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.

Browse

Filters

20061

Settings

Author: search.filters.author.kessenich, anneSubject: search.filters.subject.Early Childhood Education

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The Impact of Parenting Practices and Early Childhood Curricula on Children's Academic Achievement and Social Competence
    (2006-06-05) kessenich, anne; Hofferth, Sandra; Koblinsky, Sally; Family Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Current research highlights the importance of early social competence for later academic success. Nevertheless, despite that documented importance, the emphasis in both policy and practice has been on academic achievement in early learning curricula. The proposed research had three objectives: 1) to understand how parenting behaviors toward children in kindergarten influence their academic achievement in third grade, 2) to understand how curriculum in kindergarten influences academic achievement in third grade, and 3) to ascertain whether social competence mediates the relationship between parenting factors in kindergarten and academic achievement in third grade and curriculum factors in kindergarten and academic achievement in the third grade. Data are drawn for the period 1998-2003 from an existing data set, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study - Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K) and analyzed using multiple regression analyses. After controlling for background characteristics and academic achievement in kindergarten, these analyses revealed that the presence of spanking in kindergarten was significantly related to academic achievement in third grade. The presence of spanking in kindergarten was also related to children's learning related skills in third grade. Spanking and higher levels of warmth in kindergarten were related to children's interpersonal skills in third grade. Curriculum in kindergarten was unrelated to third grade academic achievement, social competence, and behavior problems. Social competence in third grade was related to academic achievement in third grade, while behavior problems were not. Finally, social competence mediated the relationship between spanking in kindergarten and academic achievement in third grade.