A Prospective Investigation of Representation, Regulation, and the Transition to Formal Schooling

发展和学习科学家越来越多地认识到，早期学校的成功不仅取决于孩子们是如何知道的，也取决于他们知道了什么。然而，科学家们对早期学习和教育适应过程的认识已经超过了我们对这些机制的理解。因此，促进所有儿童早期学业成功的努力受到了阻碍。儿童的心理表征（即关于自我和他人的信念）和自我调节功能（即根据情境要求控制情绪、行为和生理的能力）是积极发展和问题发展的核心机制。然而，代表性和监管过程对早期学校成功的个人和互动贡献值得进一步澄清。儿童的自我和他人表征以及他们的自我调节能力对于他们成功驾驭同龄人、老师和学习的世界至关重要。此外，代表性和管理制度构成了家庭经验学习转移到学校环境的核心机制。本研究将追踪整个学前时期代表性和监管系统的发展和组织，以阐明他们对早期学习和学校适应的个人和互动贡献。本研究采用父母、孩子、亲子互动的年度观察以及儿童教师的同步报告，将跟踪240名来自不同背景（即50%贫困；50%西班牙裔；30%黑人和15%白人；不同的压力和逆境暴露）的4岁儿童从二年级过渡到二年级。措施将评估跨多个系统的表征和调节过程，包括认知、情感、行为和生理层面的分析，以1)追踪表征和调节过程在早期学年的发展，2)评估它们对教育适应的个体和互动贡献，以及3)澄清背景因素，如父母、种族、收入和逆境，是否以及如何，影响代表、监管和向正规学校过渡之间的预期关系。这项调查将通过追踪早期学龄期代表性和监管系统内部和之间的连续性和变化模式，来完善和扩展我们对儿童早期学习和适应的理解。这样，这项研究将有助于我们理解儿童是如何学习的，并进一步促进促进早期学习和教育能力的创新努力，特别是在那些因贫困、种族或逆境而面临不成比例的学业失败风险的儿童中。向学校过渡是一个独特的易受发展影响的时期，无论好坏，对青年的长期学习和成功都有重大影响。通过澄清环境、代表性、监管和教育调整之间的相互作用，本研究将阐明教育风险和弹性的途径，为文化和环境敏感的努力提供信息，以促进儿童安全通过这一至关重要的发展转变。

Developmental and learning scientists increasingly acknowledge that early school success is as much about what children know as it is about how they come to know it. Yet scientists' appreciation for the processes that underlie early learning and educational adaptation has outpaced our understanding of these mechanisms. As a result, efforts to foster early school success for all children have been hampered. Children's mental representations (i.e., beliefs about self and other) and self-regulatory functioning (i.e., abilities to control emotions, behaviors, and physiology in accordance with contextual demands) are central mechanisms of both positive and problematic development. However, the individual and interactive contributions of representational and regulatory processes to early school success warrant further clarification. Children's self- and other-representations and their abilities to self-regulate are essential to their successful navigation of the worlds of peers, teachers, and learning. Moreover, representational and regulatory systems constitute core mechanisms by which experiential learning in the family transfers to the school setting. This investigation will trace the development and organization of representational and regulatory systems across the preschool period to clarify their individual and interactive contributions to early learning and school adjustment. Employing annual observations of parents, children, and parent-child interaction along with concurrent reports from children's teachers, this study will follow 240 4-year-old children from diverse backgrounds (i.e., 50% poverty; 50% Hispanic, 30% Black, and 15% White; variable exposure to stress and adversity) across the transition into second grade. Measures will assess representational and regulatory processes across multiple systems, including cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and physiological levels of analysis, to 1) trace the development of representational and regulatory processes across the early school years, 2) evaluate their individual and interactive contribution to educational adaptation, and 3) clarify if and how contextual factors, such as parenting, ethnicity, income and adversity, influence expected relations between representation, regulation, and the transition to formal schooling.This investigation will refine and expand our understanding of children's early learning and adaptation by tracing patterns of continuity and change within and across representational and regulatory systems across the early school years. In so doing, this research will contribute to our understanding of how children learn and, by extension, to innovative efforts that foster early learning and educational competence, particularly among children who are at disproportionate risk for school failure as a function of poverty, ethnicity, or adversity exposure. The transition to school constitutes a unique period of vulnerability to developmental influence, for better or worse, with powerful implications for youths' long term learning and success. By clarifying the interactions among context, representation, regulation and educational adjustment, this investigation will elucidate pathways of educational risk and resilience that will inform culturally and contextually sensitive efforts to facilitate children's safe passage across this critically important developmental transition.