Teacher–child relationships, behavior regulation, and language gain among at-risk preschoolers

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Abstract

Many preschoolers from low socioeconomic-status (SES) backgrounds demonstrate lags in their language development, and preschool participation is viewed as an important means for mitigating these lags. In this study, we investigated how teacher–child relationship quality and children's behavior regulation within preschool classrooms were associated with grammar gain for low-SES preschoolers. Direct child measures and indirect teacher reports were used to assess child language gain, teacher–child relationship quality, and behavior regulation for 173 preschool children enrolled in targeted-enrollment preschool classrooms. Hierarchical linear modeling showed a positive link between close teacher–child relationships and preschoolers' grammar gain during the school year. Interestingly, a significant interaction between conflicted teacher–child relationships and children's behavior regulation indicated that multiple factors are associated with children's language development in the area of grammar. Nurturing classroom environments and strong behavior regulation abilities may act as protective mechanisms for preschoolers from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Introduction

As is well understood, young children's language skills are critically related to both their school readiness and their early academic progress (Justice et al., 2009, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development — Early Child Care Research Network, 2003). In fact, research findings indicate that strong language skills in preschool are positively associated with literacy development (Storch and Whitehurst, 2002, Whitehurst and Lonigan, 1998), academic readiness (Rimm-Kaufman, Pianta, & Cox, 2000), and social competence (NICHD ECCRN, 2003), each of which is a significant contributor to children's learning within school-based settings. The substantial interplay among language development, literacy skill, academic readiness, and social competence is particularly important to examine among children from low socioeconomic-status (SES) households, a population that, as a group, exhibits significant lags in language development (Fazio, Naremore, & Connell, 1996).

Research on the language development of children from low-SES homes has typically focused on vocabulary skills (Justice, Meier, & Walpole, 2005), and some researchers have suggested that grammar development is relatively resilient to the effects of low-SES (Jackson & Roberts, 2001). However, recent work examining the longitudinal growth of grammar among children from low-SES backgrounds indicates that this aspect of the language system lags substantially behind that of more economically advantaged preschoolers (Craig and Washington, 1994, Fazio et al., 1996, Vasilyeva et al., 2008). In turn, these lags in grammar development may have impacts on future academic performance, particularly in the area of reading (Craig, Connor, & Washington, 2003). An important area of both research and practice is identifying the factors associated with grammar development among children from low-SES homes and considering how these factors might come into play in designing language-focused interventions for at-risk populations.

A variety of environmental factors and child-level behaviors relate to children's language development over time. For instance, recent studies have shown that children's relationships with their teachers are important environmental contributors to children's language growth within classroom settings (Hamre and Pianta, 2001, Liew et al., 2010, Mashburn et al., 2008, Pianta, 1999). At the same time, researchers have also focused on the potential role of children's behavior regulation as a contributor to language development (Blair and Razza, 2007, McClelland et al., 2007, Ponitz et al., 2009, Valiente et al., 2007). Nonetheless, relatively few studies have addressed the unique and multivariate relation among these environmental and child-level behaviors, particularly as they manifest themselves within early childhood classrooms that are designed to stimulate the language development of high-risk populations, particularly children from low-SES homes. Therefore, to contribute to the emerging body of work concerning factors associated with language development among children from low-SES homes, this study explores the unique and multivariate associations among teacher–child relationship quality, behavior regulation, and language gain specific to grammar for children participating in targeted-enrollment (i.e., eligibility is based on demonstration of low-income household status) preschool classrooms.

The quality of the teacher–child relationship has significant associations, both positive and negative, with children's academic growth within classroom settings (Pianta, Steinberg, & Rollins, 1995). From a theoretical perspective, language development occurs within social contexts, as it is the means through which ideas are communicated and information is received. By consequence, the nature of those contexts dictates not only what information is shared but also the manner and sophistication in which communication occurs (Mashburn et al., 2008). Importantly, as children enter formal schooling, classrooms become a primary context for language development, within which teachers and peers function as primary communication partners.

According to ecological theory, environments such as classrooms represent many component parts (e.g., the teacher and the children) that function in a specific, interdependent manner to affect the greater context in which children are developing (Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 2006, Pianta, 1999). Understanding these interpersonal relationships is paramount to understanding the impacts of classroom contexts on young children's language development. Ecological theory suggests that through countless interactions, relationships within a given environment not only affect the behaviors of a specific individual, but also play a significant role in an individual's development over time (Bronfenbrenner, 1999, Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 2006). Thus, within the classroom environment, language development is not simply a factor of child ability but a dynamic representation of the nature of interpersonal relationships.

Children's linguistic interactions within the preschool classroom, particularly those that involve their teachers, may be linked to the nature of the relationship that children have with their teachers. Whereas the consistency, accuracy, and caliber of academic instruction have significant impacts on child gains (Burchinal et al., 2008, Pianta et al., 2002), the National Association for the Education of Young Children also indicates that the quality of the teacher–child relationship is one of the four core components of the classroom critical for children's progress in school (see Bredekamp & Copple, 1997). In fact, researchers argue that high quality teacher–child relationships are the mechanism through which instruction is delivered (Entwistle and Hayduk, 1988, Hamre and Pianta, 2001, Rudasill et al., 2006). Several studies have documented a significant association between teacher–child relationships and child outcomes, apart from investigation of the instructional quality (Birch and Ladd, 1997, Hamre and Pianta, 2001, Mashburn et al., 2008, O'Connor, 2010, Pianta et al., 1995, Rudasill et al., 2006).

Some teacher–child relationships are characterized by a high degree of closeness (i.e., high levels of warmth, approachability, and trustworthiness), whereas others are characterized by a high level of conflict (i.e., strained interactions and a general lack of rapport; Birch and Ladd, 1997, Pianta et al., 1995). From a theoretical perspective, teacher–child relationships appear to be influential to children's learning within the classroom. Children who feel more secure in their environment and supported by their classroom teachers may take more risks academically, have increased self-esteem, and manifest more motivation overall (Birch and Ladd, 1997, Pianta et al., 1995). In addition, teachers appear to be more motivated to provide extra supports and energies to children with whom they have well-adjusted relationships, as time can be optimally focused on instruction (Pianta et al., 1995). Conversely, children with high levels of conflict with their teachers may demonstrate poorer work habits, school competence, and overall achievement than their more well-adjusted peers (Hamre and Pianta, 2001, Pianta et al., 1995). Increased conflict may limit the degree to which children can and will rely on teachers for support or direction, thereby limiting access to instruction and potentially impairing their overall achievement.

Recent studies show a direct connection between the quality of the teacher–child relationship and children's language development. Rudasill et al. (2006) studied the language skills of 99 at-risk preschoolers participating in targeted-enrollment preschool programs. Results demonstrated positive connections between children's language abilities (i.e., language complexity as measured by MLU calculations from language samples), temperament (i.e., degree of shyness) and the quality of their relationships with teachers. Children who were less shy (i.e., bolder) and had lower levels of language skill tended to experience more conflict within the teacher–child relationship. These findings were extended in a follow-up study of 133 at-risk preschoolers, showing significant associations among children's language (i.e., receptive language), temperament, and quality of the teacher–child relationship (Justice, Cottone, Mashburn, & Rimm-Kaufman, 2008). Specifically, in the latter study, children's language comprehension was a strong predictor of closeness within the teacher–child relationship. Both of these studies investigated language as a predictor of teacher–child relationships, but none specifically looked at the impact of teacher–child relationships on language gain, specifically related to grammar.

Relatedly, Huttenlocher et al. (2002) investigated associations between a different aspect of the classroom environment, namely the teacher's use of complex grammar structures, and resulting gains in preschool children's grammar usage. Findings from their study showed strong, positive associations between a teacher's grammatical complexity in speech and the amount of change in children's grammatical complexity over the course of an academic year. If teacher–child relationships function as a mechanism through which children can access instruction (Entwistle and Hayduk, 1988, Hamre and Pianta, 2001), then the quality of teacher–child relationships may have an indirect impact on children's language gains in the area of grammar over an academic year, such that those with close teacher–child relationships may have more opportunities to benefit from their teacher's language modeling. This pattern may especially be true for at-risk preschoolers, known to be at risk for lags in grammar development (Craig and Washington, 1994, Fazio et al., 1996, Vasilyeva et al., 2008).

Pianta et al. (2002) suggested that the quality of teacher–child relationships may be especially significant for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. These children often lack close, supportive home relationships known to impact school adjustment (Hamre and Pianta, 2001, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development — Early Child Care Research Network, 2003) and language development (Justice, Mashburn, Pence, & Wiggins, 2008). For these children, the relationship established with their classroom teachers becomes an even more critical factor in development. Hamre and Pianta (2001) investigated the teacher–child relationships and risk factors of 179 kindergarten students on longitudinal outcomes. Although they did not investigate the economic status, their results did suggest that the teacher–child relationship was most significant for those children who were already at risk for academic failure due to ethnicity, normatively low cognitive abilities, or both. Additionally, a study by Ladd, Birch, and Buhs (1999) showed a direct association between a child's family background and the quality of the teacher–child relationship, such that children from disadvantaged backgrounds had less close and more conflictual relationships than those of their more advantaged peers. As such, it is important to specifically investigate the role of teacher–child relationships on grammar gain for preschoolers from low SES households, a population at-risk for delays in language development.

Child-level behaviors also appear to have a significant role in understanding children's language development within classroom environments. In particular, children's ability to regulate their behavior within the classroom may contribute to their ability to benefit from that environment, even within the context of strong teacher and environmental supports (Liew et al., 2010, Morrison et al., 2010). Self-regulation abilities encompass a myriad of temperament-related and cognitive-related processes that function to support a child's interactions within social settings (Kerr and Zelazo, 2004, Metcalfe and Mischel, 1999). One particular cognitive-related process documented in the literature is behavior regulation, which refers to a child's ability to use attention focusing (i.e., selectively attending to salient information) and inhibitory control mechanisms to engage within a variety of tasks and contexts (i.e., preventing or modifying responses according to environmental expectations; see McClelland et al., 2007, Morrison et al., 2010, Ponitz et al., 2009). Because young children's language growth occurs within the context of social interactions with peers and adults, we surmise that their ability to interact and benefit from their environment is in large part determined by their behavior regulation abilities. For instance, children who are more attentive during storybook reading interactions learn more linguistic concepts than children who are less attentive (McGinty & Justice, 2009).

Children's behavior regulation is important for promoting learning opportunities within social interactions in the classroom (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). Research has shown that children with high levels of behavior regulation tend to exhibit increased rates of language and academic growth (Valiente et al., 2007), presumably due to their ability to function well within the school environment. This environment brings multiple demands, often unique from previous experiences. Therefore, children with high levels of behavior regulation are better suited to perform well within such situations, in that they are able to voluntarily control their attention and behavior, follow multiple task instructions, switch between tasks, and direct focus to targeted tasks while ignoring external distractions (Coplan et al., 1999, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development — Early Child Care Research Network, 2003).

Conversely, children with low levels of behavior regulation tend to be more disruptive and have weak rule internalization (Valiente et al., 2007). Teachers spend more time redirecting behavior or attention to tasks, thereby decreasing time in instruction or peer communication. With less time focused on academic tasks, children with low behavior regulation receive less instruction from their teachers and experience less positive feedback. Studies have shown that beyond the effects of socioeconomic status and cognitive ability, students with low behavior regulation often display lower gains developmentally than peers with high behavior regulation (Blair and Razza, 2007, Valiente et al., 2007).

The behavior regulation construct is an important focus in classroom-based research because teachers report that many kindergarteners arrive at school with low behavior regulation and related competencies (e.g., inhibitory control and attention focusing). For example, Rimm-Kaufman, Pianta, and Cox (2000) surveyed 3565 kindergarten teachers from over 10,000 public schools across the country. The survey asked teachers to report the percentage of students arriving at school with varying levels of kindergarten transition issues as well as the percentage of students with difficulty in specific problem areas, such as difficulty following directions, difficulty working as part of a group, and difficulty communicating with others. All such areas are relevant to a child's behavior regulation (McClelland et al., 2007, Ponitz et al., 2009). Survey findings showed that 48% of teachers reported that one-half of the students in their classrooms demonstrated some level of difficulty transitioning into kindergarten, and these were typically related to regulatory issues. Additionally, Rimm-Kaufman and colleagues found kindergarten students from low-SES backgrounds to have increased challenges transitioning to kindergarten overall compared to peers from more advantaged backgrounds. Their findings show that a relatively large number of young children arrive to kindergarten exhibiting difficulties in behavior regulation, and these difficulties might have negative impacts on children's learning readiness and subsequent developmental growth.

The existing literature contains a substantial number of studies showing that behavior regulation as observed within classroom contexts may be associated with children's learning of specific competencies (Blair and Razza, 2007, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development — Early Child Care Research Network, 2003, Stipek et al., 2010, Valiente et al., 2007). For example, McClelland et al. (2007) studied 310 preschoolers from predominantly middle to upper-middle SES backgrounds. Their study defined behavior regulation as a child's attention, inhibitory control, and memory, assessed using a direct measure of behavior regulation. Their findings revealed significant correlations between fall and spring behavior regulation and literacy, math, and vocabulary outcomes, leading the authors to conclude that children with higher behavior regulation achieved higher levels academically. Vallotton and Ayoub (2011) investigated the relation between language skills (defined as vocabulary) and self-regulation (defined as emotional and cognitive processes, measured using a rating scale completed by a trained observer) for toddlers from low-SES backgrounds. Findings suggest a strong, positive relation between a toddler's vocabulary and overall self-regulation abilities.

Although such findings highlight behavior regulation as an important component of school readiness (Blair and Razza, 2007, Ponitz et al., 2009, Rimm-Kaufman et al., 2000) and a predictor of language development in the area of vocabulary (McClelland et al., 2007, Vallotton and Ayoub, 2011), across a range of ages and socioeconomic backgrounds, no studies to date have investigated the link between behavior regulation and grammatical aspects of language development for preschoolers from disadvantaged backgrounds. Because children from low-SES families are known to be at-risk for delayed grammar development (Craig and Washington, 1994, Fazio et al., 1996, Vasilyeva et al., 2008) and lack language-rich experiences prior to school entry significant for successful transition to kindergarten (Rimm-Kaufman et al., 2000, Vallotton and Ayoub, 2011), it is important to understand the relation between behavior regulation skills and grammar gains in the preschool year for children from low-SES backgrounds.

As discussed, children's ability to regulate their behavior as well as the quality of their relationships with teachers appears to be positively associated with their language development within classroom contexts (Hamre and Pianta, 2001, Liew et al., 2010, Mashburn et al., 2008, McClelland et al., 2007, Pianta, 1999, Stipek et al., 2010, Valiente et al., 2007). The present study explicitly tests the unique contributions of these constructs on the grammar gain of preschoolers from low-SES homes. However, prior literature also suggests that children's developmental outcomes may be a reflection of the interaction between the quality of teacher–child relationships and behavior regulation (Liew et al., 2010). Specifically, the role of teacher–child relationships on language gain within classroom contexts might be moderated by a child's level of behavior regulation. We speculate that, for children with high behavior regulation abilities, the quality of their relationships with their teachers may not be strongly associated with language gains. In contrast, we anticipate that for students with weak behavior regulation abilities, their language outcomes may be significantly different, depending on the quality of the teacher–child relationship. Children with weak behavior regulation skills nested in teacher–child relationships characterized as close and low in conflict may make significantly more language gains over the course of a school year than similar peers nested within less close and highly conflictual teacher–child relationships. If this is the case, it is important to investigate the unique contribution of behavior regulation and teacher–child relationship quality to children's grammar gain as well as the multivariate interplay among these constructs.

A variety of studies have shown interactive associations between features of children's environments and child-level characteristics on child outcomes. For instance, McGinty and Justice (2009) studied 41 mothers and their preschoolers with specific language impairment (SLI) to understand constructs related to children's early literacy development. Results showed a significant interaction between a measure of the environment (i.e., quality of reading experiences) and two closely related child-level characteristics, namely attention focusing and print knowledge. In a similar vein, Liew et al. (2010) examined the interplay between the quality of the teacher–child relationship (an environmental variable), children's effortful control (a child-level characteristic), and reading and math achievement for 761 first grade students. Their findings showed a significant interaction between children's behavior regulation skills and teacher–child relationships characterized as close in predicting reading and math. Specifically, children with low behavior regulation performed equally well in reading and math achievement tasks as peers with high behavior regulation when situated within supportive teacher–child relationships. The current study seeks to extend the findings from the Liew et al. study in three ways. First, Liew and colleagues examined only the overall level of closeness between teacher and child, where our study also includes conflict as a way to measure the full scope of teacher–child relationships. Additionally, Liew et al. investigated behavior regulation abilities of first-grade students rather than preschoolers and measured reading and math outcomes as opposed to language gain specific to grammar.

The present study was conducted to examine the unique and multivariate associations among the quality of teacher–child relationships, children's behavior regulation, and language gain among preschoolers from low-SES backgrounds. This study adds to an emerging but understudied body of work investigating the interplay among environmental attributes and child-level behaviors to children's language development (Birch and Ladd, 1997, Hamre and Pianta, 2001, Mashburn et al., 2008, McClelland et al., 2007, Ponitz et al., 2008, Ponitz et al., 2009). Although the research suggests that the quality of the teacher–child relationship and children's behavior regulation each offer independent contributions to development, the potential interaction among these constructs for grammar development, particularly as applied to high-risk preschoolers, is unknown. The research questions were threefold:

  • 1.

    To what extent is the quality of the teacher–child relationship related to the grammar gain of preschoolers from low-SES homes?

  • 2.

    To what extent is behavior regulation related to the grammar gain of preschoolers from low-SES homes?

  • 3.

    To what extent are the relations between the quality of the teacher–child relationship and grammar gain moderated by children's behavior regulation?

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were 173 children involved in a larger study of instructional practices in targeted-preschool classrooms serving at-risk populations (for a full review of the larger study, see Cabell et al., 2011). Children at the start of the present study had a mean age of 52 months (SD = 5.27, range = 40–66 months) and were Caucasian (45.7%, n = 79), African American (31.2%, n = 54), Hispanic (6.9%, n = 12), multiracial (5.8%, n = 10), and other (4.1%, n = 7) races or ethnicities (Race or ethnicity for 11

Descriptive statistics and correlations

Table 1 presents descriptive statistics for the full sample of children (n = 173) on all study measures. For descriptive purposes, standard scores are presented in Table 1, although raw scores were used in analyses, because standard scores are more readily interpretable in terms of average-level of ability. As these standard scores (M = 10, SD = 3) show, fall performance on the two measures of grammar were relatively low (M = 7.51, SD = 3.13 for Sentence Structure and M = 6.63, SD = 3.04 for Word Structure).

Discussion

The purpose of this study was to investigate language gain among children from low-SES homes within the context of their preschool classrooms. Specifically, we examined the independent and interactive associations of features of the environment (i.e., quality of teacher–child relationships) and child-level behaviors (i.e., behavior regulation) on children's grammar gain over an academic year. Ecological theory suggests that both the classroom environment as well as child-level behaviors should

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the many teachers, children, and research staff who made this study possible. This research project was supported by Grant R305G050057 from the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, to the third author.

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