Research Findings: In the present study, we investigated the roles of children's social competence and immigrant background in the prediction of the quality of children's relationships with peers and teachers and school adjustment. Participants were N = 212 children (M[subscript age] = 58.32 months, SD = 10.72; n = 98 with an immigrant background)…

Research Findings: This study aimed to explore the mediating role of social competence and the moderating role of teacher-child conflict in the relation between maternal overcontrol and Chinese preschooler's internalizing problems. Participants were 216 children aged 3-4 years, from two kindergartens in Shanghai, China. Mothers completed the…

The links between a positive teacher-child relationship and young children's academic and social-emotional development have been well established, particularly for children with disruptive behaviors. However, less is known about children's views of the teacher-child relationship and how these representations relate to other established measures.…

The ways in which teachers perceive and subsequently respond to preschoolers' behavior have significant implications for children's experience in the classroom. To further understand the nature and variability of teacher perception of young children's behavior, this study examined how teachers characterized the disruptive behaviors of a large and…

Research Findings: The Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management (IY-TCM) program has shown efficacy in reducing behavioral problems and improving social skills among children experiencing poverty. However, quantitative studies that concentrate on its efficacy in relation to "proximal classroom outcomes" (e.g., classroom emotional…

Research Findings: This study examined the relation between classroom behavioral composition and teacher-child interactions in preschool classrooms and the potential for teachers' experience, education level, and area of study to buffer against the challenges of teaching in classrooms with high levels of disruptive behaviors. Classroom behavioral…

Research Findings: Preschool social-emotional education has become an increasingly important area of research and practice in mainland China. The social development domain has been recognized as an independent preschool curricular domain since 2001. Little is known, however, about the specific practices that preschool teachers in China are using…

Research Findings: This study examines the development of problem behavior in classroom contexts characterized by peer interaction among a nationally representative sample (N = 3,827) of U.S. low-income children from preschool entry to first grade. Latent growth mixture modeling was employed to identify unobserved subpopulations (latent classes)…

Social-behavioral functioning during early childhood is associated with children's academic and social success concurrently and over time. This study explored how concurrent, year-to-year, and sustained parent--teacher and student--teacher relationships predicted children's social skills and problem behaviors across the preschool to Grade 1…

Research Findings: Children's readiness to handle the expectations of elementary school depends heavily on their self-regulation skills. Self-regulation includes both cognitive and behavioral elements; however, past studies have typically looked at cognitive and behavioral self-regulation in isolation or as a composite score rather than examining…

This study examined how quantity and quality of early childhood education and care (ECEC) are related to the socio-emotional adjustment of children born in Germany (30-48 months old, N = 395). Previous research focused on a small set of ECEC features, used broad measures, and yielded inconclusive results. We assessed ECEC quantity (age at entry,…

Research Findings: This study examined whether children's outcomes at age 3 were predicted by their experiences in Early Head Start (EHS), focusing on 2 key features of infant and toddler care: (a) stability of care and (b) teacher--child interactions. This study further explored potential interaction effects between stability of care and…

Research Findings: Drawing from a diverse community sample of 89 children, ages 4-6, their primary caregivers and teachers, this study examined the interplay of child emotional behavior problems, parent emotion socialization practices, and gender in predicting teacher-child closeness. Teachers reported on perceptions of closeness with children.…

This secondary analysis explored longitudinal associations between the concentration of shared-language peers and the development of prosocial and problem behavior in dual language learning (DLL) preschoolers from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Mixed-effects regression models were used to analyze year-end outcomes of 212 Spanish-speaking students…

Positive emotional expressivity has been associated with increased social competence and decreased maladjustment in childhood. However, a few researchers have found null or even positive associations between positive emotional expressivity and maladjustment, which suggests that there may be nuanced associations of positive expressivity, perhaps as…