Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Ph.D. Candidate of Educational Psychology, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran

2 Department of Educational Psychology, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran

3 Department of Psychology and Education of Children with Special Needs, Isfahan University, Isfahan, Iran

Abstract

The aim of the current research was to investigate the effectiveness of early educational interventions on the self-regulation skills of preschool children. Statistical population was the Preschool children of Isfahan kindergarten aged 6 to 7 during 2017-2018.The sample consisted of 30 Preschool children that were selected using clustered sampling. The sample consists of 30 Preschool children that were selected using cluster sampling (each group consisted of 15 children). The early educational interventions were conducted in the experimental group. In the semi experimental design, the Preschool Self-regulation Assessment (Smith Donald, 2007) was used to measure research variables. Results showed that early educational interventions were effective in cognitive, emotional and behavioral regulation skills and leading to improved school readiness in children. Early education can have the main role in self-regulation among children. Thus, it is indicated that effective self-regulation provides a foundation for positive classroom behavior and academic achievement

Keywords

  1. Abedi, A. (2007). The standardization of NEPSY Test and the effectiveness of early intervention in children with developmental learning disabilities. University of Isfahan: Faculty of Education and Psychology, PhD thesis of psychology (not published).
  2. Anthony, K. (2013). Self-regulation development in early childhood: The role of language skills and pre-kindergarten learning behaviors. Vanderbilt University.
  3. Arruabarrena, I., & De Paúl, J. (2012). Early intervention programs for children and families: Theoretical and empirical bases supporting their social and economic efficiency.  Psychosocial Intervention,   21(2).
  4. Barnett, W. S. (2011). Effectiveness of early educational intervention. Science, 333(6045), 975-978.
  5. Bartik, T. J. (2011). Investing in kids: Early childhood programs and local economic development. WE Upjohn Institute.
  6. Blair, C. (2002). School readiness: Integrating cognition and emotion in a neurobiological conceptualization of children's functioning at school entry.  American psychologist, 57(2), 111-118.
  7. Blair, C. (2003). Behavioral inhibition and behavioral activation in young children: Relations with self‐regulation and adaptation to preschool in children attending Head Start. Developmental Psychobiology: The Journal of the International Society for Developmental Psychobiology, 42(3), 301-311.
  8. Blair, C., & Raver, C. C. (2015). School readiness and self-regulation: A developmental psychobiological approach. Annual review of psychology, 66, 711-731.
  9. Blauw-Hospers, C. H., & Hadders-Algra, M. (2005). A systematic review of the effects of early intervention on motor development. Developmental medicine and child neurology, 47(6), 421-432.
  10. Colman, R.A., Hardy, S.A., Albert, M., Raffaelli, M., & Crockett, L. (2006). Early predictors of self regulation in middle childhood. Infant and Child Development, 15, 421–437.
  11. Diener, M. L., & Kim, D. Y. (2004). Maternal and child predictors of preschool children's social competence. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 25(1), 3-24.
  12. Duncan, R. J., Schmitt, S. A., Burke, M., & McClelland, M. M. (2018). Combining a kindergarten readiness summer program with a self-regulation intervention improves school readiness. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 42, 291-300.
  13. Duncan, G. J., Dowsett, C. J., Claessens, A., Magnuson, K., Huston, A. C., Klebanov, P., & Sexton, H. (2007). School readiness and later achievement. Developmental psychology, 43(6), 14-28.
  14. Fantuzzo, J., Bulotsky-Shearer, R., McDermott, P., McWayne, C., Frye, D., & Perlman, S. (2007). Investigation of dimensions of social-emotional classroom behavior and school readiness for low-income urban preschool children.
  15. Fergusson, D. M., Boden, J. M., & Horwood, L. J. (2013). Childhood self-control and adult outcomes: results from a 30-year longitudinal study. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 52(7), 709-717.
  16. National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities. (2007). Learning disabilities and young children: Identification and intervention. A Report from the National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilitie, October, 2006 (pp. 63-72). Learning Disability Quarterly, 63-72.
  17. Hadwin, A., & Oshige, M. (2011). Self-regulation, co-regulation, and socially shared regulation: Exploring perspectives of social in self-regulated learning theory. Teachers College Record, 113(2), 240-264.
  18. Huffman, A. M. (2013). Students at risk due to a lack of family cohesiveness: A rising need for social workers in schools. The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas, 86(1), 37-42.
  19. Hillman, A. S. (2014). Early interventions and student achievement (Doctoral dissertation, Lindenwood University).
  20. Jadidi, M.F., Faramarzi, S., Abedi, A., Jamali, S., & Jadidi, M. F. (2014). Effectiveness of early educational interventions on sense of number in preschoolers. Knowledge & Research in Applied Psychology, 2, 78-85.
  21. Järvenoja, H., Volet, S., & Järvelä, S. (2013). Regulation of emotions in socially challenging learning situations: An instrument to measure the adaptive and social nature of the regulation process. Educational Psychology, 33(1), 31-58.
  22. Kim, C., & Hodges, C. B. (2012). Effects of an emotion control treatment on academic emotions, motivation and achievement in an online mathematics course. Instructional Science, 40(1), 173-192.
  23. Kopystynska, O., Spinrad, T. L., Seay, D. M., & Eisenberg, N. (2016). The interplay of maternal sensitivity and gentle control when predicting children’s subsequent academic functioning: Evidence of mediation by effortful control. Developmental psychology, 52(6), 90-99.
  24. Lasser, J., & Fite, K. (2011). Universal preschool’s promise: Success in early childhood and beyond. Early Childhood Education Journal, 39(3), 169-173.
  25. Lengua, L. J., Kiff, C., Moran, L., Zalewski, M., Thompson, S., Cortes, R., & Ruberry, E. (2014). Parenting mediates the effects of income and cumulative risk on the development of effortful control. Social Development, 23(3), 631-649.
  26. Ludwig, K., Haindl, A., Laufs, R., & Rauch, W. A. (2016). Self-regulation in preschool children’s everyday life: Exploring day-to-day variability and the within-and between-person structure. Journal of Self-Regulation and Regulation, 2(2), 99-117.
  27. McCoy, D. C., & Raver, C. C. (2011). Caregiver emotional expressiveness, child emotion regulation, and child behavior problems among head start families. Social Development, 20(4), 741-761.
  28. McClelland, M. M., & Cameron, C. E. (2011). Self‐regulation and academic achievement in elementary school children. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 2011(133), 29-44.
  29. McClelland, M. M., Acock, A. C., Piccinin, A., Rhea, S. A., & Stallings, M. C. (2013). Relations between preschool attention span-persistence and age 25 educational outcomes. Early childhood research quarterly, 28(2), 314-324.
  30. McClelland, M. M., Ponitz, C. C., Messersmith, E. E., & Tominey, S. (2010). Self‐regulation: Integration of cognition and emotion. The Handbook of Life‐Span Development.
  31. Miller, R. L., Dunsmore, J. C., & Smith, C. L. (2015). Effortful control and parents' emotion socialization patterns predict children's positive social behavior: A person-centered approach. Early Education and Development, 26(2), 167-188.
  32. Moore, S. (2014). Case study: The impact of preschool on kindergarten developmental reading assessments (Doctoral dissertation), Lindenwood University.
  33. Moffitt, T. E., Arseneault, L., Belsky, D., Dickson, N., Hancox, R. J., Harrington, H., & Sears, M. R. (2011). A gradient of childhood self-control predicts health, wealth, and public safety. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(7), 2693-2698.
  34. Carlson, E., Daley, T., Bitterman, A., Heinzen, H., Keller, B., Markowitz, J., & Riley, J. (2009). Early school transitions and the social behavior of children with disabilities: Selected findings from the pre-elementary education longitudinal study. Wave 3 Overview Report from the Pre-Elementary Education Longitudinal Study (PEELS). NCSER 2009-3016. National Center for Special Education Research.
  35. Ochsner, K. N., & Gross, J. J. (2008). Cognitive emotion regulation: Insights from social cognitive and affective neuroscience. Current Directions In Psychological Science, 17(2), 153-158.
  36. Ponitz, C. E. C., McClelland, M. M., Jewkes, A. M., Connor, C. M., Farris, C. L., & Morrison, F. J. (2008). Touch your toes! Developing a direct measure of behavioral regulation in early childhood. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 23(2), 141-158.
  37. Rao, N., Sun, J., Chen, E. E., & Ip, P. (2017). Effectiveness of early childhood interventions in promoting cognitive development in developing countries: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Hong Kong J Paediatr, 22, 14-25.
  38. Rimm-Kaufman, S. E., Pianta, R. C., & Cox, M. J. (2000). Teachers’ judgments of problems in the transition to kindergarten. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 15(2), 147-166.
  39. Sarinana, A. A. (2016). Preschoolers' cognitive development in relation to preschool education and learning environment. California State University, Long Beach.
  40. Schmitt, S. A., McClelland, M. M., Tominey, S. L., & Acock, A. C. (2015). Strengthening school readiness for Head Start children: Evaluation of a self-regulation intervention. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 30, 20-31.
  41. Von Suchodoletz, A., Gestsdottir, S., Wanless, S. B., McClelland, M. M., Birgisdottir, F., Gunzenhauser, C., & Ragnarsdottir, H. (2013). Behavioral self-regulation and relations to emergent academic skills among children in Germany and Iceland. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 28(1), 62-73.
  42. Smith-Donald, R., Raver, C. C., Hayes, T., & Richardson, B. (2007). Preliminary construct and concurrent validity of the Preschool Self-regulation Assessment (PSRA) for field-based research. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 22(2), 173-187.
  43. Spittle, A., Orton, J., Doyle, L. W., & Boyd, R. (2007). Early developmental intervention programs post hospital discharge to prevent motor and cognitive impairments in preterm infants. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (2).
  44. Shoshtari, M., Abedi, A., Golshani F. Ahrami, A. (2010). The effectiveness of early childhood-based interventions on ADHD pre-school children's. Psychology of Exceptional, 2,103-118.
  45. Tominey, S. L., & McClelland, M. M. (2011). Red light, purple light: Findings from a randomized trial using circle time games to improve behavioral self-regulation in preschool. Early Education & Development, 22(3), 489-519.
  46. Vanderveen, J. A., Bassler, D., Robertson, C. M. T., & Kirpalani, H. (2009). Early interventions involving parents to improve neurodevelopmental outcomes of premature infants: A meta-analysis. Journal of perinatology, 29(5).
  47. Williford, A. P., Vick Whittaker, J. E., Vitiello, V. E., & Downer, J. T. (2013). Children's engagement within the preschool classroom and their development of self- regulation. Early Education & Development, 24(2), 162-187.