Children's ability to self-regulate serves as a foundation for their school success. Even in the earliest years of school, children's ability to stay on task, attend to learning goals, and participate actively in learning are critically important skills. Children's ability to self-regulate is multi-determined: child temperament, family interactions, and classroom experience are important predictors. Although some research has examined how the former factors relate to children's ability to self-regulate, surprisingly little is know about the ways in which teachers' promote this outcome. This basic information is critical for the development of interventions designed to enhance children's ability to self-regulate and learn in the classroom.
The present study examines the development of self-regulatory behaviors in kindergarten and first grade, with the goal of identifying the ways in which teachers' choice of activities and the quality of the classroom environments serve as mechanisms for facilitating children's development of these behaviors. First, this study examines the relation between teacher quality and children's behavioral self-regulatory abilities in classroom settings, such as seatwork, that place high demands on children's ability to self-regulate. Second, this study will examine growth in children's behavioral self-regulatory abilities in relation to their classroom experience between kindergarten and first grade. Third, this study will examine whether high quality classrooms compensate for children's lack of support for behavioral self-regulation in their home environment. Fourth, this study will examine whether children's behavioral self-regulation is an important variable explaining the relationship between classroom quality and academic achievement.
Dr. Sara Rimm-Kaufman and her team, with support from NSF will observe 256 children and their teachers eight times per year from kindergarten through first grade. Observations will take place at nine schools selected for their high concentration of children "at risk" for school failure. Further, questionnaire data on support for self-regulatory behaviors and children's classroom self-control will be collected from families and teachers respectively. Children's growth in achievement will be assessed using a standardized achievement test.
Findings will contribute to psychological and educational research that views schools and classrooms as social contexts for children's growth. This work will provide insight to how teachers create classroom environments conducive to children's learning of self-regulatory skills, particularly for children who are "at risk" for low self-regulatory competency. Further, this research will lead to a clearer understanding of the way in which schools promote the skills that forecast high performance on achievement tests and other highly visible indicators of school success.
