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Children’s Individual Experiences in Kindergarten and Preschool Fadeout

Thu, April 8, 1:10 to 2:40pm EDT (1:10 to 2:40pm EDT), Virtual

Abstract

Introduction: Understanding why preschool effects do not persist is a key question for researchers and policymakers alike. One hypothesis to explain this convergence is the notion of sustaining environments which posits that the lasting effects of early interventions are contingent on the quality of later environments (Bailey et al., 2017). However, most research has focused on classroom-level indicators of quality environments. We posit that children’s individual experiences in kindergarten may also contribute to patterns of convergence. For example, a child who attended preschool may receive less one-on-one attention from their teacher than a non-attender because the non-attender is behind on academic skills. In this paper, we explore children’s individual experiences in kindergarten classrooms as potential moderators of differences between preschool attenders and non-attenders at the end of the kindergarten year.
Specific questions are:
1) Are there academic and social skill differences between children who attended preschool and who did not at the beginning and the end of the kindergarten year?
2) Do children who attended preschool have different learning opportunities, peer relationships, and teacher relationships than children who did not attend preschool?
3) Do these experiences moderate patterns of convergence?
Sample: Our sample includes 801 kindergarteners from 15 elementary schools. Demographic characteristics are presented in Table 1.
Method: Children’s preschool attendance was defined as any attendance at a center-based program. Academic outcome measures are the picture vocabulary, letter-word identification, and applied problems subscales of the Woodcock-Johnson III; Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders was our measure of self-regulation. Teachers reported on four subscales of the Teacher-Child Rating Scale: behavioral control, task orientation, social skills, and assertiveness. For learning opportunities, teachers reported on whether children received special pull-out instruction; whether the teacher spent more or less time talking with this student as compared to others in the class; and whether the teacher spent extra time working with this student. For peer experiences, teachers reported on children’s victimization, children reported on their loneliness, and peer nomination forms were used to capture the number of classmates who listed each individual student as a friend. For relationship with the teacher, teachers completed the conflict and closeness subscales of the Student-Teacher Rating Scale. We used multilevel regression models with children nested in kindergarten classrooms and covariates at the student-level (gender, race/ethnicity, age, maternal education, income, IEP status, home language) and the kindergarten classroom-level (class size, teacher education, experience).
Results: As shown in Table 2, attenders had higher academic skills at the fall, but not spring, of kindergarten. Teachers rated attenders as having lower behavioral control and higher assertiveness than non-attenders in fall and spring. In terms of individual experiences, attenders had more conflict in their relationship with their teacher and were less likely to receive special pull-out instruction than non-attenders. For research question 3, few interaction terms were significant. Notably, closeness with teacher significantly moderated associations between preschool attendance and both vocabulary and self-regulation. Non-attenders made large gains in vocabulary across kindergarten regardless of teacher closeness but attenders only made comparable gains when they had close relationships with their teacher.

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