Indeed, a key goal of early childhood programs for low-income families, such as Head Start, is to provide high-quality emotional supports and academic enrichment to compensate for the early adversity associated with poverty ( Administration for Children and Families, 2010). Research suggests that features of the classroom context also influence child development in important ways. The quality of parent-child interactions and the home environment play key roles in supporting the development of school readiness skills ( Lengua, Honorado, & Bush, 2007), and heightened rates of family adversity associated with poverty, such as low levels of parental education and elevated family stress often reduce support for early childhood cognitive and social-emotional development ( Ritsher, Warner, Johnson, & Dohrenwend, 2001 Ryan et al., 2006). The contexts that children experience in early childhood are influential in shaping their development ( Bronfenbrenner, 1986 Kellam, Ling, Merisca, Brown, & Ialongo, 1998). Whereas learning engagement and emergent literacy skills in early elementary school predict later school success, aggression and social withdrawal at school entry predict later behavior problems and learning difficulties, as well as reduced high school graduation rates and less advantageous long-term employment ( McClelland, Acock, Morrison, 2006 Ryan, Fauth, & Brooks-Gunn, 2006). These early delays often set the stage for later difficulties, contributing to a socio-economic gap in school attainment. In addition, learning engagement significantly mediated the association between a supportive relationship with the kindergarten teacher and first grade literacy skills.Ĭhildren who grow up in poverty are at elevated risk for school adjustment difficulties at the transition into kindergarten as many as 40% demonstrate delays in learning behaviors and emergent literacy skills, and over 20% exhibit high rates of social difficulties and disruptive behavior problems that undermine school adjustment ( Macmillan, McMorris, & Kruttschnitt, 2004 Rimm-Kaufman, Pianta & Cox, 2000). This study followed 164 children as they transitioned from Head Start into elementary school, and regressions revealed significant unique associations between each type of kindergarten support and children’s aggressive behaviors, social withdrawal, learning engagement, and emergent literacy skills in first grade, controlling for their pre-kindergarten adjustment. Given their modest inter-correlations, these dimensions of classroom context may have both unique and shared associations with child progress. Prior research has identified supportive student-teacher relationships and classroom emotional support as two features of the classroom context that can promote student adjustment however, very few studies have examined these two aspects of the classroom context simultaneously. For socio-economically disadvantaged children, a positive experience in kindergarten may play a particularly important role in fostering the behavioral adjustment and learning engagement necessary for school success.

Kindergarten teacher