Building a Foundation for School Readiness for Low Income Children

• August 16, 2011 by Bill Jenkins, Ph.D.

As educators with experience in child development, we understand the essential nature of being responsive to a child. Children who do not receive enough attention do not develop in the same way as those who receive consistent nurturing and feedback. Research has demonstrated how, at a physiological level – their brains simply wire themselves differently as they develop. This deficit in early childhood experiences often manifests itself as developmental delays across a wide spectrum of behaviors. These behavioral delays appear in parallel with delays in brain development.

Imagine a child growing up in a home where sensitive, responsive caregiving is rare. Maybe mom and/or dad work more hours and are simply not available. Maybe they come home too tired to read or play or simply snuggle with the child. Or, this is an environment where sensitive, responsive nurturing is not valued very highly. While it is not the case in every situation like this, at its extreme, the parent or parents may be truly neglecting the child’s needs at this early stage. Even moderate differences in these important parent-child interactions have important longer-term consequences for development.

Research has shown that in these situations a child’s brain development quickly gets derailed. Children who do not receive enough of what is known as “sensitive-response caregiving” and cognitive stimulation do not develop executive function skills as readily as their counterparts in more caring, stimulating environments. (Lengua et al., 2007; Li-Grining, 2007) In other words, children may not be encouraged to be aware of and interact with the world around them (cognitive stimulation). They also may not be encouraged to engage or develop planning, decision-making or troubleshooting skills (executive function).

Executive functions, also known as “domain-general” functions, are those called upon in various types of learning opportunities; these include such functions as working memory, regulation of emotions and attentional control. On the other hand, a “domain-specific” cognitive process is one that represents a specific skill or skill area, such as reading or counting.

But what are the implications as children grow and enter school? Recently, a team of researchers led by Janet Welsh at Penn State studied readiness for school in a group of Head Start children and how certain cognitive processes were associated with the development of certain skills. Specifically, they studied the relationship between domain-general and domain-specific cognitive processes in these low-income pre-kindergartners, and tracked them through kindergarten.

Welsh‘s study showed that skills scaffolded consistently from one level to the next, and these skill levels represented good indicators of how well the child would develop the next set of skills. In other words, good working memory and attention control predicted the development of early literacy and numeracy skills, and these skills were predictors of later math and reading achievement.

Whether through experience in the home, great work in the pre-kindergarten classroom and/or support from computer-based learning exercises, it is clearly essential that we support the early development of domain-general cognitive skills as early and as strongly as possible.

While this may seem obvious, Welsh’s research underscores the essential nature of laying a foundation in those executive functions, those domain-general cognitive abilities, for each and every student – but especially for those at an economic disadvantage if we are to close the gaps and truly offer the same opportunities to every student.

Read the full study: The Development of Cognitive Skills and Gains in Academic School Readiness for Children From Low-Income Families, Janet A. Welsh, Robert L. Nix, Clancy Blair, Karen L. Bierman, and Keith E. Nelson. Journal of Educational Psychology, 2010, Volume 102, Number 1, p. 43-53.

For further reading:    

Family Involvement in School and Low-Income Children's Literacy Performance, Eric Dearing, Holly Kreider, Sandra Simpkins, and Heather Weiss. Harvard Family Research Project. January 2007.

Early Care and Education for Children in Low-Income Families Patterns of Use, Quality, and Potential Policy Implications, Gina Adams, Kathryn Tout, and Martha Zaslow. Prepared for the Urban Institute and Child Trends. January 2006, revised May 2007.

The impact of poverty on educational outcomes for children, HB Ferguson, S Bovaird, and MP Mueller. Paediatr Child Health. October 2007. 12(8): 701–706.

Related Reading:

Building Unstructured Play Into the Structure of Each Day

Lifelong Learning and the Plastic Brain

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Categories: Brain Research, Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: achievement gap, attention, brain development, cognitive skills, early learning, emotions in learning, executive function, how children learn, learning environment, literacy, math, memory, play, processing, technology in education, toddler

Considering the Consequences: The Development of Childhood Decision-Making

• January 27, 2011 by Bill Jenkins, Ph.D.

One of the key lessons that children learn in school—as in life—is how to make good decisions. In so many ways, life is a sequence of decision-making moments, with every possible path bifurcating into new results, lessons and experiences.

But how does a child’s mind work in approaching and processing decisions? How does the difficulty of a decision—as well as the anticipated consequence of punishment or reward—affect future choices?

In the 2005 study, "Characterization of Children’s Decision Making: Sensitivity to Punishment Frequency, Not Task Complexity", Crone, Bunge, Latenstein and van der Molen researched and discussed this exact question.

Using a computerized variant of a standard task, the researchers studied how children of various ages approached decision-making moments. Here’s how it worked:

• The Task: Children were asked to perform two versions of a computerized decision-making task that varied in complexity.
• The Consequences: Researchers varied the frequency of how long the consequences of a decision (i.e., punishment) were delayed after each decision.
• The Results:
  • Sensitivity to consequences increased only when punishments were presented infrequently.
  • The complexity or difficulty of the task did not appear to have an effect on the child’s ability to perform it.
  • Generally boys outperformed girls by making better choices.
  • Overall, older children (ages 7-12) appear comparatively unconcerned about the future except for when the potential for future punishment is high.

Now, this is all very interesting scientifically-speaking, but what about the practical insights we can glean from this study?

In school, students face decision-making moments throughout the school day, in choosing right answers in the classroom, in selecting materials in the library, and in making activity choices on the playground. In each situation, their minds—in different ways at each developmental stage of childhood—are predicting consequences and weighing outcomes.

As educators, the more aware we are of their developmental abilities in how those decisions are made, the better we can help guide each individual child’s development and learning for success.

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Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: behavior, decision making, executive function

Beating Bullying for Better Learning

• December 16, 2010 by Sherrelle Walker, M.A.

In March of 2000, nine year-old Verity Ward of Great Britain had been pushed to the limit. She had been physically and emotionally bullied by fellow students at her school. They had repeatedly kicked, slapped and otherwise abused her for over eighteen months.

At the time, after she and her family tried unsuccessfully to have the problem addressed by the school, she said, “"I just want them to stop. I can't take it anymore. I used to love coming to school, but now I hate it." (BBC News, 2000)

Sadly, Verity’s experience is somewhat common. In a 2001 survey funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, sixteen percent of U.S. school children reported being bullied sometime during the current term. (National Institute of Health, 2001) Bullying is something we tend to think of as taking place between individuals or small groups. The reality is that such destructive interactions not only affect the lives and learning of those directly involved, but those affects can ripple outward, negatively affecting the  across classrooms and even the entire school.

While bullying can encompass any number of behaviors, the general definition involves one individual using an imbalance of power to dominate another. While this imbalance can be real or perceived and exist between individuals or groups, it manifests in a combination of three ways: physical, verbal and psychological abuse. Interestingly, males tend to be bullies and/or bullied more often than females. Between males, physical and verbal bullying is more prevalent. Among females, verbal and psychological forms tend to be more common. (U.S. Department of Justice, June 2001)

Bullying can create a stressful, anxiety-filled environment where it becomes difficult for individual victims, classrooms and even the whole of a school population to learn effectively. Studies have already shown that victims of bullying are more likely to have cognitive deficits than their peers and score lower on tests that measure executive function. Researchers suspect that the lower academic performance in such individuals may be a result of the chronic stress that can actually kill brain cells. (Seattle Times, March 2010)

So what can an institution do to remedy the problem? In the 1980s, researcher Dan Olweus of Norway implemented a multi-level intervention program to address bullying:

1. At the school level, he surveyed the bullying problems, increased supervision, held school-wide assemblies, and offered staff training to increase awareness.
2. In classrooms, he helped to establish rules against bullying and helped conduct classroom meetings--including parents--to discuss the problem of bullying at school.
3. Finally, he performed individual interventions with those identified as bullies and victims. (Limber and Nation)

The results of Olweus’s work were more than promising. In just two years, reported incidents of bullying had dropped by half. What is more, students reported drops in truancy and vandalism and theft, and, maybe most importantly, they characterized their school environment as “more positive as a result of the program.” (Ibid.)

While bullying is an extremely serious and prevalent problem in schools across our nation, work such as that of Olweus gives us as educators a clear response. The fact is, we must respond. We cannot let bullying go un-addressed as it so often is. In taking actions that involve whole school populations as opposed to just the bullies and victims, we make the issue a public one. We give the victims a voice, and we give every member of the school community the tools to talk about and deal with the issue head-on.

In the end, we can relieve the victims of their pain, freeing them to take advantage of all the school has to offer. We can also help bullies build self-esteem and positive relationships. As educators, it is our responsibility to help every individual--bully as well as victim--to find their positive life path and achieve success.

For more information, check out these articles:

1. Bullying Widespread in U.S. Schools, Survey Finds, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, April 24, 2001.
2. Addressing the Problem of Juvenile Bullying, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Fact Sheet, June 2001.
3. Bullying Among Children and Youth, Limber, Susan, and Nation, Maury.

 

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Categories: Brain Research, Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic problems, behavior, cognitive skills, emotions in learning, executive function, health and well being, learning environment, self-esteem

Building a Fit Brain: The Serious Work of Play

• February 12, 2010 by Bill Jenkins, Ph.D.

In the world of education, especially in the early grades, we have great debates about the skills that we wish to impart to students. What do kids need to learn to do early on so they can be successful as they move forward? When it comes down to it, one of the biggies is self-control.

"Executive function"—the ability to order and control our thoughts—refers to those mental processes that allow us to process information coherently, hold and refer to items in our short term memories, avoid distractions and stay on task. Executive function takes self control. It depends upon the individual’s ability to control and filter emotions and cognitive impulses in order to get a job done.

As it turns out, research indicates that higher executive functions demonstrated early on are indicators of short as well as long-term success, both in academics and in life. According to Paul Tough in his September 27, 2009 New York Times article, "In some studies, self-regulation skills have been shown to predict academic achievement more reliably than I.Q. tests."

One program called Tools of the Mind is working to improve self-regulation abilities in young children. Now being used to teach 18,000 preK and kindergarten children in twelve states, the Tools of the Mind curriculum, created by child development scholars Deborah Leon and Elena Bodrova, is purported to teach self-regulation skills to essentially any child, regardless of socioeconomic status. At the core of their methodology is the idea that the key to developing self regulation is dramatic play, with complex, long-lasting make-believe scenarios.

While the research continues into the effectiveness of these techniques, there is no question that self-regulation is a central skill that kids need to develop early on. More information about Tools of the Mind is available at www.mscd.edu/extendedcampus/toolsofthemind/

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Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic success, attention, early learning, executive function, how children learn, memory, processing