Pieter Verachtert

Predicting School Adjustment in Early Elementary School: Impact of Teacher-Child Relationship Quality and Relational Classroom Climate.

This longitudinal study evaluated the impact of dyadic and classroom‐level teacher‐child relationship quality in first grade on childrens psychosocial and academic adjustment in first (N = 3,784), second (N = 3,666), and third (N = 3,582) grade, controlling for several child features, namely, child demographics and childrens initial levels of adjustment in kindergarten. Results of multilevel hierarchical regression analyses showed that first‐grade dyadic relationship variables (i.e., teacher‐child conflict and closeness) as well as classroom relational climate variables (i.e., the average level of teacher‐child conflict and closeness in the classroom) were associated with childrens psychosocial adjustment in the first years of primary school. Associations between first‐grade dyadic relationship quality and classroom relational climate, on the one hand, and academic achievement on the other, however, were negligible.

Season of birth and school success in the early years of primary education

Several studies have reported significant relationships between children’s season of birth and measures of their academic success (i.e., the ‘season of birth effect’). Whereas most of these studies were cross‐sectional, the current study uses growth curve modelling to analyse longitudinal data on 3,187 children in Flemish primary education. The results indicate season of birth effects on both grade retention and mathematics achievement during the first two years of primary school. Because the Flemish cut‐off date is 31 December, children born in the fourth quarter (October‐November‐December) invariably are among the youngest in their grade age group. Almost 20% of these children were found to have been retained or referred to special education by the end of Grade 2, whereas for children born in the first quarter (January‐February‐March), this was only 6.34%. First quarter‐born children also showed moderately higher mathematics achievement at the start of first grade. During the next two school years, this achievement gap between children born in the first and the fourth quarter narrowed significantly. Finally, differentiated instruction was not found to be related to the decrease of the season of birth effect.

A seasonal perspective on school effectiveness: evidence from a Flemish longitudinal study in kindergarten and first grade

Summer learning studies have been set up to investigate the evolution of initial group differences in academic achievement, for example, between low- and high-socioeconomic status (SES) children. Moreover, this approach has been used to demonstrate the absolute effect of going to school on childrens learning. In the present study, we used multilevel piecewise linear growth modeling to analyze growth in mathematics skills throughout kindergarten and 1st grade. First, we added to the evidence of an absolute schooling effect by demonstrating that average learning rates were faster during both school years than during the intervening summer vacation. Second, mathematics achievement gaps between children from different socioeconomic, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds were found to remain stable during kindergarten and the summer vacation. During 1st grade, however, the ethnic and linguistic achievement gaps disappeared, whereas the SES achievement gap remained unchanged. Finally, we found no evidence for school-level variation in summer learning rates.