Poster #52 - Evaluating the Effects of Classroom Emotional Support on the Mental Health of Inner-City Preschool Students

• In Event: 3-206 - Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Section - Developmental Psychopathology

Integrative Statement

Children living in United States inner cities are among the most at-risk population for developing emotional and behavioral issues later in life. This population has been frequently studied by the Department of Education and research institutions across the country to understand the quality of education these children receive and how this quality relates to educational gains throughout preschool and later in life. Small associations between structural features of preschool programs and children’s learning gains have led researchers to concentrate more strongly on classroom process and in-service professional development to improve effectiveness (Pianta & Hamre, 2009; Hamre, et al, 2014). Observational measures have therefore become central to the field of early childhood, and are now part of continuous improvement cycles, quality rating systems, and program evaluations (Martinez-Beck, 2011; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, 2010). While these studies focus on child gains in the realm of education, what has yet to be studied with the same interest and magnitude is the impact preschool classrooms have on inner city children’s mental health.

Our aim in this presentation is to study the correlation between the quality of emotional support inner city children receive in preschool classrooms and their socio-emotional development. Using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS; Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2008), we will investigate how components of high-quality preschool classrooms affect children’s mental health. We will use results from 137 CLASS observations conducted in the spring of 2018 in a recently established preschool program in a northeast inner city, drawing from the CLASS Emotional Support (ES) domain scores, as well as the other domains in contrast. The CLASS is an observational system that measures and evaluates teacher-student interactions.

We propose to investigate the association between the CLASS ES scores, its different components, and pre and post scores of the Caregiver-Teacher Report Form for Ages 1½-5 (C-TRF: Achenbach, 2009). The C-TRFs were completed by 139 pre-k classroom teachers on a sample of 465 randomly selected children during the 2017-2018 school year. The C-TRF is a short questionnaire consisting on 99-items on behaviors. We will focus on the total behavior problems scores, and the subscale scales within the C-TRF which rate Affective Problems, Anxiety Problems, Pervasive Developmental Problems, Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Problems, and Oppositional Defiant Problems. We will examine changes in scores within each of these subscales as well as the overall total behavior problems, to determine how the quality of the preschool classroom’s emotional support affects the children’s mental health.

Preliminary analyses below address the association between the children’s spring scores, controlling for their fall scores and CLASS emotional support scores and for a threshold of quality for CLASS ES. These analyses have shown that there is not a statistically significant correlation between the overall C-TRF scores and high CLASS ES scores. Further analyses will assess associations between the subscales of the C-TRF and the different components of the CLASS.

Authors

• Charles Whitman, National Institute for Early Education Research
  Non-Presenting Author

• Mariel Acevedo, National Institute for Early Education Research
  Presenting Author

• Milagros Nores, National Institute for Early Education Research
  Non-Presenting Author