OBSERVING SELF-REGULATION IN CONTEXT IN HEAD START CLASSROOMS AND DUAL LANGUAGE LEARNERS SCHOOL READINESS

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Nationally, the rates of preschool-aged Dual Language Learners (DLL) are rising, making it a priority to understand how to support DLLs in the education environment. Currently, over a quarter of preschoolers in the United States are Latino DLLs who live in poverty. It is critical to examine the skills that contribute to the social and cognitive development of young DLLs because an achievement gap is present that persists through development. Head Start serves many Latino DLLs, and thus offers a key developmental setting to examine how to foster DLLs social-emotional and cognitive development to close the achievement gap. Self-regulation is a critical social-emotional skill, which promotes children’s later development and achievement. Self-regulation skills include self-control, emotion regulation, and problem solving. The development of these skills is important for DLL preschoolers from low-income environments because they are predictive of positive outcomes. As a result of the link between early self-regulation skills and later outcomes, it is important to foster the development of DLLs’ early self-regulation skills to begin to close the achievement gap. Few studies have examined self-regulation skills in Latino DLLs; therefore, further research in this area is necessary. To measure self-regulation skills, many studies use either direct assessment or systematic classroom observations; however, little is known about the link between these two tools. Therefore, it is important to clarify the relationship between these two types of measurement techniques in order to use them effectively in research that will inform our understanding and intervention with DLL’s self-regulation skills. This study will be the first to examine the association between two different measures of self-regulation, a direct assessment and a systematic classroom observation. It is especially important to examine the transactional relationship between self-regulation skills and the contexts of the preschool classroom, such as the focus of instruction (e.g., teacher-managed), the group size (e.g., whole group), and teacher practices used to manage behavior (e.g., verbal cues used to make behavioral requests). By researching which contexts of the preschool classroom naturally foster the use of DLL’s positive behavior, teachers will be able to intentionally focus their attention on those contexts, which will provide more opportunities for Latino DLLs to practice their self-regulation skills. This project will be the first to determine the ideal classroom contexts that promote higher use of DLLs self-regulated behaviors. The aims of this study will help contribute to the identification of how to use the classroom to best support the development of self-regulation skills and improve academic outcomes for young DLLs. The goal of this project is to inform classroom-based interventions that support teachers’ scaffolding of DLLs’ self-regulation skills and to foster positive school readiness skills across domains.