Theses and Dissertations from UMD

Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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Author: search.filters.author.Mulder, Blakely

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    What does it mean to be ready for school? Analysis of the measurement of school readiness.
    (2020) Mulder, Blakely; Teglasi, Hedwig; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Recent research has found that school readiness is a multi-faceted construct associated with academic ability as well as social-emotional skills, executive functioning, demographic, environmental, and other variables. However, most research assesses school readiness through children’s performance on discrete, typically standardized tasks, which may not be representative of the skills and behaviors children display at school day-to-day. The present study utilized a new measure, the Teacher School Readiness Scale (TSRS), to examine teachers’ perceptions of kindergartners’ school readiness. Drawing from a sample of 70 kindergarten students attending private schools in a semi-urban area, this study used exploratory factor analysis, bivariate correlation, and multiple linear regression to analyze how students’ demonstrated classroom skills and behaviors relate to one another as well as to students’ global school readiness. The study then used multiple linear regression to examine how teacher-rated school readiness relates to children’s performance on standardized performance tasks and rating scales representative of those typically used in school readiness literature. Factor analysis separated items on the TSRS into factors of Academic Understanding and Social Interactions, which correlated significantly with one another and predicted global readiness ratings. TSRS factor scores were not significantly correlated with performance measures of the same constructs. From five composite variables representing children’s academic, social-emotional, and executive functioning skills, only teacher-completed rating scales of executive functioning skills significantly predicted children’s overall school readiness. Results suggest poor ecological validity of traditional school readiness research methods and indicate need for inclusion of teacher-report measures in future school readiness studies.
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    Gender differences in emotion identification among young children
    (2017) Mulder, Blakely; Teglasi, Hedwig; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Gender differences in emotion competence, including emotion identification, are held in popular belief but are inconsistently supported in the research. Emotion identification (EID) is defined as one’s understanding of the experience and expression of emotion, as conveyed through the labeling of the emotions oneself or another person is experiencing. This study investigated gender differences in EID using both the traditional method of comparing scores on a structured task of emotion identification and a comparison of girls’ and boys’ patterns of responding. An ANCOVA was used to compare girls’ and boys’ scores on a task of Situational EID across age groups, while children’s response patterns were analyzed using chi-squares. Results found few effects due to gender, but many effects due to age. Results are framed in context of the biological and social factors that impact emotion identification.