Elizabeth A. Cottone

Relationships Between Teachers and Preschoolers Who Are At Risk: Contribution of Children's Language Skills, Temperamentally Based Attributes, and Gender

Research Findings: The teacher–child relationship can provide an important support to young children who exhibit developmental risk. This research studied the contribution of childrens language skills, temperamentally based attributes (shyness, anger), and gender to closeness and conflict in the teacher–child relationship for 133 preschoolers attending programs serving at-risk children. The results showed that both language comprehension (positive predictor) and shyness (negative predictor) were significantly linked to closeness in the teacher–child relationship. An additional result was that children who displayed greater anger within the classroom had relationships with their teachers characterized by higher levels of conflict, and both gender and language expression served as moderators for the relationship between anger and teacher–child conflict. Practice or Policy: These findings are important for considering how various skills and attributes of preschool children may contribute to their formation of trusting and secure relationships with their classroom teachers.

Visuomotor Integration and Inhibitory Control Compensate for Each Other in School Readiness.

Visuomotor integration (VMI), or the ability to copy designs, and 2 measures of executive function were examined in a predominantly low-income, typically developing sample of children (n = 467, mean age 4.2 years) from 5 U.S. states. In regression models controlling for age and demographic variables, we tested the interaction between visuomotor integration (design copying) and inhibitory control (pencil-tap) or verbal working memory (digit span) on 4 directly assessed academic skills and teacher-reported approaches to learning. Compared with children with both poor visuomotor integration and low inhibitory control, those on the higher end of the continuum in at least 1 of these 2 skills performed better across several dependent variables. This compensatory pattern was evident for longitudinal improvement in print knowledge on the Test of Preschool Early Literacy (TOPEL), with similar though marginally significant findings for improvement in phonological awareness (TOPEL) and teacher-rated approaches to learning on the Preschool Learning Behaviors Scale (PLBS). Of note, the same compensatory pattern emerged for concurrently measured receptive vocabulary on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), expressive vocabulary on the Woodcock-Johnson III (WJ), TOPEL phonological awareness, and teacher-rated approaches to learning. The consistent pattern of results suggests that strong visuomotor integration skills are an important part of school readiness, and merit further study.

Preschoolers' Emergent Literacy Skills: The Mediating Role of Maternal Reading Beliefs.

Research Findings: The purpose of this paper is to explore the association between maternal reading beliefs and childrens emergent literacy outcomes in light of maternal education. Furthermore, I consider whether maternal reading beliefs may mediate the association between maternal education level and childrens print knowledge and phonological awareness while classroom quality, maternal literacy practices, gender, and ethnicity are controlled. Data were collected from a socioeconomically diverse population of 92 mothers and their preschool children from 2 demographically different counties in a Mid-Atlantic state. Correlations among all measures were moderate and positive, with higher levels of maternal education associated with higher scores on a maternal beliefs measure and higher child scores on a print knowledge and phonological awareness measure. Maternal reading beliefs mediated the effects of maternal education level on childrens print knowledge and phonological awareness. This pathway remained in the presence of the 4 covariates for print knowledge only. Practice or Policy: These findings have important implications for practitioners as they work to involve parents in students’ literacy development by creating parent training programs that not only integrate but also highlight and even shape maternal reading beliefs.

Psychometric Properties of the Teacher-Reported Motor Skills Rating Scale

Children’s early motor competence is associated with social development and academic achievement. However, few studies have examined teacher reports of children’s motor skills. This study evaluated the psychometric properties of the Motor Skills Rating Scale (MSRS), a 19-item measure of children’s teacher-reported motor skills in the classroom. Results of a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) support the validity of the three-factor structure of MSRS. The subscales of the MSRS were also associated with child academic and behavioral outcomes, with differences in the associations depending on the subscale. Only the Classroom Fine Motor skills subscale was uniquely associated with academic knowledge and mathematics achievement, whereas Body Awareness and Shapes and Letters were not significantly associated with either of the academic outcomes. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Preliminary Validation of the Motor Skills Rating Scale

This study examined psychometric properties of the Motor Skills Rating Scale (MSRS), a questionnaire designed for classroom teachers of children in early elementary school. Items were developed with the guidance of two occupational therapists, and factor structure was examined with an exploratory factor analysis (EFA). The resulting model showed good fit with 19 items that loaded on 3 subscales: Shapes and Letters, Classroom Fine Motor, and Body Awareness. In tests of concurrent criterion validity, each scale was correlated in the expected direction with direct assessments of children’s (N = 242) visuospatial processing, sensorimotor functioning, and executive function (EF) obtained using a direct neuropsychological assessment. Children with higher ratings on the Classroom Fine Motor scale of the MSRS also had higher teacher-rated and directly assessed mathematics achievement. Study findings provided preliminary support for the utility and validity of a brief teacher report of elementary children’s motor skills.

An after-school intervention targeting executive function and visuospatial skills also improves classroom behavior:

Executive function (EF) describes a complex set of skills, including flexible attention, inhibitory control, and working memory, that coordinate to achieve behavioral regulation. Visuospatial skills (VS) describe the capacity to visually perceive and understand spatial relationships among objects. Emerging research suggests VS skills are associated with classroom functioning, including behavioral adjustment. Children from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to enter school with EF and VS deficits, with consequences for classroom adjustment. In response, we developed and experimentally tested an after-school intervention that incorporates fine and gross motor activities targeting EF and VS skills in a sample of 87 kindergarten and first-grade students from low-income communities. The aim of the present study was to preliminarily explore whether EF and VS skills were bolstered by the intervention and subsequently whether EF and VS skills mediate or moderate intervention impacts on learning-related and problem behaviors in the classroom. Intent-to-treat analyses confirm intervention effects for EF and VS skills. Using full information maximum likelihood and bias-corrected bootstrapping, results indicate that improvements in EF mediated the impact of assignment to the treatment condition on improvements in learning-related behaviors and reductions in problem behavior. Taken together, findings suggest out-of-school contexts are a reasonable point of intervention for improving daytime classroom behavior.

Examining the Validity of a Multidimensional Performance-Based Assessment at Kindergarten Entry

The present study explored the utility of a widely used performance-based assessment of children’s readiness skills as a kindergarten entry assessment. In a sample of 520 kindergarten students across 52 classrooms, we compared students’ school readiness skills as assessed by teachers using Teaching Strategies GOLD (TS GOLD) to direct assessments administered by independent data collectors. We found evidence of the concurrent validity of TS GOLD. However, the measure demonstrated weaknesses in its ability to differentiate readiness skills. Specifically, the highly correlated latent constructs and intraclass correlations associated with TS GOLD indicated that teachers were less likely to differentiate readiness skills among children within the same classroom relative to direct assessments. The findings are discussed in terms of assessing children’s school readiness at scale. As the number of programs, districts, and states that require school readiness assessments increases, so does the need to better understand the information that can be inferred from particular methods of assessment.

Preliminary Validation of the Teacher-Rated DESSA in a Low-Income, Kindergarten Sample:

This study investigated the measurement of social emotional competence in low-income youth by assessing the validity of responses derived from the widely used, teacher-rated Devereux Student Strengths Assessment (DESSA). Based on the five-component social emotional learning model proposed by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, the teacher-rated DESSA shows promise as an easy-to-administer, strengths-based assessment tool for teachers from low-income communities. In a sample of 313 kindergarten students from a southeastern city, three competing measurement models were tested (one-factor, correlated five-factor, and higher order five-factor) using confirmatory factor analyses. Results revealed that, relative to the one-factor model, the higher order five-factor framework had the best model-data fit, although the first-order factors were highly correlated with the second-order factor. Furthermore, zero-order correlations showed that the DESSA was associated with both direct and teacher-reported measures of school-related outcomes. Implications for practice and directions for future research are discussed.