Pre-K Attendance and Social Development: The Moderating Role of Kindergarten Classroom Experiences

• In Event: To Pre-K and Beyond: Child Development and Educational Environments Across Pre-K and Elementary School

Abstract

Pre-K attenders have been found to do less well on certain dimensions of social behavior in early elementary school relative to non-attenders; however, it remains unclear as to why (Bassok et al., 2019). Given the importance of early social behavior for healthy long-term development, it is critical to explore the conditions under which these differences between pre-K attenders and non-attenders persist or diminish over time. Informed by the dynamic complementary hypothesis (Bailey et al., 2017), the current study unpacks this issue by testing the interactive nature of pre-k attendance and children’s subsequent kindergarten classroom environments as such conditions. To do so, we asked two research questions: 1) To what extent do pre-K attenders and non-attenders differ in their social behaviors (i.e., self-control, interpersonal skills, internalizing and externalizing behaviors, approaches to learning, attention focusing, and inhibitory control) at kindergarten entry and exit? 2) Does the academic rigor, activity settings, and teacher-child relationships in kindergarten moderate the relations between pre-K attendance and children’s social behaviors across the kindergarten year?

We used nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten class of 2011 (ECLS-K:2011). For the current investigation, we included only children with pre-K attendance information and a valid ECLS-K weight, resulting in an analytic sample of 14,260. Children were considered to have attended pre-K if their parents reported they had attended a day-care center, nursery school, preschool, prekindergarten program, or Head Start for 5 or more hours per week in the year before kindergarten. The seven dimensions of social behaviors were drawn from fall and spring teacher reports. Finally, kindergarten classroom experience information, including language rigor, math rigor, time spent in whole-class, small-group, individual instruction and child-directed activities, and teacher-child closeness and conflict was collected from spring teacher surveys.

We first estimated a series of covariate-adjusted regression models to examine associations between pre-K attendance and fall and spring social behavior (for list of covariates, see Table 2). Our results confirmed that pre-K attenders exhibit more externalizing problems in both the fall (ES = .06) and spring (ES = .09) of kindergarten than non-attenders (see Table 3). However, this was the only significant difference by attender status in the fall, and only one of two differences in the spring. Additionally, over time, the magnitude of differences between attenders and non-attenders were largely not changing differentially in kindergarten. The two exceptions were for approaches to learning (ES = -.05) and attention focusing (ES = -.05), with non-attenders demonstrating greater improvements. And although not shown, there was no evidence of moderation when examining our focal classroom experience variables as moderators of pre-K effects.

Overall, results suggest that pre-K attenders are not consistently underperforming non-attenders on social behaviors across the kindergarten year. However, given that our findings on externalizing problem behaviors align with existing literature (Huston et al., 2015) it is important to continue to investigate why differences persist through kindergarten. Although the classrooms experiences under consideration were not significant moderators, consideration of other classroom experience measures are important steps for future research.

Authors

• Kathryn Zimmermann, Ohio State University
  Presenting Author

• Qingqing Yang, Ohio State University

• Kelly M Purtell, Ohio State University

• Arya Ansari, Ohio State University