Poster #27 - Relationship Between Support for Children’s Self-Sustaining Engagement in Learning and Social Emotional Skills among Preschoolers in Jordan

• In Event: Poster Session 19

Abstract

The relationship between classroom quality and early learning outcomes is dependent on the specific dimensions by which it is measured (Mashburn et al., 2008; Zaslow et al., 2016). Whereas instructional characteristics have been found to predict academic outcomes, children’s Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) skills are likely to relate more strongly to the coinciding aspects of teacher-child interactions, such as emotional support and responsiveness (Maier, Hsueh, and McCormick, 2020; McCoy and Wolf, 2018). Identification of these precise associations in non-western contexts is needed to advance the literature on classroom quality and SEL development.

The Playful Learning Across the Years (PLAY) project aims to build a collection of instruments that measure setting-level quality of support for children’s self-sustaining engagement in learning. In the first phase, observation and survey tools spanning ages 0-12, and school- and home-based settings, were developed and piloted in four countries: Jordan, Kenya, Ghana, and Colombia. Psychometric analysis from this phase yielded factor structures for each tool, which we now seek to test further by assessing the relationships to child outcomes. This poster will focus on the Jordan classroom observation tool, analyzing the relationship between quality of adult support for children’s self-sustaining engagement in learning and children’s SEL skills.

Hypothesis: Quality of support for children’s self-sustaining engagement in learning will positively predict children’s SEL skills, with the “personal/community connections” and “relational classroom climate” subscales of the PLAY classroom observation tool showing stronger associations.

The PLAY classroom observation tool was administered in preschools in the Irbid region of Jordan in 2022 (N=112 classrooms, 2257 children). The sample was simultaneously participating in a cluster-randomized control trial which implemented and assessed the impact of a mass media program on children’s SEL skills.

Measures
Predictor: PLAY Classroom Observation on quality of teacher-child Interactions
-Promoting child-centered exploration subscale, 7 items, α = 0.8833
-Promoting personal/community connections, 5 items, α = 0.8646
-Promoting relational classroom climate, 5 items, α = 0.8806
Outcomes: Children’s SEL competencies
-Ages & Stages Questionnaire (ASQ; Squires & Bricker, 2009)
-Brief Problem Monitor scale (BPM; Achenbach et al., 2011)
-Child Direct Assessment- a vignette-based child assessment protocol which assesses children’s abilities to: (i) identify basic and complex emotions, (ii) recognize these sample emotions from facial expressions, (iii) identify their own and other’s emotions based on situational vignettes, and (iv) to identify key regulation strategies when facing such situations (modeled on protocols validated across other countries and regions, i.e. Brenick et al., 2010; Obradovic et al., 2018; Provenzi et al., 2017)
Covariates: Intervention treatment status, baseline ASQ, baseline BPM, child demographics (gender, age, nationality, country of origin), family socioeconomic status

We will conduct regression analyses on the relationship between overall quality of support for children’s self-sustaining engagement in learning, as well as each of the individual PLAY subscales, and children’s SEL skills (regressing SEL outcomes on PLAY classroom observation). We will use multilevel models to account for the nesting of children within classrooms.

This poster will present findings from the above analyses, and discuss implications for classroom quality measurement and intervention.

Authors

• Casey Moran, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Kate Schwartz, New York University

• Hirokazu Yoshikawa, New York University

• Andres Molano, Universidad de los Andes (Uniandes)