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Children’S Psychological Adjustment To Entry Into Kindergarten
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Word Count: 1391
Page Count: 6 Children’S Psychological Adjustment To Entry Into Kindergarten
Children’S Psychological Adjustment To Entry Into Kindergarten
Michael Burkhardt
Page 2
From an ecological perspective, early childhood development occurs within the multiple contexts of the home, the school, and the neighborhood, and aspects of these environments can contribute to the development of adjustment problems (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). A child’s psychological adjustment to entry into school for the first time can have a significant impact on the level of success achieved later in life. Children rated higher in school adjustment by their elementary school teachers, as a result of improved cognitive development, showed positive attitudes toward school resulting in better school performance which lead to higher educational attainment and lower delinquency at age 19. Not one factor alone accounts for children’s adjustment problems. Therefore it is important that we take a closer look at a wide range of factors that can affect the psychological adjustment to school in early childhood. Ladd, Birch, & Buhs derived a child x environment model of early school adaptation that breaks these factors into five categories: children’s entry factors, behavioral styles, relationships with classroom peers and teachers, classroom participation, and achievement.
A child’s entry factors are those attributes that are present in the child prior to entry into school, but impact the child’s psychological adaptation after entry into school. Children that enter school with greater cognitive and linguistic maturity tend to form better relationships with teachers and perform better scholastically. Typically, girls are known to establish supportive ties with teachers, more often than boys (Birch and Ladd, 1997) because of their cognitive/linguistic maturity making gender an entry factor as well. Preschool experience is said to be an entry factor, which is the basis of Arthur J. Reynolds studies in 1996. Reynolds investigated the effects of preschool intervention versus school achievement in the sixth grade. Because of
Michael Burkhardt
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cognitive readiness at kindergarten entry due to preschool, children in the sixth grade showed significantly higher reading and math achievement with a lower incidence of grade retention. Evidence suggests that early school adjustment is positively associated with parental education, socioeconomic status, and children’s ethnicity (Ladd, 1987; Reynolds, 1991). These environmental entry factors are relative to the challenges of school and influence early adaptation. Parental education and income may afford advantages that lead to cognitive maturity prior to entry into kindergarten. A low socioeconomic status may produce increased stress in a family as well as diminished resources, and may influence the child through parenting practices and lack of warmth and acceptance. In American society, certain ethnic minorities have increased risk to psychological problems due to race discrimination and prejudice. This results in a higher amount of behavioral problems and lower academic achievement. These environmental entry factors effect a child’s psychological adjustment indirectly due to the many contributing factors to be considered. The socioeconomic status includes many demographic factors including: single parent families or larger families which mean decreased attention toward the child, amount of income or resources available toward developing the child’s cognitive ability, violence or other social practices within the child’s neighborhood that could lead to increased behavioral problems, and the mother’s age at childbirth which can affect parenting abilities since young mother’s are generally more likely to have had difficulties in school and live in poor neighborhoods as well as emotional difficulties.
Behavioral styles are the tools children use to confront challenges in school such as the formation of relationships with new classmates and teachers. Being rejected by a peer group or having a conflict with the teacher may cause the child to feel a lack of security or acceptance and
Michael Burkhardt
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promote maladjustment. Children appear to be better adjusted toward kindergarten when they have formed close rather than conflicting ties with their teachers (Birch & Ladd, 1996). Maladjustment is prevalent among children who remain friendless or are rejected by their classmates. The determinants in deciding the behavior type a child will pursue is based upon the notion to maximize rewards such as fun, arousal and common interests and minimize costs such as punishment and negative affective states. Antisocial behavior is found in those children whose style of relating produces a higher ratio of costs, and conversely pro-social behavior is found in those children who style o..
...f relating produces a higher amount of rewards. The better-adjusted children display pro-social behavior and form relationships with their peers and teachers resulting in a higher scholastic achievement level.
A complex network of influences initiates the effects of early preschool intervention over time rather than by any single mechanism (Reynolds, 1996). Reynolds studied school achievement in the sixth grade and the impact of early childhood programs. The results of Reynolds studies were to answer three questions: Do preschool participants perform better than non-preschool participants in school achievement?, Do family-process and cognitive factors mediate the effects of preschool intervention?, and Are the effects stable from early childhood to middle childhood?. The factors that influence achievement in the 6th grade were cognitive readiness at kindergarten entry, and parent involvement in school. The results were that the family support hypothesis and the cognitive advantage hypothesis were not sufficient enough to determine preschool effectiveness. Reynolds went on to learn that teacher ratings of school adjustment show that preschool graduates are more likely to come to school ready to learn, and parental involvement is more likely to lead to higher school achievement. Reynolds was able to
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determine that preschool does help to make psychological adjustment to school easier, not only by providing a cognitive advantage but also through parental involvement. His studies were the first to test different hypotheses of mechanisms of preschool effectiveness, and are more contemporary than previous studies.
Mark Greenberg’s studies were similar to that of Reynolds with the exception that Greenberg gathered his results from the first grade using risk factors to predict children’s psychological and academic outcomes. The study used a regression model to assess the following ecobehavioral risks: demographics, family psychosocial status, mother’s depressive symptoms, and neighborhood quality. Family psychosocial context, and neighborhood quality predicted unique variance in a child’s academic and social functioning. Family psychosocial context includes risk factors such as: negative life events, marital problems, the quality of social support, and the quality of the environment. Negative life events can be used to predict a child’s aggression, social adaptation, and intellectual functioning. Children who have been exposed to marital conflict show a direct relation to poor psychological adjustment and poor cognitive performance. The physical environment of the home, play environment and physical safety, is an important predictor of success in adaptation, more so than community violence (Greenberg, 1999). Using participant perceptions and an objective rating of the neighborhood quality, Greenberg was able to determine that poverty and crime have been related to higher levels of stress, exposure to violence, and the child’s psychological adjustment. One last factor to look at is that Greenberg took a notable consideration to gender in regard to school adjustment. His studies demonstrated that boys are more vulnerable than girls and that boys have more adjustment problems. Greenberg notes that it is possible that boys and girls have different
Michael Burkhardt
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developmental pathways to externalizing problems, but there have not been enough studies to determine if risk factors affect boys and girls differently.
The purpose of these studies were to determine the factors that influence a child’s psychological adjustment to entry into kindergarten and to determine if the adjustment has an effect on the overall education of the child. By reviewing these studies, I have learned that a child’s psychological adjustment can be positively affected by participating in a preschool program, environmental factors, such as marital problems at home and neighborhood violence can negatively affect a child’s psychological adjustment, and no one factor alone affects a child’s adjustment into kindergarten. A child’s relationship with peers and teachers has a direct relationship with psychological adjustment and academic success. All of the factors show relevance in academic success not only in kindergarten but also through middle childhood. Some studies have shown relationships between adjustment to kindergarten and academic success in nineteen year olds as well. The continuing studies of psychological adjustment to entry into the academic world are just beginning to scratch the surface on the amount of environmental and biological factors involved, and will one day be the basis of accurately predicting the academic success of a child within his or her first year of school.
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