Poster #80 - It’s Playtime!: Parent Reported Peer Play Skills in the Home Context and Preschool Learning Outcomes

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Education, Schooling

Integrative Statement

At kindergarten entry, children from low-income families are almost a year behind in their language and literacy skills compared with their higher-income peers (Bernstein, West, Newsham, & Reid, 2014). Children living in poverty are disproportionately also from ethnic minority backgrounds, with 64% of African American families and 61% of Hispanic families currently living in poverty (National Center for Children & Poverty, 2018). A resilience perspective seeks to identify promotive factors, such as positive peer relationships and play skills during preschool as a strength to support learning (Coolahan, Fantuzzo, Mendez, & McDermott, 2000; Bulotsky-Shearer et al., 2012). Greater interactive play at home, lower disruptive and disconnected play have been found to be positively associated with positive learning behaviors and higher receptive vocabulary scores (Fantuzzo & McWayne, 2002; Mendez & Fogle, 2002). Additionally, children with greater positive interactive play skills in preschool were positively associated with mathematics achievement in third grade (Sekino, 2006). Despite the importance of peer play skills in the home setting, few studies have examined the relationship between parent reported peer play skills and academic outcomes in diverse samples of preschool children living in poverty. To address this gap, the purpose of the present study was to extend the psychometric properties of the Penn Interactive Peer Play Scale Parent version for use with a diverse sample of Head Start children and to examine the relationship between parent reported play skills and academic and learning outcomes at the end of the preschool year.
Participants in the study included 496 preschool children across 53 classrooms, enrolled in a large, urban Head Start program in the Southeastern United States. The sample included children ranging in age from 34 to 66 months (M = 48.05, SD = 6.83), 53% boys with an ethnic composition of 58% African American, 32% Hispanic, 4% Caucasian, and 6% reported another race. The Penn Interactive Peer Play Scale Parent version (PIPPS-P; Fantuzzo, Mendez, & Tighe, 1998) was used to assess children’s interactive, disruptive, and disconnected peer play. Academic readiness skills were assessed using the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement (W-J III; Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather, 2001) and learning behaviors were assessed using the Preschool Learning Behaviors Scale (PLBS; McDermott, Leigh, & Perry, 2002).
Confirmatory factor analysis revealed a good fit of the three-factor structure in our sample, with the Tucker-Lewis coefficient (TLI) = 0.931, the Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = 0.937, and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.047 (90% confidence interval, 0.043, 0.052). The weighted root mean square residual (WRMR) = 1.213 and was considered acceptable (Yu & Muthén, 2002). Bivariate correlations were then used to examine whether the three PIPPS dimensions related to the learning and academic outcomes. Bivariate correlations are presented in Figure 1. Follow-up analyses will include multiple regression models to examine the unique contribution of parent-report peer to these outcomes.
Implications of this study include building home-school partnerships between teachers and parents to encourage the development of peer play to promote positive academic and learning outcomes.

Authors

• Jhonelle Bailey, University of Miami
  Presenting Author

• Rebecca Bulotsky-Shearer, University of Miami
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jenna Futterer, University of Miami
  Non-Presenting Author

• Melissa Gutierrez, University of Miami
  Non-Presenting Author