Journal article
Predicting Academic School Readiness and Risk Status from Different Assessment Approaches and Constructs of Early Self-Regulation
Child and Youth Care Forum, Vol.51, pp.369-393
2022
Abstract
Background:
Over the past few decades early self-regulation has been identified as foundational to positive learning and wellbeing trajectories. As a consequence, a wide range of approaches have been developed to capture children’s developmental progress in self-regulation. Little is known, however, about whether and which of these are reliable indicators of future ability and risk for young children.
Objective:
This study examined measures from prominent approaches to self-regulation assessment (i.e., task-based, observation, adult-report) to determine: their structure; how these predict future academic school readiness in 3–5-year-old children, individually and if combined; and whether thresholds could be ascertained to reliably discriminate those children at risk of poor academic outcomes.
Methods:
Longitudinal analyses were conducted on start-of-year self-regulation data from 217 children in the final year of pre-school, using three prominent approaches to self-regulation assessment, and their end-of-year school readiness data. Data were subjected to path analysis, structural equation modelling and receiver operating characteristic curve analyses.
Results:
Start-of-year cognitive self-regulation indices—but not behavioral or emotional self-regulation indices—from each approach reliably predicted school readiness 7 months later, just prior to commencing school. Only when combined into a composite score was a threshold with sufficient sensitivity and specificity for predicting school readiness risk established; yet this provided better prediction of true-negative than true-positive cases.
Conclusions:
Taken together, these results suggest the importance of cognitive self-regulation in particular for school readiness, as measured here, although self-regulation is just one of the contributing factors to school readiness risk.
Details
- Title
- Predicting Academic School Readiness and Risk Status from Different Assessment Approaches and Constructs of Early Self-Regulation
- Authors
- Steven J. Howard (Corresponding Author) - University of WollongongE. Vasseleu (Author) - University of WollongongC. Neilsen-Hewett (Author) - University of WollongongM. de Rosnay (Author) - University of WollongongK. E. Williams (Author) - Queensland University of Technology
- Publication details
- Child and Youth Care Forum, Vol.51, pp.369-393
- Publisher
- Springer New York LLC
- DOI
- 10.1007/s10566-021-09636-y
- ISSN
- 1573-3319
- Grant note
- This work was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award grant [DE170100412].
- Organisation Unit
- School of Education and Tertiary Access
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99990898702621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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- Domestic collaboration
- Web Of Science research areas
- Psychology, Developmental
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