Differences in Children’s Social Development: How Migration Background Impacts the Effect of Early Institutional Childcare Upon Children’s Prosocial Behavior and Peer Problems

Abstract

This article focuses on the early years of children from immigrant families in Germany. Research has documented disparities in young children’s development correlating with their family background (e.g., immigrant or ethnic minority status), making clear the importance of early intervention. Institutional childcare—as an early intervention for children at risk—plays an important role in Germany, as 34.3% of children below the age of three and 93% of children above that age are in external childcare. This paper focuses on the extent to which children from families with a background of migration differ in their social development when considering their age of entry into early external childcare (and thus its duration). Data from the infant cohort study of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS, N = 1,846) is used to analyze the impact of early institutional childcare before the age of 3 years on children’s social competence at the age of 5 years, controlling for gender, siblings, temperament, home learning activities, and socioeconomic status. Results show the effects of duration of early external childcare on peer problems for children from families with a background of migration, in such a way that children who attend early external childcare for more than 1 year before the age of three show less problem behavior with peers than those who attend for less than a year. These findings have equity implications for children with a migration background living in Germany, especially as the proportion of these children is trending upwards.

The relationship between individual characteristics and practice behaviour within an adaptive arithmetic learning program

“…Moreover, a possible migration status was determined by the language(s) spoken at home. Even though many studies have assessed migration background in such a way (Kast et al, 2021; Konrad‐Ristau & Burghardt, 2021), it might also be important to know for how long families have lived in Germany and which family members were born abroad. It would then be possible to distinguish between first‐ and second‐generation migrants, which would be valuable information as previous research has suggested that first‐generation migrants are more disadvantaged (OECD, 2019; Wendt et al, 2020).…”

Early home learning support and home mathematics environment as predictors of children's mathematical skills between age 4 and 6: A longitudinal analysis using video observations and survey data

“…Our findings are similar to those of Novita and Kluczniok (2021) who demonstrated the learning disparities associated with parental migration background in literacy, here we extend these findings to mathematics in the German context. However, due to the diverse cultures and experiences associated with immigrant families, knowledge on the influence of migration background on children's learning is inconclusive, thus we demand more research in the future (Konrad‐Ristau & Burghardt, 2021). Nevertheless, this learning disparity could be closed as early preventative intervention targeting at ethnic minority groups could reduce any potential mathematics attainment gap, thus we call future policies to pay special attention toward families from migrant backgrounds (Ramani & Scalise, 2020).…”

“…Unlike parental education level and parental SES, the impact of migration history has been less comprehensively studied, partly due to immigrants' diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds (Konrad‐Ristau & Burghardt, 2021). A recent study from Germany demonstrated that parents with migration histories were less likely to engage in more informal literacy activities like joint book reading, which, in turn, was associated with poorer child vocabulary measured by PPVT at age 5 (Novita & Kluczniok, 2021).…”

The Effect of Physical Activity-Based Physical Education Learning Model in the Form of Games

“…(c) Better social development [30]. (d) The differences in the behavior of boys and girls are getting clearer [31]. (e) Increasingly to master a certain form of activity with a high competitive spirit [32].…”