Exploring social-emotional strengths and challenges among bilingual children

• In Event: Strength-Based Approaches to Cultivate Social and Emotional Skills and Ethical Character in Middle School Students

Abstract

Background: The number of bilingual students in the United States has increased dramatically over the last decade (NCES, 2020). Evidence indicates that the ability to learn and use more than one language shapes many aspects of child development that are associated with academic readiness and success, including social and emotional resilience (Hass & Kennedy, 2014). With a growing emphasis on promoting social-emotional learning and positive mental health in educational settings (The Aspen Institute, 2018), it is important to understand how factors such as bilingualism potentially moderate developmental effects to better support student learning (Byers-Heinlein et al., 2019). The present study examined data from widely used self-assessments of social-emotional and mental health disaggregated by bilingual status.

Methods: Self-report data (Table 1) were collected from 6,695 students ages 9 to 18 (48.7% female) who completed the 61-item Holistic Student Assessment (HSA), a measure of social-emotional resilience (Noam et al., 2012), and the 25-item Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), a screen for emotional and behavioral symptoms (Goodman, 2001). All surveys were presented in English, and students who indicated that they spoke a language other than English at home were considered bilingual. Two-way ANOVA was used to determine whether social-emotional skills differed by bilingual status (bilingual or monolingual) and whether bilingualism interacted with gender (male or female).

Results: About one in six students reported speaking a language other than English at home. Different patterns of social-emotional strengths and challenges emerged by bilingual status, gender, and grade. Overall, the most frequently reported strengths were Emotion Control, Empathy, and Relationships with Peers. Monolingual students rated six out of 14 social-emotional skills higher—and two out of five mental health risks lower—than their bilingual peers. Bilingual students reported fewer symptoms of hyperactivity/inattention than their monolingual peers (Table 2). Bilingual females reported lower Trust than monolingual females and all males. Grade-by-grade analyses were conducted to examine developmental nuances in social-emotional skills, with a special focus on Grades 5 to 7 (late childhood to early adolescence) as this group comprised the majority of the sample. The finding that monolingual students reported more resiliencies and fewer risks persisted across grades, but each grade showed a different profile of strengths and challenges.

Conclusion: Understanding patterns of strengths and challenges amongst bilingual children can advance child development research and practice by providing a sense of what is typical in a group of students who speak a different language than English at home. The present results indicated that monolingual students tended to rate specific social-emotional skills higher—and mental health risks lower—than their bilingual peers, with the exception of hyperactivity/inattention. This kind of information can help teachers and school support staff identify ways of leveraging students’ social and emotional skills toward further social, emotional, and academic growth. These results also underscore the need for more focused and precise studies—especially as the indicator used here does not account for variation in languages spoken or proficiency—to understand how language and culture relates to the development of social, emotional, and academic resilience.

Authors

• Patricia J Allen, The PEAR Institute: Partnerships in Education and Resilience, McLean Hospital, Belmont, MA; Harvard
  Presenting Author

• Hannah Meisels, McLean Hospital, PEAR
  Non-Presenting Author

• Abigail Bergman, other
  Non-Presenting Author

• Gil G. Noam, Harvard University
  Non-Presenting Author