Listen to thisThe current emphasis on children's academic preparedness continues to overshadow the importance of children's social and emotional development for school readiness (Raver & Zigler, 1997). Research, however, indicates that young children's emotional adjustment matters – children who are emotionally well adjusted have a significantly greater chance of early school success, while children who experience serious emotional difficulty face grave risks of early school difficulty. This Digest presents a brief overview of longitudinal research linking children's emotional development to school readiness and early school success and then discusses interventions designed for children entering school.
Longitudinal research
Over the past 20 years, research has demonstrated that children's
emotional and social skills are linked to their early academic standing
(Wentzel & Asher, 1995). Children who have difficulty paying attention,
following directions, getting along with others, and controlling
negative emotions of anger and distress do less well in school (Arnold
et al., 1999; McClelland et al., 2000). For many children, academic
achievement in their first few years of schooling appears to be built on
a firm foundation of children's emotional and social skills (Ladd,
Kochenderfer, & Coleman, 1997; O'Neil et al., 1997). Specifically,
emerging research on early schooling suggests that the relationships
that children build with peers and teachers are based on children's
ability to regulate emotions in prosocial versus antisocial ways and
that those relationships then serve as a “source of provisions" that
either help or hurt children's chances of doing well academically (Ladd
et al., 1999, p. 1375). Psychologists find that children who act in
antisocial ways are less likely to be accepted by classmates and
teachers (Kupersmidt & Coie, 1990; Shores & Wehby, 1999). They
participate less frequently in classroom activities and do more poorly
in school than their more emotionally positive, prosocial counterparts,
even after one controls for the effects of children's preexisting
cognitive skills and family backgrounds (Ladd et al., 1999). One caveat
is that children's early academic skills and emotional adjustment may be
bidirectionally related, so that young children who struggle with early
reading and learning difficulties may grow increasingly frustrated and
more disruptive (Arnold et al., 1999; Hinshaw, 1992). Although our
understanding of the causal and reciprocal influences of children's
cognitive, language, and emotional competencies on later academic
achievement would greatly benefit from additional research, the bulk of
longitudinal evidence of the importance of social and emotional
adjustment for children's success in early academic contexts is
convincing and clear.
Interventions with children entering school
Given the evidence that children's emotional adjustment plays an
important part in predicting their likelihood of school success, the
next question is “How do we aid children to develop emotional competence
and avoid emotional difficulties so that they come to school ready to
learn?" Interventions have been implemented at the family, child care,
school, and clinical site levels to address these difficulties as
children enter school. (A detailed discussion of interventions designed
for children before they start school can be found in Raver [2002].)
Based on programmatic intensity, these programs include the following:
Low-Intensity Interventions in the Classroom. A wide range of
interventions identify children's entry into formal schooling as a prime
opportunity to affect children's social, emotional, and academic
competence. Some programs have been implemented to change the way that
children think about emotional and social situations. Using modeling,
role play, and group discussion, teachers can devote relatively small
amounts of class time to instruct children on how to identify and label
feelings, how to appropriately communicate with others about emotions,
and how to resolve disputes with peers (e.g., Conduct Problems
Prevention Research Group, 1999; Quinn et al., 1999). The potential gain
is that such programs can be offered to all children in a given
classroom for relatively low cost. The potential drawback is that these
programs may have only a modest, short-term impact on children's social
and emotional behaviors (Quinn et al., 1999).
Low- to moderate-intensity interventions in
the home
Based on a body of research that views parenting as playing a key role
in children's emotional adjustment, a number of interventions have been
designed to reduce children's risk for emotional difficulties by helping
parents to increase their positive interactions with their children, to
set firm limits on children's negative behaviors, and to reduce their
use of harsh parenting practices when the adults become angry or upset
(see, e.g., McEvoy & Welker, 2000). These programs vary in approach,
intensity, and the location in which they are implemented (e.g., home
visiting programs, telephone support, parenting skills workshops).
Generally, these programs have shown moderate success (Kazdin, 1987).
One concern is that the link between harsh parenting and children's
manifestation of behavior problems has been found to hold true for White
families but not African American families in some studies, suggesting
that interventions must be placed in culturally grounded frameworks
(Deater-Deckard & Dodge, 1997). A second concern is that the effects of
these programs may be more transitory than long lasting (Corcoran,
2000).
"Multi-Pronged" Home/School Interventions for Children at Moderate Risk. These programs address children's emotional and behavioral difficulties at home and in school. Although more costly to run and targeted at fewer children, these programs are expected to pay off in the long run by reducing the prevalence of costly outcomes such as criminal offenses and dropping-out of school (Kazdin, 1997; McEvoy & Welker, 2000). Results from a number of experimental studies (using randomized designs) suggest remarkable effectiveness of these multipronged programs in reducing children's disruptive behavior. These gains range from modest improvements to strong gains in children's social, emotional, and academic skills (Eddy et al., 2000; Stoolmiller et al., 2000; Webster-Stratton & Taylor, 2001). These programs have also shown effectiveness in reducing the likelihood that children will engage in delinquent behaviors (Stoolmiller et al., 2000) and in being held back a grade or more, than did the less-expensive, lower-intensity, classroom-only interventions described earlier (Vitaro et al., 1999). Some researchers, however, have pointed out that these findings are not sustained over longer periods of time, and that children's high school dropout rates are not significantly affected by the intervention program.
High-Intensity Clinical Interventions for High-Risk Children. A small percentage of young children in poverty struggle with serious emotional and behavioral disturbance. A range of programs are designed to lower the risk of young children's development of serious problems in families struggling with multiple, chronic stressors such as high risk of maltreatment, mental illness, substance abuse, and domestic violence. School-based mental health consultation programs, for example, pair psychologists, social workers, and psychiatrists with local school districts in order to identify, assess, and treat young children who are in serious emotional and behavioral trouble. Clinicians from local community mental health organizations observe classrooms, provide teachers with training, and provide child- and family-centered psychotherapy (Cohen & Kaufmann, 2000). As of this writing, no evaluations of school-based consultation programs using randomized trial design could be found; however, the potential for such programs seems promising.
Conclusion
How can we explain the varying levels of effectiveness that have been
demonstrated across different types of interventions? Three cautions are
offered to explain variation in programmatic success. First,
programmatic success is reliant in great measure on the extent to which
programs succeed in enlisting families' participation (Brooks-Gunn et
al., 2000). Second, it may be unreasonable to expect long-term emotional
and behavioral gains on the part of young children if their families
continue to face chronic, structural stressors that erode children's
psycho-social health. Third, we must recognize that the economic,
employment, and policy contexts of high-risk families have changed
substantially from the conditions under which many models of
interventions were originally designed and implemented over 20 years ago
(e.g., Olds et al., 1998). Even given these cautions, however, research
clearly demonstrates the importance of children's emotional adjustment
to early school success. This Digest was adapted from “Emotions matter:
Making the case for the role of young children's emotional development
for early school readiness," by C. Cybele Raver, in the Society for
Research in Child Development's Social Policy Report, 16(3), 3-19.
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