Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.21857/ygjwrcje7y
EARLY SCHOOL ADJUSTMENT AS A CHILD WELLBEING INDICATOR: PREDICTIVE VALIDITY OF INDIVIDUAL CHILD CHARACTERISTICS
Ivana Hanzec Marković
; Sveučilište u Zagrebu – Hrvatski studiji
Abstract
Transition to primary school is one of the major developmental milestones
in the child’s life which requires complex adjustment to new social and academic
demands. Successfully meeting this early demands is associated with future
adjustment and educational progress, and also reflects the wellbeing of the
child (his feelings and effective functioning - academic and social) in the school
context. Given the importance of school adjustment as an indicator of child wellbeing,
the long-term consequences of early adjustment, and the inconsistent
results of previous studies, the aim of this study was to examine and compare
the predictive validity of social-emotional competence and specific cognitive
skills for early social and academic school adjustment, and to examine if these
relationships are moderated by the child’s gender.
Participants were 417 first grade students (202 girls and 215 boys) from 12
elementary schools, their parents (N = 372) and teachers (N = 34). Research
design included two waves of data collection, at the beginning and at the end of
a school year, using a number of instruments filled in by children, their parents
and teachers. The data were analysed using structural equation modelling, and
showed that specific cognitive skills are more important for early social and academic
school adjustment than children’s social-emotional competence. Specific cognitive skills, as expected, were the best predictor of academic adjustment,
and also predicted student’s classroom involvement and student-teacher relationship.
Contrary to expectations, social-emotional competence, in the way it
was defined and operationalized in this study, did not predict any of the measured
early adjustment indicators except the student-teachers relationship, with
specific cognitive skills taken into account. The patterns of relationships among
the variables showed to be equal for girls and boys, i.e. gender was not a significant
moderator of the observed relationships. This research, by broadly defining
school adjustment in terms of both its academic and social indicators, as well
as by determining the relative contribution of a child’s social-emotional competence
(relative to specific cognitive skills) to early school adjustment, complemented
the knowledge of many previous studies of educational achievement
and determinants of academic success.
Keywords
child wellbeing; academic adjustment; social adjustment; social- emotional competence; specific cognitive skills.
Hrčak ID:
231133
URI
Publication date:
24.12.2019.
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