Poster #41 - Integrated Relationships matter in Early Head Start Programs: Associations with child social competence

• In Event: Poster Session 16

Abstract

Enhancing social emotional skills and preventing maladaptive patterns is critical for young children; socially and emotionally competent infants and toddlers demonstrate more positive developmental trajectories in preschool and beyond (Bohlin et al., 2009). The quality of the relationships that children experience in their early lives impacts their developing competence, and children observe and interact in a web of integrated relationships that may can collectively enhance or potentially stifle their learning (Kim and Sheridan, 2015; McWayne, 2015). Early Head Start (EHS) programs which serve pregnant woman and families with infants and toddlers provide comprehensive two-generation services to promote well-being of both parents and children who are economically disadvantaged. In EHS, family-teacher relationships are critical to successfully implement early intervention services and it can enhance parent-child and teacher-child relationships which can lead to positive social-emotional development of infants and toddlers. A small body of research has examined how family- teacher relationships affect caregivers’ dyadic relationships with children (Lang et al., 2020), however we do not yet know how the holistic relationship dynamic (parent-teacher, parent-child, and teacher-child) affects infants and toddlers’ social-emotional development in EHS programs. Thus, this study examined how family-teacher relationships may directly affect children’s social competence, and may indirectly affect social-competence through parent-child and teacher-child relationships.

Method
Data for the present study is from the Early Head Start Family and Child Experiences Study 2018 (Baby FACES 2018; Cannon et al., 2020). This study includes 137 EHS programs, 859 teachers and 1509 infants and toddlers who attended EHS center-based programs in 2018-2019. We used data from parents and teachers survey for the main study variables for this study. First, for parent-teacher relationship we used the Cocaring Relationship Questionnaire-Adapted (CRQ-Adapted: Lang et al., 2015, 2017) scores from parents and teachers, separately. Second, for teacher-child relationship, we used STRS-SF, teacher’s perceptions of their relationships with individual children in the classroom (Pianta, 2001) and for parent-child relationship, we used Child-Parent Relationship Scale (CPRS). As the final outcome, we used child social-competence from the Brief Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment (BITSEA).

Results and discussion
We employed a latent structure equation model (SEM) to identify how complex relationship factors affect child social-emotional development in EHS (see Figure 1). Results showed that teacher-perceived parent-teacher relationship affected both parent-child and teacher child relationships as well as directly affected child social-competence. Parent-child relationship and teacher-child relationship both were positively associated with child social-competence. In addition, parent perceived and teacher perceived relationships were associated with each other and parent-child and teacher child relationship were associated each other. Our preliminary results provide additional evidence in support of the Parent, Family, and Community Engagement Framework (Head Start, Early Childhood Learning & Knowledge Center, 2022), and highlight that fostering positive family-teacher partnerships may be a critical way to enhance the quality of infants’ and toddlers’ experiences at home, within their center, both directly and indirectly enhancing their positive social-emotional development.

Authors

• Shinyoung Jeon, University of Oklahoma
  Presenting Author

• Sarah Naomi Lang, Ohio State University

• Hong Li, University of Oklahoma