Latent national subpopulations of early education classroom disengagement of children from underresourced families

Trajectories of early education learning behaviors among children at risk: A growth mixture modeling approach

“…Thus, it makes sense that children's relative maturity (as reflected in their ages) at prekindergarten entry should comport with increasingly better learning behavior as time passes. Male children and those receiving services for special needs are at particularly high risk for membership in the least fortunate growth classes of learning behavior, both findings that correspond to research on the emergence of disengaged classroom behavior among Head Start-eligible children from the national Head Start Impact Study (McDermott et al, 2017). Interestingly, Latino children find a general protective advantage in averting membership in the least desirable growth classes of learning behavior and this makes sense in view of research showing that Latino children exhibit generally high motivation toward educational success as encouraged by teachers and families (Alfaro et al, 2006), a phenomenon echoed in research studying those from recently immigrated families (Cardoso & Thompson, 2010;Greenman, 2013).…”

Initial assessment versus gradual change in early childhood behavior problems―Which better foretells the future?

“…() that, within the general population of children assessed for physical aggression, and by McDermott et al. () for reticence/withdrawal, there exist three distinct latent subpopulations, each with a characteristically different problem level at earliest assessment and change pattern over time. This demonstrates that there can be distinctive heterogeneity in a given population.…”

“…Children from underresourced families, in particular, are more likely to attend schools of lower quality and to have teachers with less training (Currie & Thomas, ; Isenberg et al., ; Lee & Loeb, ; Zhai, Raver, & Jones, ). In these settings, it is less likely that the classroom environment will provide the optimal context for accurate assessment of the child's behavior, and that valid and reliable assessments will be administered because of a lack of resources, training, or both (McDermott et al., , ). Additionally, low‐income children are likely to enter prekindergarten programs later than other children, or not at all.…”

“…Also, evidence from an early assessment can often be misleading because most early childhood disturbances do not follow a straight pathway over time. Rather, the preponderance of early‐detected self‐control problems (e.g., physical aggression) and reticence/withdrawal problems will decrease markedly in frequency and intensity as children move through the early transition years, whereas other problems will characteristically intensify (Barker & Maughan, ; McDermott et al., ; Pine & Fox, ; Tremblay, ). Thus, results of early assessment cannot be presumed emblematic of things to come.…”

“…To acquire understanding of the role of problem behaviors, it follows that practitioners would need to follow their developmental pathways as children move through the milestone transitions from preschool to formal schooling. This perspective reveals whether observed disturbances remain stable over time, whether they tend to normalize as children navigate through the socializing influences of common schooling, whether they are likely to worsen with exit of preschool and entry into the more competitive setting of formal schooling, and when and where observed problems will generalize to other contexts as time progresses (Barker & Maughan, ; Bub, McCartney, & Willett, ; Cote, Vaillancourt, Barker, Nagin, & Tremblay, ; McDermott et al., , , ; Morgan, Farkas, & Wu, ; Trembley, ). However, organizing and maintaining a longitudinal assessment program is logistically complex and the requirements for well‐designed longitudinal measures of behavior problems are psychometrically demanding.…”