Ecological Instability and Children's Classroom Behavior in Kindergarten.

ABSTRACT: We engage the concept of ecological instability to assess whether children's exposure to frequent change in multiple contexts is associated with teacher reports of students' overall behavior, externalizing behavior, and approach to learning during kindergarten. We operationalize multiple dimensions of children's exposure to repeated change-including the frequency, concurrency, chronicity, timing, and types of changes children experience-in a nationally representative longitudinal cohort of U.S.-born children (Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort, N ~ 4,750). We focus on early childhood, a period of substantial flux in children's family and neighborhood contexts. Predicted behavior scores differ by approximately one-fifth of a standard deviation for children who experienced high

SUBMITTER: Fomby P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6188662 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature