Include attention difficulties and social skills in preschool academic screening, and consider prosocial components and feelings about school in early interventions¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 5 claims (4 for, 1 mixed) · 1 study (1 associational), q3 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 5 claims rest on one study

Description¶

Drawing on their findings, the authors recommend that assessment screenings include attention difficulties and social skills alongside academic measures, since both were independently related to emergent academic development. They further suggest that "broader interventions including prosocial components may help address the risk of academic failure," and that positive feelings about school may offer "an additional possible leverage point in disrupting the serious risks associated with co-occurring social and academic difficulties."

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Screening and intervention decisions should rest on the correlational findings, which the authors label preliminary

Constraints¶

• The authors state the practice and policy implications are preliminary and the design is correlational, precluding causal conclusions

Target Learners¶

• Preschool children in Head Start and community child care centers

Target Learning Goals¶

• Early identification of academic risk; prevention of co-occurring social and academic difficulties

Affordances¶

• Reciprocal Social Academic Development Model

Claims¶

• Attention problems are associated with lower preliteracy and language scores in preschoolers, controlling for aggression and social skills [+W]
• Aggression is not a unique predictor of preschool academic development once attention problems and social skills are controlled [+W]
• Bivariate correlations between social functioning and academic development are in the predicted direction but modest in strength [+W]
• Children's positive feelings about school attenuate the relationship between aggression and academic development [+W]
• Ethnicity moderates several social-functioning–academic relationships, which are stronger for African American than Caucasian children [~W]

Related Strategies¶

• Incorporate social communication skill building into preschool interventions promoting school readiness

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Arnold, D. H., Kupersmidt, J. B., Voegler-Lee, M. E., & Marshall, N. (2012). The Association between Preschool Children's Social Functioning and Their Emergent Academic Skills. Early Childhood Research Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2011.12.009