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Pre-K students benefit when teachers are supportive |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: A new study finds that the quality of interactions between teachers and children plays a key role in accounting for gains in children's development when compared to typical quality indicators such as teachers' education, class size, and child-to-teacher ratio. The study suggests that efforts to promote interactions with teachers that are instructionally and emotionally supportive can help children gain the most benefit from their pre-K experience and be more ready for school. It appears in the May/June 2008 issue of the journal Child Development. "This helps parents, teachers, and program administrators understand the specific features of pre-K programs that directly support children's academic, language and social development," Mashburn said. Efforts that focus on the quality of instructional and emotional interactions within pre-K classrooms appear to have the potential to improve children's development, more so than the traditional approaches of class size, teacher qualifications and student-teacher ratios" "Given that other studies have found the quality of instructional and emotional interactions in pre-K classrooms to be average at best, these results point to the importance of working to improve teacher-child classroom interactions." They tested children's academic, language, and social skills at the beginning and end of the program. In addition, teachers and program administrators provided information about whether programs met nine minimum standards of quality recommended by professional organizations, including teacher-child ratio and teacher certification. Rather, children developed greater academic and language skills in classrooms when they had higher quality instructional interactions, and they developed greater social skills when they had higher quality emotional interactions. High-quality emotional interactions happened when teachers frequently displayed positive emotions and were sensitive to children's needs, interests, motivations, and points of view.
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