All in a Day’s Work: The Effects of Daily School Experiences on Children’s Executive Function Skills (Poster 3)

• In Event: Excellence in Education Research: Early Career Scholars and Their Work

Abstract

"In recent years, there has been an increased focus on the importance of time in school for children’s learning (Engzell et al., 2021). While there is clear evidence that instructional time predicts gains in children’s academic skills (Aucejo & Romano, 2016), we do not know how instructional time affects children’s non-academic skills which are critical for school success. Executive functions (EFs) encompass children’s abilities to self-regulate their attention and behavior and are key predictors of academic achievement and children’s abilities to engage in learning.
This study exploits quasi-random variation in test days in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort of 2010-2011 to relate time in school to students’ EFs. Quantile regressions are used to estimate the effect of school years on specific quantiles of the EF distribution. Results demonstrate that the passage of a kindergarten school year is associated with gains of 0.750 SDs in working memory and 0.540 SDs in cognitive flexibility skills. The inclusion of sociodemographic controls and the use of fixed effects impact the significance, but not the magnitude of the effect. Estimates of quantile regressions in kindergarten show that the effects monotonically increase with EFs, such that instructional time has larger effects on children with higher EFs.
Overall, this study provides policy-relevant information on whether children who are absent from school may need additional EF support. The quantile regressions suggest that extra instructional time may inadvertently widen gaps between students with lower and higher EFs, consistent with similar work on academic achievement (Hayes & Gershenson, 2016). "

Author

• Jenna Elizabeth Finch, University of Nebraska - Lincoln