Examination of a structured problem-solving flexibility task for assessing approaches to learning in young children: Relation to teacher ratings and children's achievement

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Abstract

This exploratory study used structured tasks as direct measures of approaches to learning to examine a potentially important domain of school readiness that is comprised of the multiple ways children engage in learning situations. A structured task designed to measure problem-solving flexibility was found to relate to a subset of a teacher rating system that included several aspects of approaches to learning; it predicted achievement both concurrently and 1 year later in a sample of 158 kindergarteners. The direct measure significantly added to the prediction of future achievement even after controlling for prior achievement, receptive vocabulary, and the more global teacher ratings. This study highlights the importance of approaches to learning and offers evidence for the potential of structured tasks to be developed to allow a multidimensional approach to the assessment of this important school readiness domain. Future efforts to guide and enhance children's successful transition into school are also discussed.

Introduction

In 1991, the National Education Goals Panel (NEGP) made the statement “All children will start school ready to learn” (NEGP, 1991, p. 4). Since then, great effort has been made in assessing school readiness. Several different approaches to defining and measuring readiness have been developed. In 1995, the NEGP (1995) issued a second report clarifying domains of readiness and refining the goals. The report included a list of recommended domains for assessing school readiness, which include: general knowledge/cognitive development, communication/language development, physical well-being and motor development, social/emotional development, and approaches to learning.

“Approaches to learning” is the newest and least researched domain of school readiness suggested by the NEGP (1991). The NEGP considers approaches to learning as a more general “umbrella-type” school readiness domain because it includes a variety of ideas about habits, patterns, attitudes, and characteristic styles of approaching and engaging in learning situations. While there is not yet complete agreement on the components of this domain, they typically include eagerness, curiosity, persistence, flexibility, inventiveness, engagement in a variety of new and familiar activities, preference for challenge, initiative, and self-direction (McDermott, 1999, Meisels et al., 1994, National Education Goals Panel, 1995).

Despite being the least understood and least researched school readiness domain, approaches to learning may be the most important for preparing at-risk children for the difficult transition into primary school. Unlike other readiness domains, approaches to learning components are domain-general. Learning to rhyme, for example, is an important preliteracy skill, but it will not contribute to other readiness domains such as social/emotional or motor development. Persistence and flexibility, on the other hand, are component skills that are important for learning in all school readiness domains. These skills may serve as causal protective resilience factors during the transition to school. In reviewing research on resiliency, Kraemer, Kazdin, Offord, Kessler, Jensen, & Kupfer, (1997) have suggested that risk factors be classified by whether the factor can change and whether risk changes when the factor is altered. Kramer et al. suggest three types of risk factors: fixed markers are those factors associated with a certain outcome but not demonstrated to change; variable markers are factors that can change but, when altered, do not alter the risk of the outcome; and causal factors are those that are possible to change and affect child outcomes when changed. While Kraemer et al. focused on risk factors, the same ideas of malleability and causality apply to protective factors. Few factors that could be termed causal have been discovered, especially protective factors (Huffman, Mehlinger, & Kerivan, 2000).

Approaches to learning may be such a malleable causal protective factor. Barnett, Bauer, Ehrhardt, Lentz, and Stollar (1996), for example, identified keystone variables that, if modified, could produce positive effects in the greatest number of other important variables, which can be behaviors, perceptions, or environmental characteristics. Much of what they describe can be argued to fall under the umbrella term of approaches to learning. In addition, research conducted with school-age children provides empirical support for the modifiability of approaches to learning behaviors (Barnett et al., 1996, Engelmann et al., 1979, Stott, 1978, Stott, 1981) and, when modified, accounts for aspects of school performance that are independent of cognitive ability and intelligence (McDermott, 1984, Shaefer & McDermott, 1999).

One developmental period where keystone variables can play a critical role is during the transition into public school. Successful transition during the first few years of school is a challenging experience for most children (Logue & Love, 1992, Ramey & Ramey, 1994). The experience is especially difficult for children whose coping ability is already taxed by difficult circumstances and events within their family or community (Ramey & Ramey, 1999, Ramey et al., 1998). Resilience is often conceptualized as positive adaptation or development in spite of significant stress, adversity, trauma, or other threat to the individual (Masten & Coatsworth, 1998). Because the transition to school is difficult, especially for at-risk children, those who successfully make this transition may be deemed resilient. In addition, how children face these challenges and ultimately make the transition into school is important to later school adjustment and success in school and work settings (Kagan & Neuman, 1997, Ramey & Ramey, 1994, Ramey et al., 1998). If component skills of approaches to learning prove to be modifiable causal protective factors that promote resiliency in the transition to school for preschool children, then they can serve as intervention components in early childhood programs to increase the number of at-risk children who make a resilient transition into public school.

When evaluating young children's emerging competencies, multiple informants and multiple methods are necessary to obtain accurate information (Greenfield, Wasserstein, Gold & Jorden, 1997). Consistent with this approach, the NEGP (1995) recommends that a multimethod, multi-informant method of assessment be used to measure school readiness, including approaches to learning, with data collected at multiple times, from multiple sources, and utilizing multiple strategies. This has not yet been achieved. No measures that directly assess approaches to learning in children are presently available.

Currently, the only method of assessing approaches to learning is through adult rating scales. These appear in two formats. A number of teacher rating systems include items that target approaches to learning behaviors, but the items are embedded within other scales. For example, the Devereaux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA; Devereaux Foundation, 1998) asks parents or teachers to rate preschool children on the frequency of 27 positive behaviors and 10 behavioral concerns. While the DECA was developed to measure within-child protective factors and behavioral concerns, one of the three factors, “Initiative,” includes items that assess approaches to learning. Examples include “chooses to do a task that was challenging for her/him” and “tries different ways to solve a problem.” The Work Sampling System (Meisels, Liaw, Dorfman, & Nelson, 1995), a teacher rating performance assessment for children from 3 years old through fifth grade, includes approaches to learning items within the Personal and Social Development domain. Items include “attempts several different ways to solve a problem” and “selects new activities during choice time.” The Social Skills Ratings System (Gresham & Elliott, 1990) measures social ability but includes items that assess the handling of transitions, enthusiasm and interest, persistence at challenging tasks and other behaviors related to approaches to learning. More recently, with the designation of approaches to learning as one of the NEGP domains of school readiness, teacher rating scales that include scales that focus directly on approaches to learning are being developed. For example, The Galileo System for the Electronic Management of Learning, which previously included approaches to learning items in other domain areas, has included a new scale specifically named “Approaches to Learning” (Bergan, Bergan, Rattee, & Feld, 2002). McDermott, Leigh, and Perry (2002) and McDermott, Green, Francis, and Stott (2000) have developed the Preschool Learning Behavior Scales, a 29-item teacher rating scale with factors named Competence Motivation, Attention/Persistence, Strategy/Flexibility, and Attitude Towards Learning.

The present study examined one structured task designed to measure problem-solving flexibility as a first step in investigating the feasibility of developing a set of structured tasks for directly assessing approaches to learning in young children. Data on this task were collected as part of a larger longitudinal study that followed low-income children through the early elementary school grades (Kagan & Neuman, 1998). Because data on this task were available, it was decided that analysis of this task would be a useful step before attempting to develop additional tasks that assess other aspects of approaches to learning, which would be done only if results of this study gave evidence that structured tasks could be useful. In addition to the problem-solving flexibility task, teachers provided data on children's classroom behaviors, and children's academic achievement in language and mathematics were assessed. Data were collected on these tasks in the spring of the kindergarten and first-grade years. This exploratory study on aspects of approaches to learning allowed a preliminary comparison of teacher ratings with a direct measure of problem-solving flexibility, and also addressed how well such measures predict academic performance within and across the first 2 years of public school.

Section snippets

Participants

The sample consisted of 158 children who were participants at one of the 31 sites of the National Head Start/Public School Early Childhood Transition Demonstration Project (Transition Project; Kagan & Neuman, 1998). Eighty-four participants were female. Fourteen children were Caucasian, 111 were Black, 30 were Hispanic, 1 was Asian/Pacific Islander, and 2 children did not fit in any of the ethnicity categories. Over two-thirds of the sample were enrolled in Head Start preschool programs and

Preliminary analyses

A number of preliminary analyses were conducted to assess appropriateness of the data prior to conducting the primary analyses of the study. Data analyses were based on the 158 children who were tested on all measures in both the kindergarten and first-grade school years. First, children excluded from the sample due to incomplete data were compared to children included in the analyses. Children excluded from the sample were not significantly different (p > .10) from children included in the

Discussion

The construct of approaches to learning—which incorporates several ideas about how behavior stems from temperament, culture, previously learned skills for handling new, and challenging situations, and the demands of the learning environment—can result in the attainment of new knowledge and skills (NEGP, 1995). Approaches to learning are a complex construct and, as suggested by the NEGP (1995), should be measured in multiple ways, and, when assessing children, multiple informants are crucial (

Acknowledgements

This study was supported, in part, by a grant (90-CD-0888) from the Administration for Children and Families to Daryl Greenfield. The authors wish to gratefully acknowledge the cooperation and support of Miami-Dade County Head Start, Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Eva Greenfield and her staff, and the teachers, parents, and children who made this work possible.

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