CHILDREN’S INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCES WITH TEACHERS: PRECURSORS AND ASSOCIATED OUTCOMES

Early care and education programs have demonstrated strong impacts on the development and school readiness of young children, with particular benefit for children growing up in poverty. Within these programs, teacher-child interactions have been identified as they key active ingredient underlying the impacts on children’s development. However, limitations in conceptualization and measurement have hindered efforts to elucidate the most important features of teacher-child interactions and for whom and under what conditions these beneficial interactions occur and demonstrate impact. Guided by the Bioecological Model and Differential Susceptibility Theory, this dissertation first provides a conceptual framework to guide the examination of individual children’s experiences with teachers and associations between individual experiences and development in preschool. The second paper utilizes a person-centered analytic approach to assess how multiple developmental characteristics of children associate with their individual experiences with teachers. Membership in the profile with low developmental skills across domains was associated with teacher reports of more conflict and less closeness and higher levels of observed conflict between teachers and children. The third paper examines the association between children’s self-regulation and growth in academic skills and whether children’s individual experiences with teachers mediates this association. Results provided little support for mediation, but indicated links between children’s self-regulation and some aspects of experiences with teachers and academic growth

Individual Myanmar Children's Experiences in Head Start Classrooms

BACKGROUND: Early childhood is a crucial period for children who are dual language learners (DLLs), struggling to learn the new language as well as other skills for school readiness. In contrast to comprehensive research in ECE, there are relatively few studies conducted with DLLs, and mainly for the Latino DLLs, no other language groups. Recently, Myanmar migrants are growing rapidly and make up 25% of the total migrant population in Tulsa (NBC news, 2017). Previous studies have shown that DLL children differ in various developmental outcomes because of a myriad of factors including poverty, systemic racism, and oppression. The researchers examined the classroom experiences of Myanmar children in a Head Start program by measuring their individual language use and level of engagement then, comparing them to other racial groups. METHODS: The participants included 3- and 4-year-old children (n=1,101) in a Head Start program in Northeast OK. The measure used the Child Observational Protocol, which involved 3-second sweeps which snapshots of individual children’s behavior across a period of time in the classroom. Observers spent approximately 4 hours in the classroom on a typical morning. All children in the classroom were observed and had an average of 9 sweeps per child. The current study specifically focused on the proportion of sweeps in which a child was listening to or talking to someone else in the classroom (in any language) and the proportion of sweeps a child was observed speaking in English. Descriptive analyses were conducted using ANOVA in SPSS. RESULTS: Results indicated that children who speak Myanmar at home had fewer times observational sweeps in which they were speaking in English (15%) compared to their African American and White peers (19-20%). However, whereas Latino children were observed more frequently to be neither speaking nor listening (45% of sweeps), Myanmar children were not significantly different than their Latino peers. Instead, Myanmar children were more likely to engage in passive instruction (15%) than their African American (10%) and White (12%) peers. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that Myanmar children who were enrolled in a Head Start program had bit fewer opportunities to practice their language skills and are less likely to be engaged in their classroom activities. Further research is needed to see whether these outcomes are due to language proficiency, cultural aspects, or influenced by others. This information also leads to the need for further study of how teachers interact in the classroom based on the racial groups.N

Supporting Children’s Healthy Development During Mealtime in Early Childhood Settings

The purpose of this study was to examine the frequency of and relationship between responsive feeding practices used during early childhood education (ECE) mealtimes and high-quality teaching practices and teacher characteristics. We found variation in teachers’ use of responsive feeding practices. Teachers were more often observed using role modeling than supporting eating self-regulation. Programs that implemented family style meal service had a generally higher use of responsive feeding practices. Overall, we found positive associations between high-quality teaching practices and responsive feeding practices. Teachers’ Head Start status was associated with teaching practices and role modeling during mealtime. Teachers’ education and salary were associated with high-quality teaching practices. This study highlights the possible training needs for teachers related to responsive feeding practices and the need to expand classroom quality assessment to incorporate classroom routines. Finally, this study sheds light on the importance of building better interdisciplinary partnerships to support teachers during mealtimes and to improve ECE mealtime practices in order to help promote optimal outcomes for children in all areas of development

Public Preschool Predicts Stronger Third-Grade Academic Skills

Public preschool boosts academic skills in kindergarten, but little is known about whether that boost lasts to third grade because many studies stop directly assessing children after kindergarten. The current study tests for sustained associations between preschool attendance and an array of repeatedly measured, directly assessed language and math skills; we do this separately for public pre-K and Head Start, the two major publicly funded preschool programs. We draw on a large, racially diverse sample of children from families with low incomes in Tulsa, OK (N = 689, M age at 3rd = 8.5 years). Using propensity score weighting, we compare children who attended school-based pre-K or Head Start to those who did not attend preschool. Both school-based pre-K and Head Start attenders outperformed preschool nonattenders on numeracy in third grade. There was weaker evidence of a sustained preschool advantage on language and literacy skills, and no evidence that associations differed by preschool program