Young Children’s Self-Regulation and Contextual Supports in Their Classrooms

• In Event: Examining Variability of Young Children’s Self-Regulation Across Context: Findings From Naturalistic Approaches in Four Countries

Abstract

Young children are still developing their self-regulation and sometimes need support enacting it. They may therefore show within-child differences in self-regulation according to the expectations teachers place on their behavior and the supports teachers provide. Children who differ in their overall abilities to regulate their behavior may respond differently to these expectations and supports (Sameroff, 2010). Observing children’s self-regulation in the classroom allows researchers to test this possibility and we did so in this study.
We collected videos of 54 children in 9 preschool and kindergarten classrooms in the Northeast United States (52% female, average 5.8 years-old, range= 4.8 - 6.8). Research assistants trained on the Regulation Related Skills Measure (an observational tool; McCoy et al., 2017) coded 330 video segments (average 6.1 per child) that were 4-7 minutes in length. Coders rated children’s self-regulatory behavior during each segment using five items capturing attention (α = .82) and five items capturing inhibitory control (α = .68). Coders also noted the kind of activity (i.e., teacher-directed, student-directed, or a transition) and the teacher’s proximity to the child (on a scale from 1-5) for each segment. Teachers also independently rated children’s overall ability to regulate their behavior using the researcher-developed Child Executive Function Survey (CEFS; Jones et al., 2015).
Based on hierarchical linear models with observations nested in children and classrooms and controlling for children’s age, gender, and school, we found that children’s overall ability to regulate their behavior moderated the degree to which teacher-directed activities predicted children’s attentional control (b = 0.30, S.E. = 0.07, p < .001). As depicted in Figure 1, children with low overall ability to regulate their behavior (1 SD below sample mean) showed no within-child difference in attention control across teacher- and student-directed activities (p = ns). Children with high general overall ability to regulate their behavior (1 SD above sample mean), however, demonstrated greater attention during teacher-directed activities compared to student-directed activities (b = 0.68, S.E. = 0.24, p < .01). No such differences emerged for children’s inhibitory control.
Similarly, children’s overall ability to regulate their behavior moderated the degree to which a teacher’s physical proximity to a child predicted that child’s inhibitory control during classroom transitions (b = -0.12, S.E. = 0.49, p < .05). Specifically, as shown in Figure 2, children with low overall ability to regulate their behavior showed greater inhibitory control during transitions when their teachers were physically near them (b = 0.22, S.E. = .09, p < .05), but no such trend emerged for children with high overall ability to regulate their behavior (p = ns). No such differences emerged for attention control.
These results are exploratory but illustrate how children with high overall ability to regulate their behavior, as reported by teachers, modulated their behavior in response to classroom expectations, showing greater attention during teacher-led activities. In contrast, children with low overall ability to regulate their behavior responded to supports from teachers, showing greater inhibitory control during transitions when their teachers were physically close to them.

Authors

• Andrew E. Koepp, University of Texas at Austin
  Presenting Author

• Dana Charles McCoy, Harvard University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Stephanie M Jones, Harvard Graduate School of Education
  Non-Presenting Author

• Deborah J. Leong, Tools of the Mind
  Non-Presenting Author

• Elena Bodrova, Tools of the Mind
  Non-Presenting Author