3-021 - Environmental Context, Executive Function, and Academic Achievement

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

This symposium brings together four longitudinal studies testing the relations among children's environmental context, executive functions (EF), and academic competence, with a focus on mediating pathways.

In the first paper, the authors test whether children's executive function at age 5 mediates the longitudinal relationship between parenting prior to age 3 and academic achievement at age 6. While controlling for prior levels of all constructs, mediation was supported for math, but not reading. In the second paper, the authors examine similar questions about whether EF mediates the relationship between 3rd-6th grade teachers' instructional support and classroom organization and children's math and English achievement, while controlling for prior levels of achievement. In this study, the mediation hypothesis was supported for both math and English. In the third paper, the authors examine whether the relationship between neighborhood college degree attainment and academic achievement in Head Start is mediated by EF. In this study, neighborhood college degree attainment and EF were independently predictive of academic outcomes, but there was no support for the mediation hypotheses. In the final paper, the authors examine the longitudinal associations among teacher-child relationship closeness and conflict, child EF, and child academic achievement across three waves of data collection in kindergarten and first grade. While controlling for prior levels of all variables, conflict predicted later reading, but not math, and closeness was unrelated to the later academic variables. Results of these papers help clarify the role that EF plays in either complementing or explaining contextual effects on children's academic achievement.

Sub Unit

• Education, Schooling

Chair

• Michael J Sulik, New York University

Individual Presentations

• Longitudinal relations between sensitive parenting and children’s academic ability: Testing executive function as a mediator - Presenting Author: Michael J Sulik, New York University; M. Paula Daneri, New York University; Clancy B. Blair, New York University; William Roger Mills-Koonce, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro

• Classroom Quality and Academic Achievement in Middle Childhood: Mediation by Executive Functioning Skills - Presenting Author: Jenna Elizabeth Finch, Stanford University; Jelena Obradović, Stanford University

• How neighborhood factors and child executive function predict early academic outcomes for low-income children - Presenting Author: Jennifer K Finders, Oregon State University; Megan McClelland, Oregon State University

• Teacher-Child Relationships, Executive Function, and Academic Achievement: A Cross-lagged Model from Kindergarten to First-Grade - Presenting Author: Rachel McKinnon, New York University; Clancy B. Blair, New York University