Matching Items (7)
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- All Subjects: Early Childhood Education
- Creators: Eisenberg, Nancy
- Creators: Bradley, Robert
Description
Guided by Belsky's Determinants of Parenting Process Model, the goal of the present study was to examine how mothers' personality (i.e., Conscientiousness) and behaviors (i.e., sensitivity, structure, and negative control) relate to children's developmental outcomes, such as internalization (i.e., committed compliance and effortful control) and academic adaptation. A multi-method, longitudinal model included five waves of data to examine the processes of the relations among variables. Mothers' Conscientiousness was measured via self-reported data when children were 18 months of age (N = 256), mothers' parenting behaviors were measured through observational laboratory tasks when children were 30 months (N = 230), children's internalization was measured using mothers' and caregivers' reports as well as observational data at 42 months (N = 210), and children's school adaptation was measured when children were 72 and 84 months (Ns = 169 and 144) using mothers' and teachers' reports. Through a series of regression analyses, the results supported the mediated effect of effortful control in the relation between mothers' behaviors and children's school adaptation. As hypothesized, mothers' Conscientiousness marginally predicted children's internalization. Contrary to hypotheses, mothers' Conscientiousness was unrelated to parenting behaviors and children's academic adaptation. Mothers' sensitivity interacted with maternal structure to predict children's effortful control. Socioeconomic status and child sex interacted with mothers' behaviors in predicting the child's committed compliance. The discussion focuses on the unique role of parenting practices and personality on children's internalization and academic adaptation and on the existing literature. Implications of the study for clinicians and intervention researchers are offered.
ContributorsKopystynska, Olena (Author) / Spinrad, Tracy L. (Thesis advisor) / Eisenberg, Nancy (Committee member) / Valiente, Carlos (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Preschool teachers have the opportunity to facilitate children's play with a variety of classroom activities. Preschool activities can be categorized as masculine, feminine, and gender-neutral based on children's preferences. Understanding how and why teachers facilitate children's play with feminine, masculine, and gender-neutral activities is important because children's engagement in gender typed activities has been linked to cognitive development. The current study extends previous and outdated research on teachers' engagement in gender-typed classroom activities by using a teacher-focal observational coding system and survey data to assess the frequency at which, with whom, and why teachers facilitate feminine, masculine, and gender-neutral activities. Results reveal teachers facilitate gender-neutral and masculine activities more frequently than feminine activities. However, facilitation of these activities is qualified by with whom the teacher interacts and the classroom context. During free play, teachers facilitate gender-typed activities in stereotypic ways, facilitating masculine activities with boys more than with girls and feminine activities with girls more than with boys. Although, during structured settings, teachers do not facilitate masculine and feminine activities at different frequencies. Finally, in both free play and structured settings, teachers' gender attitudes do not seem to be strong predictors of their facilitation of gender-typed and gender-neutral activities with the exception of teachers' facilitation of feminine activities during structured settings. The present findings address important issues in educational and developmental research by investigating teachers' gendered classroom practices.
ContributorsGranger, Kristen L (Author) / Hanish, Laura (Thesis advisor) / Bradley, Robert (Committee member) / Kornienko, Olga (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Researchers who have previously explored the relation of broad-based temperamental approach constructs, such as surgency/extraversion, exuberance, or behavioral approach sensitivity, to academic competence (AC) in early elementary school have often found conflicting results. Moreover, few researchers have examined the interaction between these approach reactivity constructs and effortful control (EC) in the prediction of AC. The goal of the current study was to examine the fine-tuned relations of different aspects of temperamental approach reactivity in early childhood (42 and 54 months; N=223), such as impulsivity, frustration, and positive affect, as well as EC, to AC during early elementary school (72 and 84 months). Examining the complex relations may clarify the literature using broad-based approach reactivity constructs. Temperament was observed in the laboratory when children were 54 months of age. Mothers and caregivers also reported on children's impulsivity at 42 and 54 months. School-related behavioral adjustment was reported by children, mothers, and teachers, and GPA was reported by teachers at 72 and 84 months. The results of the study indicated that positive affect, EC, and receptive language ability were the only unique direct predictors of school adjustment and/or GPA. Without EC in the model, only positive affect and vocabulary predicted AC. Frustration, positive affect, and impulsivity each interacted with EC to predict AC outcomes, such EC was only related to higher AC for children with high impulsivity or anger, or low positive affect. Additionally, positive affect and impulsivity interacted to predict GPA, such that impulsivity was positively related to GPA for children with high positive affect, but it was negatively, albeit nonsignificantly, associated with GPA for children with low positive affect. These results were found to be similar for boys and girls. Finding are discussed in terms of the developmental importance of early EC for academic competence for children who have high approach reactivity, as well as the interactive effects of dimensions of approach reactivity on academic achievement.
ContributorsVanSchyndel, Sarah (Author) / Eisenberg, Nancy (Thesis advisor) / Spinrad, Tracy L. (Committee member) / Valiente, Carlos (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This dissertation examines Japanese preschool teachers' cultural practices and beliefs about the pedagogy of social-emotional development. The study is an interview-based, ethnographic study, which is based on the video-cued mutivocal ethnographic method. This study focuses on the emic terms that Japanese preschool teachers use to explain their practices, such as amae (dependency), omoiyari (empathy), sabishii (loneliness), mimamoru (watching and waiting) and garari (peripheral participation). My analysis suggests that sabishii, amae, and omoiyari form a triad of emotional exchange that has a particular cultural patterning and salience in Japan and in the Japanese approach to the socialization of emotions in early childhood. Japanese teachers think about the development of the class as a community, which is different from individual-centric Western pedagogical perspective that gives more attention to each child's development. Mimamoru is a pedagogical philosophy and practice in Japanese early childhood education. A key component of Japanese teachers' cultural practices and beliefs about the pedagogy of social-emotional development is that the process requires the development not only of children as individuals, but also of children in a preschool class as a community. In addition, the study suggests that at a deeper level these emic concepts reflect more general Japanese cultural notions of time, space, sight, and body. This dissertation concludes with the argument that teachers' implicit cultural practices and beliefs is "A cultural art of teaching." Teachers' implicit cultural practices and beliefs are harmonized in the teachers' mind and body, making connections between them, and used depending on the nuances of a situation, as informed by teachers' conscious and unconscious thoughts. The study has also shown evidence of similar practices and logic vertically distributed within Japanese early childhood education, from the way teachers act with children, to the way directors act with teachers, to the way government ministries act with directors, to the way deaf and hearing educators act with their deaf and hearing students. Because these practices are forms of bodily habitus and implicit Japanese culture, it makes sense that they are found across fields of action.
ContributorsHayashi, Akiko (Author) / Tobin, Joseph (Thesis advisor) / Eisenberg, Nancy (Committee member) / Nakagawa, Kathryn (Committee member) / Fischman, Gustavo (Committee member) / Swadener, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This thesis was an analysis of items in the Late Adolescent Home Observation for Measure of the Environment (LA HOME) after the first wave of N = 138 interviews. The purpose of this project was to learn how to utilize a statistical software such as SPSS to analyze items and interpret results. Frequency analysis, inter-rater reliability (IRR), correlation analysis, internal consistency using Cronbach's alpha, and feedback from research assistants were considered when deciding which items should be eliminated from the measure. After running these analyses, ten items were suggested for deletion including: clean, adolescent's room allows for privacy, reference materials, news, family encourages adolescent to think independently, community service, parent knows where adolescent spends time, weekly household responsibilities, school/career planning, and dentist. Future interviews generating a larger sample size as well as discussions and subsequent revisions to the manual will clarify additional items that may be eliminated from the final version of the instrument.
ContributorsMiller, Ava Kathryn (Author) / Bradley, Robert (Thesis director) / Spinrad, Tracy (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Social-emotional competence (SEC), or effectiveness of social interaction, plays a central role in children’s health and well-being. The three goals of the current study were to describe the development of SEC during a preschool year; identify an appropriate factor structure for observed teacher-child interactions; and predict SEC growth from children’s characteristics (emotional competence, language risk, gender, and race/ethnicity), teacher-child relationship quality, and classroom characteristics (relational climate, observed teacher-child interaction quality, and curriculum). Children’s social competence, anger/aggression, effortful control, and emotion knowledge (N =822) was assessed at three time points during a preschool year via teachers’ reports and behavioral assessments. In the fall, teachers reported the quality of their relationships with children and teacher-child interactions were observed in classrooms. Aim 1 results indicated that children exhibited linear increases in effortful control and social competence and stability in anger/aggression, although social competence was the only construct where linear change varied among children. Due to a lack of longitudinal measurement invariance, growth in latent emotion knowledge could not be evaluated. Several gender and racial/ethnic differences were identified in SEC intercepts, but not the social competence slope. Language risk and impulsivity were consistent predictors of SEC intercepts. Aim 2 results indicated that teacher-child interaction quality was primarily unidimensional. Finally, results from aim 3 indicated that children’s emotional competence at the beginning of the year and classroom relational climate were predictive of growth in social competence. End-of-year social competence levels were associated with supportive teacher-child relationship quality (particularly among girls), high emotional competence, low language risk, and supportive classroom relational climate; girls had higher social competence than boys. Although not directly associated with social competence, observed teacher-child interaction quality was conditionally predictive of the social competence in the context of supportive teacher-child relationships. Further, when observed teacher-child interaction quality was average or high, children with low emotional competence exhibited greater growth in social competence than children with high emotional competence. The results inform our understanding of SEC development, the nature of teacher-child interactions in preschool classrooms serving high-risk populations, and potential school-based mechanisms for promoting social competence.
ContributorsJohns, Sarah Katherine (Author) / Eisenberg, Nancy (Thesis advisor) / Spinrad, Tracy L. (Committee member) / Bradley, Robert H. (Committee member) / Grimm, Kevin J. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
The goal of this study was to illuminate areas of strength within a sample of Hispanic, Spanish-speaking children (n = 446) from the early head start research and evaluation project, a multi method, multi reporter longitudinal study that involved children starting at 14-months through pre-kindergarten, with a 5th grade follow up assessment. A longitudinal path model examined relations between external factors (i.e., parent warmth and responsivity, home cognitive and language environment, child-directed speech), and internal factors (i.e., child self-regulation), and Spanish language before kindergarten, and English language at 5th grade. In addition to direct paths, indirect paths were included from external factors to language outcomes through self-regulation and Spanish language. After controlling for important demographic variables, analyses indicated that parents’ warmth and responsivity was directly related to children’s self-regulation and children’s English language proficiency in 5th grade. Home environment and self-regulation were directly related to children’s Spanish language proficiency. Children’s Spanish language proficiency was directly related to English language proficiency. Significant indirect effects emerged between parent warmth and responsivity to both Spanish and English language via children’s self-regulation. Results additionally evidenced significant indirect paths from home environment and self-regulation to English language through Spanish language. Direct paths between parent warmth/responsivity and Spanish language, home environment and English language, and child-directed speech and child regulation, Spanish language, and English language were not significant. Implications include current and future interventions targeted at bolstering parent-child interactions and regulation skills and to promote early educational programs supportive of both heritage and second languages.
ContributorsLopez, Jamie Theresa (Author) / Spinrad, Tracy (Thesis advisor) / Bernstein, Katie (Committee member) / Bradley, Robert (Committee member) / Swanson, Jodi (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021