initial behavioral engagement received subsequently more of all 3 teacher behaviors. These findings suggest that students who are behaviorally disengaged receive teacher responses that should further undermine their motivation. The importance of the student–teacher relationship, especially interpersonal involvement, in optimizing student motivation is highlighted. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Linking teachers' memory-relevant language and the development of children's memory skills.

This longitudinal study was designed to (a) examine changes in children's deliberate memory across the 1st grade; (b) characterize the memory-relevant aspects of their classrooms; and (c) explore linkages between the children's performance and the language their teachers use in instruction. To explore contextual factors that may facilitate the development of skills for remembering, 107 first graders were assessed 3 times with a broad set of tasks, while extensive observations were made in the 14 classrooms from which these children were sampled. When the participating teachers were classified as high or low in terms of their "mnemonic orientation," in part on the basis of their use of metacognitive information and requests for deliberate remembering during instruction in language arts and mathematics, differences were observed in the use of mnemonic techniques by the children in their classes. By the end of the year, the children drawn from these 2 groups of classrooms differed in their spontaneous use of simple behavioral strategies for remembering and in their response to training in more complex verbally based mnemonic techniques. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Teachers' occupational well-being and quality of instruction: The important role of self-regulatory patterns.

Teachers' occupational well-being (level of emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction) and quality of instruction are two key aspects of research on teaching that have rarely been studied together. The role of occupational engagement and resilience as two important work-related self-regulatory dimensions that predict occupational well-being and teachers' instructional performance in the classroom was investigated. In Part 1 of the study, self-regulatory data from 1,789 German mathematics teachers were subjected to a latent profile analysis, yielding four self-regulatory types (healthy-ambitious, unambitious, excessively ambitious, and resigned) that differed significantly on emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction. In Part 2, the association between teachers' self-regulatory type and instructional performance was examined in a subsample of 318 teachers. Results showed that teachers' self-regulatory type predicted the quality of instruction in three of the four aspects of instructional performance examined. Moreover, teachers' self-regulatory type was systematically linked to differences in students' motivation. No association was found between teacher self-regulation and student achievement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Modifying maternal teaching style: effects of task arrangement on the match-to-sample performance of retarded preschool-age-children

Twenty-one mothers and their retarded preschool-age children were observed during six teaching sessions. Following the first three sessions, each mother-child dyad was assigned to one of the three groups. Groups were matched on measures of mother and child behavior and on measures of various mother and child background factors. Prior to the last three teaching sessions, mothers received instructions to modify certain aspects of their teaching style. The results indicated that children of mothers who had been instructed to present the materials of the task systematically obtained significantly higher performance scores during training than did children of mothers who either received no instruction or had been told to increase positive feedback for correct responses. Further, 6 of 7 children whose mothers had altered the manner in which they presented the task materials showed improvement on a test administered after training. These results suggest that nonverbal activities which precede responding are critical aspects of teaching style and deserve more attention than they have received in the past.     

Metacognitive emotion regulation: Children's awareness that changing thoughts and goals can alleviate negative emotions.

Metacognitive emotion regulation strategies involve deliberately changing thoughts or goals to alleviate negative emotions. Adults commonly engage in this type of emotion regulation, but little is known about the developmental roots of this ability. Two studies were designed to assess whether 5- and 6-year-old children can generate such strategies and, if so, the types of metacognitive strategies they use. In Study 1, children described how story protagonists could alleviate negative emotions. In Study 2, children recalled times that they personally had felt sad, angry, and scared and described how they had regulated their emotions. In contrast to research suggesting that young children cannot use metacognitive regulation strategies, the majority of children in both studies described such strategies. Children were surprisingly sophisticated in their suggestions for how to cope with negative emotions and tailored their regulatory responses to specific emotional situations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of task-avoidant and task-focused behaviors in the development of reading and mathematical skills during the first school year: A cross-lagged longitudinal study.

The aim of the study was to examine whether children's achievement strategies would prospectively predict their improvement in reading and mathematical skills during the 1st school year, or whether it is rather the skills that predict the change in their achievement strategies. One hundred five 6- to 7-year-old children were investigated 3 times during the 1st school year. Each time, their reading and mathematical skills were tested, and their task-avoidant versus task-focused behaviors were rated by their classroom teacher. In addition, their overall cognitive competence was measured before entry into school. The maladaptive strategies children deployed in the classroom and their reading skills formed a cumulative developmental cycle. On the one hand, task-avoidant behaviors decreased subsequent improvement in reading skills, and on the other hand, a low level of reading skills increased subsequent task-avoidant behaviors. Although a low level of mathematical skills increased subsequent task avoidance, the mathematical skills were not influenced by it. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Two ways to elaborate Vygotsky's concept of mediation.

L. S. Vygotsky's (1978, 1981, 1983, 1934/1988) writings suggest 2 major types of mediation as the main mechanism of children's learning and development. Metacognitive mediation refers to the acquisition of semiotic tools of self-regulation. Cognitive mediation refers to the acquisition of scientific concepts representing the essence of some class of phenomena. Some approaches taken by American researchers, characterized as guided discovery in a community of learners, are relevant to L. S. Vygotsky's concept of metacognitive mediation but are in sharp contrast to his concept of cognitive mediation. The "theoretical learning" approach taken by Russian followers of L. S. Vygotsky incorporates his concept of cognitive mediation but fails to emphasize adequately the concept of metacognitive mediation. Analysis of these approaches shows that it is advisable to develop an instructional procedure that incorporates both of L. S. Vygotsky's types of mediation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Can offline metacognition enhance mathematical problem solving?

The effectiveness of a short metacognitive intervention combined with algorithmic cognitive instruction was assessed in an elementary school setting. Two hundred thirty-seven 3rd-grade children were randomly assigned to a 5-session metacognitive strategy instruction, an algorithmic direct cognitive instruction, a motivational program, a quantitative-relational condition, or a spelling condition. Children in the metacognitive program achieved significant gains in trained metacognitive skills compared with the 4 other conditions. Moreover, the children in the metacognitive program performed better on trained cognitive skills than children in the algorithmic condition, with a follow-up effect on domain-specific mathematics problem-solving knowledge. Despite the consistency of findings, no generalization effects were found on transfer of cognitive learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Continuity and change in early school engagement: Predictive of children's achievement trajectories from first to eighth grade?

Premises about the effects of early engagement on achievement were investigated with 383 children who were followed from ages 5.5 to 13.5. Change and continuity in behavioral (cooperative-resistant classroom participation) and emotional (school liking-avoidance) engagement were assessed during Grades 1-3 and were examined within variable- and person-oriented analyses as antecedents of scholastic progress from Grades 1 to 8. Findings corroborated the premises that change as well as continuity in early school engagement is predictive of children's long-term scholastic growth. Compared to children who participated cooperatively in classrooms, those who became increasingly resistant across the primary grades displayed lesser scholastic growth. Among children who manifested enduring engagement patterns, those who exhibited a combination of higher behavioral and emotional engagement across the primary grades made greater academic progress than those who displayed lower levels of these two forms of engagement. Overall, the results of this investigation were consistent with the school engagement hypothesis and extend what is known about the predictive contributions of early school engagement to children's achievement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The contribution of children’s self-regulation and classroom quality to children’s adaptive behaviors in the kindergarten classroom.

In this study, the authors examined the extent to which children’s self-regulation upon kindergarten entrance and classroom quality in kindergarten contributed to children’s adaptive classroom behavior. Children’s self-regulation was assessed using a direct assessment upon entrance into kindergarten. Classroom quality was measured on the basis of multiple classroom observations during the kindergarten year. Children’s adaptive classroom behavior in kindergarten was assessed through teacher report and classroom observations: Teachers rated children’s cognitive and behavioral self-control and work habits during the spring of the kindergarten year; observers rated children’s engagement and measured off-task behavior at 2-month intervals from November to May. Hierarchical linear models revealed that children’s self-regulation upon school entry in a direct assessment related to teachers’ report of behavioral self-control, cognitive self-control, and work habits in the spring of the kindergarten year. Classroom quality, particularly teachers’ effective classroom management, was linked to children’s greater behavioral and cognitive self-control, children’s higher behavioral engagement, and less time spent off-task in the classroom. Classroom quality did not moderate the relation between children’s self-regulation upon school entry and children’s adaptive classroom behaviors in kindergarten. The discussion considers the implications of classroom management for supporting children’s early development of behavioral skills that are important in school settings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preventing reading failure in young children with phonological processing disabilities: Group and individual responses to instruction.

The relative effectiveness of 3 instructional approaches for the prevention of reading disabilities in young children with weak phonological skills was examined. Two programs varying in the intensity of instruction in phonemic decoding were contrasted with each other and with a 3rd approach that supported the children's regular classroom reading program. The children were provided with 88 hr of one-to-one instruction beginning the second semester of kindergarten and extending through 2nd grade. The most phonemically explicit condition produced the strongest growth in word level reading skills, but there were no differences between groups in reading comprehension. Word level skills of children in the strongest group were in the middle of the average range. Growth curve analyses showed that beginning phonological skills, home background, and ratings of classroom behavior all predicted unique variance in growth of word level skills. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)