Children’s Classroom Engagement as Predictor of Primary Caregiver-Teacher Communication Quality in Urban Head Start Classrooms

• In Event: Building Bridges and Breaking Barriers in Early Education Pedagogical Practice and Family-School Partnerships

Abstract

Understanding the relationship between primary caregiver-teacher communication quality and children’s classroom engagement during preschool years is critical as they have both been strongly linked with concurrent and future academic and social-emotional outcomes (e.g., Nold et al., 2021; Sabol et al., 2018; Williford et al., 2013). Previous studies have shown that the quality of communication between primary caregivers and teachers predicts preschool children’s classroom engagement, but very little is known about the inverse relationship (Ochoa et al., 2024). The influence of children’s behavior on primary caregiver practices, known as child-evocative influences, has been documented in regard to children’s classroom adjustment predicting parental involvement (Hoglund et al., 2015); however, the child evocative influence is understudied and has not been applied to children’s classroom engagement or communication quality.
Utilizing Bioecological Systems Theory (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006) and Relational Engagement framework (Kim & Sheridan, 2015), this study aims to understand if Head Start children’s classroom engagement predicts the quality of primary caregiver-teacher communication. In doing so, the hope is to expand the knowledge of which, if any, child-evocative factors contribute to the foundation of high-quality communication between primary caregivers and teachers. We hypothesize that there will be a negative relationship, where children who have challenges with classroom engagement trigger their primary caregivers to increase the quality of their communication with teachers in an effort to assist in their child's school experience.
This study samples 301 preschool students, their primary caregivers, and teachers from 39 classrooms in a diverse Head Start program in the northeastern United States. Primary caregivers completed a survey on communication quality regarding their child’s teacher in the spring of the academic year. Teachers completed a comparable survey on communication quality regarding the student’s primary caregiver in the spring and a survey rating the student’s engagement in the classroom in the fall.
This study utilizes multi-level modelling in order to account for the variation in scores across classrooms due to the hierarchical nature of the data, where children are nested within different classrooms. Results show that teachers’ perception of child engagement at the beginning of the school year predicted teacher-rated communication quality supporting a child-evocative influence. Additionally, various child and primary caregiver characteristics significantly influenced communication quality ratings for primary caregivers and teachers. Additional analyses are currently underway to include various teacher demographic covariates as well as a match in language between primary caregivers and teachers, to better investigate the relationship.
To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate a child-evocative influence between children's classroom engagement and primary caregiver-teacher communication quality, which contributes to the limited research on the child-evocative influence and illuminates the need for future studies in this area. Additionally, in this study’s focus and consideration of students and families from low-income, ethnoculturally diverse, urban communities, the results may emphasize the complexity and importance of family-school partnerships in early childhood education settings.

Authors

• Sophia Betar, Tufts University

• Christine M. McWayne, Tufts University