Poster #103 - Ecobehavioral analysis of social behavior across learning contexts in kindergarten.

• In Event: Poster Session 06

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to examine the opportunities kindergarten children in the United States had across different learning contexts (whole group, small group, center time, lunch, recess) to engage in social behavior as defined by the Developing Skills Checklist. Children with more developed social emotional skills are better able to manage their stress and have improved self-esteem and relationships (Taylor et al., 2017). The kindergarten classroom should be a safe space for children to practice social emotional skills. However, academics often take precedence over social development because of the focus on academics. Also, the assumption is if the academic pieces are in place, the social components will naturally happen on their own. Field observations have indicated a lack of social interactions in kindergarten classrooms; therefore, kindergartners were observed to determine the frequency of social behaviors in the learning contexts and if a pattern emerged over time.
Across a 3-year period, the social behaviors of 36 children across 13 public and private kindergarten classrooms were recorded to determine the frequency of social behaviors during their regularly scheduled classroom activities. Social behavior was subdivided into the categories of classroom skills, self-esteem, persistence, self-expression, and pro-social behavior. This study utilized an ecobehavioral analysis design (1984) embedded in a nonconcurrent multielement design (Houlihan et al., 1992; Wacker et al., 1990). Ecobehavioral analysis incorporates an ecological perspective into the analysis of behavior by considering environment-behavior relationships (1984). Interval recording was utilized to observe the children and document the child’s behavior for each learning context. Differences were found between the five learning contexts when looking at children’s social behavior. Overall, persistence was consistently demonstrated more often across all learning contexts. Self-esteem was observed more frequently during small group and center time than the whole group. Self-expression and prosocial behavior were observed at extremely low rates across all learning contexts.

Group Authors

LSU Early Childhood Education Institute

Authors

• Cynthia Fontcuberta Dicarlo, Louisiana State University

• Carrie Ota, Weber State University
  Presenting Author