Children’s Task Engagement in Early Childhood: A Systematic Review

• In Event: Promoting well-being, social-emotional development and executive functioning in early childhood classrooms

Abstract

Accumulating research suggests that high engagement in academic tasks predicts positive educational and developmental outcomes such as higher grades and lower involvement in delinquency, substance abuse, and problem behavior (Wang & Degol, 2014). Research suggest that in early childhood, children’s engagement in tasks or activities predicts their readiness for school (Sabol, Bohlmann, & Downer, 2018), emerging literacy skills (Bohlmann & Downer, 2016), concurrent pre-academic skills and later school performance (Halliday, Calkins, & Leerkes, 2018).). Thus early task engagement is possibly an important factor for children’s engagement in academic activities in school (Wang, Algina, Snyder, & Cox, 2017).

Researchers have examined young children’s engagement in tasks and activities from different perspectives with different rating systems. For example, McWilliam, Scarborough and Kim (2003) have defined and quantified engagement as the amount of time children spend interacting with their environment or activities as they occur in a developmentally and contextually appropriate manner. Vitiello and Williford (2016) have studied child engagement based on global rating scales. Lee, Wargo and Porretta (2018) examined children’s on task behaviors with compliance and attention. Still others focus on qualitative differences in children’s emotional, attentional and cognitive investment in tasks that are cognitively challenging (Wang et al., 2017).

There is a need to synthesize the current field in understanding children’s task engagement in early childhood. Specifically, in this literature review study, we aim to examine how task engagement is defined, assessed, predicted in early childhood as well as the extent to which task engagement in early childhood may predict children’s later outcomes. We define task engagement as a child’s emotional, and/ or behavioral, or cognitive efforts in a defined activity, with or without social partners, consistent with the expectations of the tasks or activities.

Following the evidence synthesis guidelines recommended by Division for Early Childhood (Snyder, Reichow, Carta, Trivette, & McLean, 2018), we conducted a multi-step literature search. First, we found 546 articles by searching 8 databases and imported 146 non-duplicated articles for database searching. Then, we did title and abstract screening to eliminate studies that did not meet inclusion criteria (i.e., published between 1950 to 2020, peer-reviewed article, available in English, aged from 0 to 5, and engagement is assessed via observation and directed to tasks) which resulted in 110 screened-in articles for full-text screening. The full-text screening yielded 64 qualified articles. Additional relevant studies were identified through the snowball search process (Greenhalgh & Peacock, 2005) including the cited work search via Web of Science and ancestral search. The cited work search yielded additional 21 articles and the ancestral search yielded additional 17 entries, resulting in a total of 102 entries for data coding. Inter-screener agreements are 91% for title abstract screening, 89% for full-text screening. See Figure 1 for details of article identification, screening and eligibility and final inclusion of qualified studies.

Planning for data coding and analysis in currently under way and findings will be presented at SRCD 2021 to inform the field of research on young children’s task engagement at should this abstract is accepted.

Authors

• Feihong Wang, University of Florida
  Presenting Author

• Patricia Ann Snyder, University of Florida
  Non-Presenting Author

• Hanxiao Jiang, University of Florida
  Non-Presenting Author