Session Information
05 SES 05.5 A, General Poster Session
General Poster Session
Contribution
Cognitive aspects of school readiness upon entry to primary education is a strong predictor of later academic achievement (Duncan et al., 2007; Paro & Pianta, 2000). It is also found that young children from low socioeconomic status (SES) families lag behind their higher-SES peers in school readiness related skills, especially executive functions (that involves working memory, inhibition, and switching), which have a negative effect on their performance in school (Nayfeld et al., 2013; Hilferty et al., 2010). Empirical evidence showed that it is possible to support the development of these kind of abilities even in case of at-risk samples of children (Duncan et al., 2018; Takacs & Kassai, 2019), however, families living in poverty may have limited resources and knowledge about prevention and early intervention programs (Leseman & Slot, 2014; Lloyd, 2017). Thus, making these services accessible for at-risk samples is crucial but challenging. One of the most promising form of ensuring available interventions for these vulnerable families are home visiting programmes. These programmes can not only foster children’s cognitive skills directly but also nurture parenting skills of their caregivers, and improve their home environment (Corr et al., 2016; Welsh et al., 2014). The aim of the present study was to address these barriers and reduce inequality in school readiness by examining the feasibility and the effectiveness of a low-threshold early intervention for children living in poverty conducted by volunteer helpers. According to our hypotheses it is feasible to provide early intervention at children’s home even in an adverse environment. Additionally, we expect that, after a year of weekly intervention sessions, the intervention group will outperform the controls on school readiness related cognitive abilities like short-term memory and working memory skills.
Method
The intervention targeted preschool-aged children living in underprivileged neighborhood in a segregated roma settlement in Hungary. Following the assessment of the children’s individual needs and circumstances, trained volunteer helpers (mentors) visited the participating families at their homes once a week and provided age-appropriate playful sessions, the main focus of which was on the improvement of children’s cognitive and socioemotional skills. A session usually consisted of different actives for example educational games like puzzle or memory, arts and crafts to support fine motor movements, shared storybook reading to widen their vocabulary and improve language comprehension. However, the intervention programme also aimed to improve parenting skills of the caregivers by inviting them to participate in the sessions as much as they could, and provide feedback and time for consultation following each session. The mentors’ work were constantly supported and supervised by child development specialists (a psychologist and a special education teacher). The present data was collected for two consecutive academic years (year 1: 2020-2021, year 2: 2021-2022). As a measure of feasibility, we registered the number of participating children from the targeted age group living in the area, the ratio of successful and cancelled sessions, and the level of parental involvement. The children’s cognitive skills were measured by the Cognitive Profile Test (CPT; Gyarmathy, 2009) upon school entry. The results of the participants of the intervention group (n=16) were compared to a sample of children living in a similar roma settlement without such a home visiting programme (n=14) in a quasi-experimental design. The control group was matched to the participants in the intervention group by age, gender and SES.
Expected Outcomes
Regarding the feasibility of the intervention, during the first year 70% of the target group on the intervention site were involved in the programme, while in the second year we managed to involve more than 90% of the children. The ratio of the successful sessions were 75% in the first, and 67% in the second year. It should be noted that in the first years we had to suspend the program for 6 weeks due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Regarding children’s cognitive skills, we focused on short-term memory and executive function related subtests of the CPT. A significant large effect were found on post-test both on the digit span t(27) = 2,15, p = .04, d=0.79 and the word span test t(27) = 2,46, p = .02, d=0.92, which suggests that the intervention had a positive effect on short-term memory skills. While there was a tendency for higher scores in the intervention than in the control group on the backward digit span and nonword repetition test, these differences were not significant. In sum, the home visit intervention was shown to be feasible in such adverse home environments and beneficial for children’s developing short-term memory, which is an important ability for reading skills (Haarmann et al., 2003). Surprisingly, the intervention did not affect children’s working memory skills.
References
Corr, C., Santos, R. M., & Fowler, S. A. (2016). The components of early intervention services for families living in poverty: A review of the literature. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 36(1), 55-64. Duncan, G. J., Dowsett, C. J., Claessens, A., Magnuson, K., Huston, A. C., Klebanov, P., ... & Japel, C. (2007). School readiness and later achievement. Developmental psychology, 43(6), 1428. Duncan, R. J., Schmitt, S. A., Burke, M., & McClelland, M. M. (2018). Combining a kindergarten readiness summer program with a self-regulation intervention improves school readiness. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 42, 291-300. Gyarmathy, É. (2009). Kognitív Profil Teszt. Iskolakultúra, 19(3-4), 60-73. Haarmann, H. J., Davelaar, E. J., & Usher, M. (2003). Individual differences in semantic short-term memory capacity and reading comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language, 48(2), 320-345. Hilferty, F., Redmond, G., & Katz, I. (2010). The implications of poverty on children's readiness to learn. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 35(4), 63-71. La Paro, K. M., & Pianta, R. C. (2000). Predicting children's competence in the early school years: A meta-analytic review. Review of educational research, 70(4), 443-484. Leseman, P. P., & Slot, P. L. (2014). Breaking the cycle of poverty: challenges for European early childhood education and care. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 22(3), 314-326. Lloyd, E. (2017). Early childhood education and care: Poverty and access. Perspectives from England. The SAGE Handbook of Early Childhood Policy. London: SAGE, 268-86. Nayfeld, I., Fuccillo, J., & Greenfield, D. B. (2013). Executive functions in early learning: Extending the relationship between executive functions and school readiness to science. Learning and Individual Differences, 26, 81-88. Takacs, Z. K., & Kassai, R. (2019). The efficacy of different interventions to foster children’s executive function skills: A series of meta-analyses. Psychological bulletin, 145(7), 653. Welsh, J. A., Bierman, K. L., & Mathis, E. T. (2014). Parenting programs that promote school readiness. Promoting school readiness and early learning: The implications of developmental research for practice, 253-278.
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