Research Findings: The goal of this study was to investigate the role of play behaviors in the links between child shyness and teacher-child relationship quality in preschool. Participants were 212 (102 girls) young children (M = 58.32 months, SD = 10.72) recruited from 10 classrooms in three preschools in central Italy. Parents evaluated…

Research Findings: This study provides psychometric validation of the Classroom Engagement Scale (CES), a 14-item, teacher-report, formative assessment of behavioral engagement. It is currently used for all kindergarten children in a large, urban school district where it is embedded in the report card. Multi-level factor analysis revealed two…

Research Findings: The current study examines the relations between Chinese preschoolers' social-emotional competence and their preacademic skills, as well as the role of child gender and parental education in such relations. A total of 154 children from the northeastern region of China were involved in the study. Both parents and head teachers of…

The present study investigated 42 preschool children's ideas of what constitute "nice" behaviors on the part of their male and female peers, both at home and at school. Children were individually interviewed and asked to describe nice behaviors same-age peers do for others. A total of 285 distinct social behaviors were generated by the children…

Compared children retained in kindergarten with matched samples of age and grade mates, using teacher ratings as an index of their social and academic skills. Found that retained children showed a reduction in behavior problems, specifically acting-out and shy-anxious behaviors, but only slightly increased competence for task orientation across…