Social Competence and Oral Language Development

Early Education and Development, 26: 933–955 Copyright # 2015 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1040-9289 print/1556-6935 online DOI: 10.1080/10409289.2015.1005728

Social Competence and Oral Language Development for Young Children of Latino Immigrants Downloaded by [BYU Brigham Young University] at 10:11 16 October 2015

Bryant Jensen Department of Teacher Education, Brigham Young University

Leslie Reese College of Education, California State University, Long Beach

Kendra Hall-Kenyon and Courtney Bennett Department of Teacher Education, Brigham Young University

Research Findings: In this study we analyze how parent and teacher ratings of young Latino children’s social competencies in rural California are associated with children’s oral language development. We find (a) that there is considerable incongruence between parent and teacher ratings of child social competence, (b) that both parent and teacher ratings account for meaningful variation in children’s oral language development, and (c) that incongruence between parent and teacher ratings is associated with oral language above and beyond the effects of parent and teacher ratings alone. Practice or Policy: Young Latino children’s social competencies contribute to their oral language development. These competencies represent an important, though to date underutilized, asset for building stronger academic/language functioning. Part of the paradoxical development of Latino children (i.e., strong social though weak academic/language competence) could be attributable to cultural differences that underlie teacher and parent perceptions of social competence. Teachers of young Latino children should (a) be aware of the cultural nature of social competence and (b) explore culturally responsive ways of interacting in classrooms to build stronger oral language functioning.

A growing body of research links children’s social competencies with their academic and language development (Arnold, Kupersmidt, Voegler-Lee, & Marshall, 2012; Denham & Brown, 2010; DiPerna, Volpe, & Elliott, 2001; Dobbs, Doctoroff, Fisher, & Arnold, 2006; Doctoroff, Greer, & Arnold, 2006; Malecki & Elliott, 2002; Nadeem, Maslak, Chacko, & Hoagwood, 2010). Arnold and colleagues (2012), for example, found significant relationships between young children’s preliteracy, language, and mathematics learning and teachers’ ratings of children’s social competencies. Social skills, such as cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, and self-control, can serve as academic enablers for children and are associated, albeit

Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to Bryant Jensen, Department of Teacher Education, Brigham Young University, 206-T MCKB, Provo, UT 84602. E-mail: [email protected]

Downloaded by [BYU Brigham Young University] at 10:11 16 October 2015

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JENSEN, REESE, HALL-KENYON, BENNETT

modestly, with academic competence and achievement (Malecki & Elliott, 2002). Conversely, higher social-emotional risk at school entry is often associated with weaker academic outcomes (Hair, Halle, Terry-Humen, Lavelle, & Calkins, 2006). To date, this body of research has primarily focused on the relationships between social and academic/language functioning for mainstream, English-speaking children. Less is known about the nature of these relationships for Latino children. Only a few studies have addressed this issue (Galindo & Fuller, 2010; Oades-Sese, Esquivel, Kaliski, & Maniatis, 2011), and some suggest that it is unclear whether Latino children’s social competencies enable academic learning in the same way that such competencies do for their mainstream peers (Denham & Brown, 2010). In this article we conceptualize the social competencies of Latino children as critical assets that are available to enhance children’s language learning in early elementary classrooms. Utilization of this resource, we argue, depends on the quality of social interactions between teachers and students (Downer, Sabol, & Hamre, 2010) and thus how well teachers detect the social competencies children bring to the classroom. We theorize that Latino children’s social assets—nurtured through family cultural models of educación (e.g., Reese, Balzano, Gallimore, & Goldenberg, 1995)—directly affect their oral language development and that congruence between parent and teacher perceptions of social behavior is an important consideration. We explore these hypotheses with a series of sequential regression models using data from a sample of Latino kindergartners (mostly children of Mexican immigrants) attending a rural school district in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Specifically, we examine (a) parent and teacher ratings of children’s social competence and the congruence between these ratings, (b) the effects of social competence on Latino oral language development, and (c) how congruence between parent and teacher ratings of social competence is associated with children’s oral language development. THE PARADOXICAL DEVELOPMENT OF LATINO CHILDREN Many Latinos—1 in 4 U.S. births—demonstrate a perplexing developmental profile: strong social competencies (e.g., affection, communication, comportment, composure, cooperation, meeting role obligations, obedience, respect, and self-reliance; Bridges et al., 2012) yet relatively weak academic and linguistic development (Fuller & Garcia Coll, 2010; Jensen, 2013, 2014). Researchers refer to this phenomenon as a developmental paradox (Fuller et al., 2009; Garcia Coll & Marks, 2012), because in mainstream society children demonstrating stronger cognitive skills also tend to exhibit stronger social competencies (Denham, 2006). This paradoxical profile is even more pervasive for Latino children raised in immigrant (vs. nonimmigrant) homes (Garcia Coll & Marks, 2012; Jensen, 2007), a fact that is often attributed to the cultural values of educación among immigrant Latino families that cultivate the development of social competencies in the home (Jensen & Sawyer, 2013). Social Competencies Though diverse, a majority of Latino children are reared in immigrant, Spanish-speaking homes. Most are exposed to cultural ways of being, feeling, acting, and thinking that are rooted


LATINO SOCIAL COMPETENCE AND ORAL LANGUAGE

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in values of familism, respect for authority, hard work, and group solidarity (Bridges et al., 2012; Livas Stein, García Coll, & Huq, 2013; Reese, 2013; Reese et al., 1995). Latino parents seek to develop children who are bien educados, or well brought up (Knight & Carlo, 2012; Reese et al., 1995). Respect is a key cultural value for many Latinos, exhibited through good manners and appropriate address (Goldenberg & Gallimore, 1995; Valdés, 1996). These cultural ways of being likely contribute to Latino children’s strong intra- and interpersonal functioning, although they likely do not always correspond with mainstream views. In fact, some have proposed that differences in cultural models of childrearing between home and school settings may be one possible explanation for the Latino paradox (Bridges et al., 2012; Livas Stein et al., 2013). Some studies show that Latino parents, especially those with recent immigrant pasts, follow the cultural model of educación, socializing their children to be obedient, respectful, and cooperative and to identify with collective effort and accomplishment (Reese et al., 1995; Valdés, 1996). Mainstream teachers in U.S. settings, in contrast, tend to value children who know academic facts, express themselves verbally, and identify with individual effort and accomplishment (Lipka, 1998; Rogoff, 2003). It has been argued that many Latino families, especially immigrants from Mexico and Central America, emphasize collectivist values (e.g., family loyalty, cooperation), whereas U.S. school personnel often accentuate more individualist orientations (e.g., individual achievement, competition; Greenfield & Quiroz, 2013). Thus, when kindergarten teachers rate Latino students lower than White students on measures of social competence (West, Denton, & Reaney, 2001), it may be that they are not perceiving the full set of social skills developed in the home and possessed by young children as they enter school. It is important to consider how the congruence, or lack of congruence, between teacher and parent ratings of children’s social competencies influences children’s academic and other developmental opportunities in classroom settings. It is also critical to evaluate the cultural values that underlie the development of social-behavioral surveys (Bridges et al., 2012).

Academic Performance These considerations are significant because many Latino children continue to demonstrate pervasively poor performance on traditional academic tasks—significantly lower (0.6 to 0.8 SD) than their White, non-Hispanic peers (Hemphill, Vanneman, & Rahman, 2011). We know that Latino academic underperformance is associated with a combination of school and family factors (Reardon & Galindo, 2009). Latino children are more likely than their White, nonHispanic peers to live in poverty (Hernandez, Denton, & Macartney, 2007), have parents with low levels of formal schooling (Capps et al., 2005), demonstrate limited English proficiency, and live in linguistically isolated home environments (Hernandez et al., 2007). When the effects of family variables are statistically controlled, however, Latino children still perform lower than their White, non-Latino peers. Institutional factors like poor teacher quality and racial/ethnic student segregation influence their performance (Ryabov & Van Hook, 2007), and cultural factors in the classroom (e.g., differential expectations, cultural responsiveness, and discrimination) can also affect academic learning for Latinos and other minority children (Moss, Pullin, Gee, Haertel, & Young, 2008).

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ORAL LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT AMONG LATINO CHILDREN


Oral language competence includes a complex set of skills (e.g., vocabulary [expressive/ receptive], grammar, listening comprehension) that develop over time through rich, ongoing language experiences that take place both within and outside of school (Hart & Risley, 2003). Early oral language demonstrates robust predictive validity for students’ reading and academic proficiencies through high school (e.g., Cunningham & Stanovich, 1997) and is developed through social interaction (Kuhl, 2007). However, oral language development for Latino children, who are often bilingual, requires special considerations (Howard et al., 2014). Bilingual Considerations A central, somewhat contested issue is the relationship between oral skills in Spanish—the first language of most children of Latino immigrants—and English. Cummins (1990) has proposed the concept of cross-linguistic transfer to describe the knowledge and skills that transfer from the first language to the second language and vice versa. Research syntheses (e.g., Genesee, Geva, Dressler, & Kamil, 2006) demonstrate that early reading skills such as reading fluency and decoding transfer better than oral language skills and that cross-linguistic transfer is insufficient to explain second language development. Some evidence shows that Spanish oral language as measured by narrative story retells is predictive of reading passage comprehension in both languages (Miller et al., 2006), but another longitudinal study found that the effect of Spanish oral language in kindergarten on English reading in Grades 3 through 8 was confounded by early oral proficiency in English (Kieffer, 2011). Much attention has been given to the question of whether “children’s ability to learn language is challenged in any way by the acquisition of two languages at the same time” (Genesee & Nicoladis, 2007, p. 324). Bilingual children have been found to outperform their monolingual peers on certain language and literacy tasks (Baker, 2001; Oller & Jarmulowicz, 2007). Studies have shown that bilingual children produce their first words at about the same age as monolingual children and show the same rates of vocabulary acquisition, as long as both languages are considered (Genesee & Nicoladis, 2007). However, vocabulary tends to be distributed, such that some words are known in one language or the other depending on how, where, and with whom the vocabulary is acquired (Oller & Jarmulowicz, 2007). Thus, it is recognized that bilingualism, in both adults and children, is not simply the sum of monolingual competence in each language (Garcia, 2005; Grosjean, 2001). Determining the oral language competencies of bilingual children thus demands assessment in both languages. Taken together, these studies suggest that the development of bilingual children differs from that of monolingual children (Bialystok, 2001). For example, although bilingual children perform similarly to monolinguals on vocabulary recognition, monolingual speakers consistently outperform bilinguals on picture naming accuracy and response time (Paradis, 2007). Verhoeven and Strömqvist (2001) contended that “the essential difference is that bilingual children receive two sets of linguistic input and thus have the additional task of distinguishing the two language systems” (p. 8). Systematic interplay between the two languages is to be expected in children’s linguistic development (Paradis, 2000), and attempts to study children’s second language acquisition without taking into account their first language proficiency and opportunities for use result in an incomplete picture of their linguistic development.


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The Social Nature of Language Development Even with these differences, it is clear that developing oral language competence for both monolingual and bilingual children is an inextricably social process (Kuhl, 2007). Language, even in infancy, is gained from social interaction—from repeated opportunities to observe and imitate others’ verbal expressions and to inquire and respond to encouragement in conversations. This assertion is consistent with early language theorizing (Bruner, 1983; Vygotsky, 1962) as well as recent neurological research demonstrating synaptic overlap in the prefrontal cortex between complex language and social-emotional processing (Goldberg, 2009; Jensen, 2013). Because oral language development is inherently social, it follows that social competencies would be associated with oral language proficiency in young children. Still, more research is needed to better understand how social competencies underlie oral language functioning for Latino children. Background Influences Out-of-school activities are important settings for early oral language development for young children. Several studies show positive relationships between vocabulary knowledge and home literacy practices across racial and ethnic groups, particularly shared reading (Howard et al., 2014; Purcell-Gates, 1996). Texts shared orally with young children have a range of features that are rarely used in conversational language with children, including subordinate clauses, passive constructions, unfamiliar expressions, colloquialisms, and idioms (Bus, 2001). We expect more frequent home reading to be associated with stronger oral language skills (Farver, Xu, Eppe, & Lonigan, 2006). Yet Latino parents with lower levels of formal school tend to report less frequent home reading with their children (Brooks-Gunn & Markman, 2005), though some evidence suggests that home reading among Latino families increases with exposure to U.S. schools (Iruka, Dotterer, & Pungello, 2014; Reese & Gallimore, 2000). Preschool experiences can improve the prereading performance of Latino children (e.g., Gormley, 2008); however, Latino children’s rates of enrollment in preschool are lower than national averages (Liang, Fuller, & Singer, 2000). Taken together, these findings suggest that young Latinos in immigrant families are likely to be reared in homes in which they develop culturally valued social skills, whereas opportunities to develop academic competencies through preschool and home reading activities might be less frequent. THE PRESENT STUDY As discussed, we expect the social competencies of rural Latino children to contribute to their oral language development, with some caveats. We ask the following: 1. How congruent are parent and teacher ratings of kindergarten children’s social competencies? 2. To what extent do Latino children’s social competencies, as rated by parents and teachers, predict their oral language performance in the fall and spring semesters? 3. To what extent do differences in parent and teacher ratings of Latino children’s social competencies predict oral language performance in the fall and spring semesters?


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To address the bilingual considerations described previously, we assess Latino children’s reading and oral language performance in both Spanish and English. Consistent with Cummins’s (1990) notion of common underlying proficiencies, we operationalize oral language knowledge in terms of expressive vocabulary, knowledge of antonyms/synonyms, and verbal reasoning in Spanish or English. In other words, for item credit children must respond accurately in one language or the other but not necessarily in both. Given the social nature of oral language development, we hypothesize that parent and teacher ratings of children’s social competence will significantly predict performance in the fall and spring. We also hypothesize that greater congruence between teacher and parent ratings will predict children’s oral language functioning above and beyond parent and teacher ratings alone. We interpret congruence between raters as an alignment of cultural values regarding ideal child behavior and thus how to socialize children (Goldenberg & Gallimore, 1995). METHODS The present study was part of a larger project that examined classroom quality and children’s language and early reading development in Grades K–2. Here we focus on the kindergarten cohort only, for which parents and teachers rated children’s social skills as well. Sample School district. The sampled school district included three elementary schools, a middle school, and a high school in California’s San Joaquin Valley. It encompassed two rural communities of 15,505 residents and 1,439 residents, respectively (per the 2010 Census). Agricultural work and work in the nearby state prison facility were majority employers for children’s parents. Student enrollment in the district was predominantly Latino (94%) and low income (98%). This rural setting was purposefully sampled to explore how the Latino paradox is addressed in classrooms in which children of recent low-income Mexican and Central American immigrants predominate. Among Latino children, paradoxical development is most stark among this group (Garcia Coll & Marks, 2012). Teachers. All kindergarten teachers (n ¼ 11) in the district consented to participate in the study. All were female. Eight were Hispanic; three were non-Hispanic. All teachers were state certified. One teacher held a master’s degree, and the other 10 held bachelor’s degrees. The average number of years teaching among them was 11 years, 8.5 years at their current schools. Eight teachers indicated that they spoke Spanish, and the other three were English monolinguals. One Hispanic teacher reported that she did not speak Spanish, and another White, non-Hispanic teacher reported that she was proficient in Spanish. All but two teachers lived outside of the communities where their students lived. They commuted daily from larger nearby cities. Five teachers reported that they held a bilingual education credential. Eight indicated that they were well prepared to teach English language learners, and the other three reported that they were adequately prepared. Children and families. A total of 57 Latino kindergartners were included in the analytic sample. All kindergartners (n ¼ 246) in the district (during 2010–2011) were invited to participate. Thus, the sample was nonrandom, and analytic findings should be interpreted with



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caution. Half of the children’s parents signed and returned consent forms. By the end of the school year, 23% of the kindergartners had participated in all data collection activities: fall and spring student assessments, teacher and parent ratings of child social skills, classroom observations, and face-to-face parent surveys. No siblings were included in the analytic sample. The gender split of the analytic sample was even (51% male, 49% female), and 95% of children were designated limited English proficient by school district records. All were Hispanic, and 90% spoke Spanish as their first language. For 86% of the children, Spanish was the language spoken most frequently in the home. Parents of two children indicated that Nahuatl (a Mexican indigenous language) was spoken in the home. Most children (95%) had been born in the United States, mostly in California. Most parents, in contrast, had been born in Mexico (79% of mothers, 81% of fathers). One father had been born in El Salvador. Educational levels of the parents were low but consistent with levels in rural Mexico (Treviño, 2013): 45% of mothers and 36% of fathers had not attended beyond elementary school. A total of 16% of mothers and 12% of fathers reported having attended at least some college. Measures Oral language. The Bilingual Verbal Ability Tests (BVAT; Muñoz-Sandoval, Cummins, Alvarado, & Ruef, 1998) was administered to assess children’s language competencies in English and Spanish in the fall and spring. Bilingual project-trained research assistants individually administered tests to children in, or immediately outside of, their classrooms. Spanish– English bilingual subtests from the BVAT included Picture Vocabulary, Oral Vocabulary, and Verbal Analogies. BVAT subtests were normed in 2005 from a sample of participants ages 2 to 90 þ years that included a large group of Spanish-speaking persons. Reliability indices range from .76 to .98. We used standardized scores (M ¼ 100, SD ¼ 15) in all present analyses. Thus, we operationalized oral language using the Picture Vocabulary, Oral Vocabulary, and Verbal Analogies subtests. Consistent with Cummins’s (1990) theory of linguistic interdependence and the common proficiencies that underlie language systems for bilingual persons, BVAT measures provide standardized scores for children regardless of the language system used. In the Picture Vocabulary subtest, for example, children are shown a picture (e.g., of a bicycle) and prompted to say the name of it. They are asked to do it first in English, then in Spanish if they do not respond correctly in English. Credit is given for knowing the answer, regardless of the language. In this way, oral competence irrespective of the language system is assessed. Verbal Analogies is scored the same way. It measures children’s verbal reasoning abilities by asking them to complete logical sequences (e.g., “On is to off as open is to … ”). The Oral Vocabulary subtests simply ask children to provide synonyms and antonyms (e.g., “Tell me the opposite of up”). Early reading subtests—Letter-Word Identification and Word Attack (i.e., decoding)— from the Woodcock–Johnson III Diagnostic Reading Battery were also administered in English only, as in all kindergarten classrooms English was the only language of instruction. We share group means from these measures to describe the sample. Social competencies. Social skills were assessed during the fall semester using the Social Skills Improvement System (SSIS; Gresham & Elliott, 2008). The SSIS is a Likert-item survey that focuses on 10 social skills shown in previous research to be among the most important to school success, categorized as prosocial skills (communication, cooperation, assertion,


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responsibility, empathy, engagement, and self-control) and problem behaviors (externalizing, hyperactivity/inattention, and internalizing). Psychometric analyses have confirmed the factor structure of the tool, though interrater agreement remains an important concern (Gresham, Elliott, Cook, Vance, & Kettler, 2010). A recent synthesis found that the SSIS (and its predecessor, the Social Skills Rating Scale; Gresham & Elliott, 1990) is the most widely used assessment of child and adolescent social skills in the research literature (Crowe, Beauchamp, Catroppa, & Anderson, 2011). Teachers filled out the SSIS individually for each participating child after knowing the children in their classrooms for about 2 months. Parents rated their own kindergarten child, completing the SSIS in the language of their choice (English or Spanish). We used parent and teacher composites of children’s prosocial skills to model the effects of general social competence on children’s oral language development. The composite was a standardized measure. It was calculated by SSIS software using a factor analytic algorithm that correlated highly with all seven specific prosocial skills (Gresham & Elliott, 2008). Again, we interpret the congruence between parent and teacher ratings as an alignment of cultural values regarding child behavior and socialization. Parent survey. Based on previous work assessing home and cultural variables associated with the literacy learning of young Latino children (Goldenberg, Gallimore, & Reese, 2005), the parent survey consisted of 58 items addressing family demographics, language use, reading practices, preschool attendance, and the daily activities of children outside of school. Research assistants gathering this information were bilingual Latinos who themselves had grown up in the San Joaquin Valley; individual meetings were scheduled with parents at the child’s school, and the parent survey was administered orally. Parents were given the option to complete the survey in Spanish or English. We used three variables from this survey: amount of preschool, maternal schooling, and amount of home reading. Data Analysis Descriptive statistics. Means and standard deviations from oral language measures were calculated to interpret basic trends and to assess basic group differences. We assessed means and distributions by performance groups (e.g., top vs. bottom quartiles) within subtests to evaluate basic model assumptions: homoscedasticity and the normality of dependent variable distribution. Sampling bias. We used reading and language data to assess selection bias in our analytic subsample (n ¼ 57). That is, 124 children were administered reading and language measures in the fall and spring semesters, though additional data used in our models were only gathered on 57 children (46% of the participant sample). We wanted to assess the extent to which this selection was biased—whether our analytic sample consisted of higher or lower performers compared to the unanalyzed sample (n ¼ 67). To do so, we calculated a series of independent-samples t tests. The t statistic we chose assumed relatively equal performance variances between the two samples. We also conducted mean comparisons to determine differences in teacher and parent social skills ratings. Because teachers and parents rated the same children, we calculated a series of paired-samples t tests to compare means. We compared ratings for social skills composite


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scores (for which the SSIS provides standardized scores [M ¼ 100, SD ¼ 15]) as well as raw item totals associated with each social skill. The statistical significance of t values was based on a two-tailed level of .10. We provide sample frequencies for child background variables (amount of preschool, maternal schooling, home reading) associated with fall performance subgroup means in early reading and oral language using ordinal categories in all three cases. These descriptions are important when interpreting the results from multiple regression analyses that follow. Multiple regression analyses. We conducted sequential linear regression models to determine the effects of social competence ratings on children’s fall and spring oral language performance. For models of spring performance we controlled for the effects of fall performance. We did not, however, control in any of the models for the effects of the student background variables mentioned because (a) they demonstrated limited variation in our sample and (b) none of the bivariate correlations between student background and oral language performance were found to be statistically significant at the .10 level (see Table 1). Using dummy-coded variables we modeled the effects of (in)congruence between parent and teacher ratings of child social skills on oral language performance in the fall and spring. We used a sequential approach to assess how adding blocks of predictors improved model fit (i.e., R2 change). Full regression models predicting fall performance were captured in the following equation: y ¼ β0 þ β1 x1 þ β2 x2 þ β3 x3 þ β4 x4 þ β5 x5 þ β6 x6 þ " Here the dependent variable y is fall performance on each oral language subtest. β0 is the regression intercept, and β12 are the parameter estimates for standardized teacher and parent composites of child social skill ratings, respectively. β36 are the dichotomous parameter estimates for parent–teacher rating congruence: teacher higher than parent, parent higher by 1 SD, parent higher by 2 SD, and parent higher by 3 þ SD, respectively. Comparable parent– teacher ratings were operationalized as the reference category. " is the residual error term. For each regression model we calculated R2 to estimate the overall model effect or fit—to determine the total variance in y explained or accounted for by the relationships of y to x. Full regression models predicting spring performance in oral language performance (i.e., development) were identical to fall models, with the addition of a baseline parameter to estimate or control for the effect of fall on spring performance. In other words, we were interested in how models accounted for spring performance above and beyond the effects of fall performance. For each regression model we first interpreted model fit (R2) and fit improvement (R2 change). We used standard criteria to interpret the strength of fit: .010 to .089 as a small effect, .090 to .249 as a medium effect, and .250 and greater as a large effect (Cohen, 1988). Then we interpreted the significance and direction of the regression coefficients. Given the small sample we used α ¼ .10 as our criterion for statistical significance. We report actual p values for all coefficients in order to “move from NHST [null hypothesis significance testing] as dichotomous decision making to the consideration of p values as useful input to interpretation” (Cumming & Finch, 2005, p. 172). Interpreting the relative size of p values is critical when the R2 coefficient of determination suggests good model fit yet associated parameter coefficients are not statistically significant. Higher p values despite good fit are relatively common with small sample data.

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Home reading

Maternal education

Amount of preschool

Variable

None or less than 1 year 1 year More than 1 year Elementary or less Some high school High school, general equivalency diploma, or more 1–2 times per month or less 1–2 times per week Almost daily or more

Category

25% 32% 32%

26% 40% 34% 45% 35% 20%

%

76.2 84.2 79.8

75.8 80.9 83.3 78.5 80.8 83.0

M

ρ

.183

.011

.163

Fall

83.7 85.9 87.5

84.9 83.0 90.0 87.5 83.1 87.4

M

.086

.150

.042

Partial ρ

Spring

Picture vocabulary

52.5 70.3 65.9

74.2 57.2 63.5 74.4 57.7 50.1

M

.154

91.9 92.4 97.2

95.4 92.0 95.4 92.5 95.0 94.9

–.050 –.229

M

ρ

Fall

.201

.221

.062

Partial ρ

Spring

Oral vocabulary

83.9 84.9 80.9

78.8 84.6 84.9 74.4 77.3 85.9

M

–.064

–.002

.017

ρ

87.6 89.0 89.8

92.5 87.2 88.1 90.5 86.8 88.9

M

.114

–.084

–.222

Partial ρ

Spring

Verbal analogies Fall

TABLE 1 Sample Frequencies, Oral Language Means, and Rank-Order Correlations by Child Background Variable



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FINDINGS Descriptive Statistics


We describe children’s background characteristics, oral language performance, and children’s social competencies. To address our first research question, we contrast children’s social competencies as perceived by their parents at home and their teachers at school. Child background. Table 1 includes sample frequencies and mean performance on oral language measures by child background variables. We also include rank-order correlations (Spearman’s ρ) between the three background variables and each of the oral language measures. Partial correlations demonstrate relationships between spring performance and background variables when fall performance is controlled. Weak and nonsignificant correlations were found for all bivariate relationships. Frequencies in Table 1 demonstrate low maternal education levels: 80% of sampled children had mothers who had not finished high school. They also demonstrate that most children (74%) had attended at least 1 year of preschool—mostly Head Start, but also state-funded programs, a program at a nearby community college, and a private program subsidized by a major farming enterprise that employed many parents. Furthermore, more than a third of parents indicated that they read to their children almost daily or more, whereas 10% indicated that they read to their children once per month. Oral language skills. Significant performance variation among the 57 children was found across the fall and spring semesters (see Table 2). As a whole, children’s oral language performance, even when measured bilingually, was much lower than national norms. Overall performance means in the fall were more than 1 SD below the normative means in Picture Vocabulary and Verbal Analogies and more than 2 SD lower for Oral Vocabulary. In the spring these differences reduced slightly in Picture Vocabulary and Verbal Analogies and drastically diminished in Oral Vocabulary. These gains were concentrated in the lowest performing TABLE 2 Descriptive Statistics for Fall and Spring Student Performance on Oral Language Measures by Performance Subgroup Fall

Spring

Measure

Subgroup

n

M

SD

M

SD

Picture Vocabulary

Quartile 1 Quartile 2 Quartile 3 Quartile 4 Tercile 1 Tercile 2 Tercile 3 Quartile 1 Quartile 2 Quartile 3 Quartile 4

11 18 15 13 19 16 22 17 15 12 13

56.45 76.33 85.87 100.85 0.00 84.56 106.27 67.65 77.93 90.50 102.23

18.79 2.30 3.00 8.23 0.00 7.92 6.73 17.44 4.83 3.29 5.26

70.27 83.72 88.73 100.15 89.84 88.19 102.27 83.59 87.67 91.17 95.38

3.25 1.72 2.24 3.90 2.29 2.43 1.46 2.27 3.00 2.64 2.31

Oral Vocabulary

Verbal Analogies


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tercile: One third of sampled children did not respond correctly to any of the Oral Vocabulary items in the fall (i.e., basal effects), but by the spring they were performing in the low-average range. The skewed distributions resulting from basal effects made fall Oral Vocabulary scores difficult to interpret in subsequent predictive analyses. Homoscedasticity (i.e., comparable variance in y across levels of x) is a central assumption of linear regression. Though not as extreme as for Oral Vocabulary, performance gains were largest for the lowest performing children across the other subtests as well. It is important to note that standardized scores were based on age-equivalent performance in the normative sample. Thus, decreased standard scores do not necessarily signify that children somehow unlearned related knowledge, but simply that they did not perform as well compared to their same-age peers (calculated by month) in the spring than in the fall. In other words, it is more difficult for high performers than low performers to gain standard points between semesters. Independent-samples t tests indicated no significant differences in mean comparisons at the p < .10 level. We conclude that the analyzed and unanalyzed samples were relatively comparable and that the analyzed group was not selected with bias in terms of children’s oral language development. Analytic findings should still be interpreted with caution, however, given that the selection of the full sample was not random. Social competence ratings. By and large, teacher and parent ratings of children’s social competencies were incongruent (see Table 3). On the whole, parents (mostly mothers) perceived their children as more socially competent than did teachers. With the exception of self-control, bivariate correlations were below .20 and mean differences between teacher and parent ratings were statistically significant, with effect size differences ranging from 0.73 SD (responsibility) to 1.41 SD (assertion). For self-control, teachers actually perceived children as slightly more competent than did parents, though the difference was not statistically significant.

TABLE 3 Mean Comparisons Between Parent and Teacher Social Competence Ratings During the Fall Semester Skill Composite Communication Cooperation Assertion Responsibility Empathy Engagement Self-control

Rater

M

SD

Teacher Parent Teacher Parent Teacher Parent Teacher Parent Teacher Parent Teacher Parent Teacher Parent Teacher Parent

90.81 107.40 12.86 16.09 11.54 14.44 10.61 15.98 11.58 14.02 10.49 14.02 12.54 16.18 11.95 11.44

15.67 13.90 4.09 3.34 3.58 2.82 4.50 3.13 3.59 3.12 3.93 3.60 3.82 3.85 4.51 4.44

r

ΔM

t

p

.083

–16.60

–6.25

.000

.116

–3.23

–4.90

.000

.149

–2.89

–5.19

.000

.096

–5.37

–7.75

.000

–.097

–2.44

–3.70

.000

.025

–3.53

–5.05

.000

.150

–3.63

–5.49

.000

.230

0.51

0.69

.492



945

The mean difference in composite scores was 1.13 pooled SD. Parent ratings were in the average to high-average range, whereas teacher ratings were in the low-average range. Of course, the cause of these differences is not clear. We do not know whether rater averages represent behavioral differences (i.e., children actually behaving differently across settings), perceptual differences (i.e., teacher and parent subjectivities), or some combination of the two. This is a distinctive problem in research using social and behavioral rating systems (Gresham et al., 2010). We interpret these rating differences in terms of cultural value systems that underlie what is deemed ideal, prosocial child behavior (Bridges et al., 2012). Table 4 includes means and standard deviations of social competence ratings by five categories of parent–teacher congruence: teacher higher than parent composite rating, comparable ratings, parent around 1 SD higher than teacher, parent 2 SD higher, and parent 3þSD higher. Given these large differences—and the fact that teacher and parent scores were essentially uncorrelated—we modeled the effects of teacher and parent ratings on student oral language as separate variables. Social Competencies and Oral Language Development We conducted multiple regression analyses to address our second research question regarding the extent to which children’s social competencies are associated with their oral language development. We considered collapsing performance on language subtests to produce more parsimonious regression models by correlating fall performance and fall-to-spring gains on oral language measures (i.e., Picture Vocabulary, Oral Vocabulary, Verbal Analogies). Bivariate correlations, however, did not support the decision to collapse. Relationships between measures were small at best in the fall and slightly stronger though still modest in the spring. Fall performance. Regression model results for fall performance across oral language subtests are shown in Table 5. These results allowed us to interpret (a) the strength of overall model fit (i.e., R2), (b) the statistical significance of regression coefficients, and (c) fit improvement (i.e., R2 change) modeling parent–teacher congruence above and beyond parent and teacher ratings alone. Again, given the small sample we used α < .10 as our criterion for statistical significance. In Table 5 we see that social competence ratings (Models 1, 3, and 5) had a small overall effect on oral language in the fall. They accounted for 4.1% of the variation in Picture Vocabulary, 1.5% of the variation in Oral Vocabulary, and 4.6% of the variation in Verbal Analogies performance. We suspect that the weaker model fit for Oral Vocabulary in Model 3 was due to violation of the homoscedasticity assumption. None of the regression coefficients for parent and TABLE 4 Means (SD) of Parent and Teacher Ratings of Student Social Competence by Congruence Category Category

n

Parent rating

Teacher rating

P–T difference

Teacher rating higher Comparable ratings Parent rating higher (1 SD) Parent rating higher (2 SD) Parent rating higher (3 þ SD)

5 11 17 13 11

93.00 95.27 107.71 112.69 119.36

117.80 93.00 93.71 87.92 75.27

24.80 2.27 14.00 24.77 44.09

(10.42) (11.89) (10.75) (13.72) (5.14)

(8.14) (10.64) (10.86) (13.77) (12.63)

(12.72) (5.64) (2.83) (3.14) (10.95)

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Teacher composite Parent composite Teacher higher Parent higher (1 SD) Parent higher (2 SD) Parent higher (3 þ SD) .83

0.04 (0.17)

.041

.14

0.22 (0.15)

(SE)

.31 .57 .10 .11 .26

–0.40 (0.39) –7.68 (13.52) 13.61 (8.18) 17.82 (10.98) 19.11 (16.81) .108 .067

.12

0.57 (0.36)

(SE)

p (SE)

.015

–0.26 (0.46)

0.32 (0.41)

β

Model 3

.57

.44

p (SE)

.061 .046

42.85 (46.84)

33.36 (30.60)

–43.39 (37.68) 21.22 (22.79)

–1.39 (1.08)

1.37 (1.01)

β

Model 4

DV: Oral vocabulary

.37

.28

.26 .36

.21

.18

p (SE)

.046

0.19 (0.16)

0.14 (0.14)

β

Model 5

.23

.34

p

(SE)

.01 .09

–25.84 (10.14) –26.54 (15.51) .165 .119

.63 .05

.04

.35

p

6.09 (12.48) –15.06 (7.55)

0.77 (0.36)

–0.31 (0.33)

β

Model 6

DV: Verbal analogies

Note. DV ¼ dependent variable; Model 1 ¼ effects of social skill ratings on fall Picture Vocabulary; Model 2 ¼ effects of social skills and the congruence between ratings on fall Picture Vocabulary; Model 3 ¼ effects of social skill ratings on fall Oral Vocabulary; Model 4 ¼ effects of social skills and the congruence between ratings on fall Oral Vocabulary; Model 5 ¼ effects of social skill ratings on fall Verbal Analogies; Model 6 ¼ effects of social skills and the congruence between ratings on fall Verbal Analogies.

R2 R2 change

Congruence in parent and teacher ratings

Child social competence

Predictor

β

β p

Model 2

Model 1

DV: Picture vocabulary

TABLE 5 Unstandardized Coefficients, Standard Errors, p Values, and Fit Indices for Fall Multiple Linear Regression Models



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teacher ratings were found to be statistically significant. For Picture Vocabulary, teacher ratings in Model 1 were more strongly associated (p ¼ .14) with fall performance than parent ratings (p ¼ .83). Higher ratings were associated with higher vocabulary performance. For Verbal Analogies, though not statistically significant, parent and teacher ratings of child social competencies in Model 5 were associated with stronger analytic language performance. Spring performance. Regression models of spring performance in oral language are found in Table 6. Unlike in the fall models, variation in Oral Vocabulary performance in the spring was normally distributed (see the standard deviations in Table 2), allowing for clearer interpretations of model results, especially after we controlled for the effects of fall performance. Fall performance accounted for 52.1%, 16.7%, and 7.8% of spring performance in Picture Vocabulary (Model 1), Oral Vocabulary (Model 4), and Verbal Analogies (Model 7), respectively. We found mixed results for the effects of social competence on oral language in the spring after we controlled for fall performance. Social competence ratings (Models 2, 4, and 6 in Table 6) uniquely accounted for 0.6% of spring performance variation in Picture Vocabulary (a null effect), 7.1% in Oral Vocabulary (a small effect), and 10.1% in Verbal Analogies (a medium effect). The regression coefficient (p ¼ .02) for teacher ratings on Verbal Analogies in Model 6 was the only one found to be statistically significant, such that higher ratings were associated with stronger performance. Coefficients for parent (p ¼ .14) and teacher (p ¼ .15) ratings on Oral Vocabulary performance in Model 4 were equally strong, once again such that higher ratings were associated with stronger language performance. Thus, though parents and teachers differed in their perceptions of children’s social competence, each appeared to provide unique and important information relative to children’s oral language functioning. Congruence Between Teacher and Parent Ratings of Social Competence Our third research question addressed the issue of congruence, or lack of congruence, between parent and teacher ratings of child social competence—the extent to which rater differences are associated with variation in children’s oral language scores. Findings discussed earlier indicated that parents and teachers independently perceived children’s social skills and that these ratings were modestly associated with children’s oral language development. We asked whether the alignment of parent and teacher perspectives affects children’s oral language above and beyond the effects of parent and teacher ratings alone. Congruence in parent and teacher ratings (see Models 2, 4, and 6 in Table 5) demonstrated small to medium effects on Latino children’s oral language performance in the fall, above and beyond the contributions of parent and teacher ratings alone. Congruence uniquely accounted for 6.7%, 4.6%, and 11.9% (i.e., R2 change) of fall performance variation in Picture Vocabulary, Oral Vocabulary, and Verbal Analogies, respectively. Regression coefficients for parent higher dummy-coded variables were found to be statistically significant in the case of Verbal Analogies (Model 6), such that congruence was associated with stronger fall performance. Regression coefficients for Picture Vocabulary and Oral Vocabulary performance, however, were not statistically significant (though some p values were as low as .10). Rater congruence for Picture Vocabulary (Model 2) and Oral Vocabulary (Model 4) was associated with weaker fall performance. Less congruent (i.e., higher parent than teacher) ratings were associated with

948

Parent higher (1 SD) Parent higher (2 SD) Parent higher (3þSD)

Teacher composite Parent composite Teacher higher

.521

0.58 (0.08)

(SE) .00

.527 .006

0.59 (0.08) –0.05 (0.09) –0.05 (0.10)

(SE)

.62

.56

.00

0.59 (0.08) –0.09 (0.22) –0.04 (0.23) 4.77 (7.91) 3.78 (4.90) 0.31 (6.57) 1.56 (9.93) .540 .013

(SE)

β

.88

.96

.44

.55

.88

.68

.00

p

Model 3

.167

0.09 (0.03)

(SE)

β

.00

p

Model 4

.238 .071

0.09 (0.03) 0.12 (0.08) 0.14 (0.10)

(SE)

β

.14

.15

.01

p

Model 5

0.08 (0.03) 0.57 (0.20) –0.28 (0.21) –20.62 (7.29) 1.05 (4.39) 9.18 (5.91) 14.85 (9.01) .358 .120

(SE)

β

.11

.13

.81

.01

.19

.01

.01

p

Model 6

DV: Oral vocabulary

.078

0.18 (0.08)

(SE)

β

.04

p

Model 7

.179 .101

0.16 (0.08) 0.21 (0.08) –0.09 (0.10)

(SE)

β

.35

.02

.05

p

Model 8

0.19 (0.09) 0.29 (0.20) –0.17 (0.22) –10.22 (7.49) 0.99 (4.69) 2.97 (6.45) –1.61 (9.55) .262 .083

(SE)

β

.87

.65

.83

.18

.45

.15

.03

p

Model 9

DV: Verbal analogies

Note. DV ¼ dependent variable; Model 1 ¼ effect of fall Picture Vocabulary on spring Picture Vocabulary; Model 2 ¼ effects of social skill ratings on spring Picture Vocabulary; Model 3 ¼ effects of social skills and the congruence between ratings on spring Picture Vocabulary; Model 4 ¼ effect of fall Oral Vocabulary on spring Oral Vocabulary; Model 5 ¼ effects of social skill ratings on spring Oral Vocabulary; Model 6 ¼ effects of social skills and the congruence between ratings on spring Oral Vocabulary; Model 7 ¼ effect of fall Verbal Analogies on spring Verbal Analogies; Model 8 ¼ effects of social skill ratings on spring Verbal Analogies; Model 9 ¼ effects of social skills and the congruence between ratings on spring Verbal Analogies.

R2 R2 change

Congruence in parent and teacher ratings

Child social competence

Fall performance

Predictor

p

β

β p

Model 2

Model 1

DV: Picture vocabulary

TABLE 6 Unstandardized Coefficients, Standard Errors, p Values, and Fit Indices for Spring Multiple Linear Regression Models




949

stronger Picture Vocabulary and Oral Vocabulary performance, whereas more congruent ratings were associated with stronger Verbal Analogies performance. What is interesting is that rater agreement was associated with weaker oral language (i.e., Picture Vocabulary) when p values for effects of teacher ratings were lower than those for parent ratings, whereas rater agreement was associated with stronger oral language (i.e., Verbal Analogies) when p values for effects of parent ratings were lower than those for teacher ratings. High p values in Oral Vocabulary models relative to the other models were likely due to a violation of the homoscedasticity assumption (i.e., basal effect) in the fall. In the spring, models of congruence in parent and teacher ratings (see Models 3, 6, and 9 in Table 6) demonstrated null to medium effects. Rater congruence accounted uniquely for 1.3%, 12.0%, and 8.3% of the variation in Picture Vocabulary, Oral Vocabulary, and Verbal Analogies, respectively. The regression coefficients for the teacher rating effect (p ¼ .01) as well as the teacher higher dummy-coded variable (p ¼ .01) in Model 6 for Oral Vocabulary were statistically significant. No other regression coefficients in Models 3, 6, and 9 were found to be statistically significant. Higher teacher ratings and less congruence between parents and teachers were associated with higher spring Oral Vocabulary performance. Children whose parents’ ratings were 2 SD (p ¼ .13) and 3þSD (p ¼ .11) higher than teacher ratings performed higher in Oral Vocabulary than children whose parent and teacher ratings were more similar.

DISCUSSION This study addresses an issue that has been termed a developmental paradox for Latino children (Fuller et al., 2009; Garcia Coll & Marks, 2012). Although research confirms that Latino children, particularly those from immigrant families, possess strong social competencies compared with their mainstream peers, they do not demonstrate the levels of academic or language functioning usually expected to accompany such social skill development. One hypothesis attributes this seeming paradox to second language acquisition. If children are schooled and their academic performance is assessed in their second language (English), it is possible that the functioning of social competencies as academic enablers is compromised. In this study, however, we used oral language measures that assessed children’s linguistic resources in both Spanish and English rather than a single language. Using the BVAT (MuñozSandoval et al., 1998) to capture a range of academic language competence, we found that children’s overall performance on entry to kindergarten was more than 1 SD below the normative means in Picture Vocabulary and Verbal Analogies and more than 2 SD lower for Oral Vocabulary. In other words, weak oral language functioning does not appear to be attributable to language assessment in the second language exclusively. Child background factors contributed much less than expected to fall and spring performance in oral language. Whereas preschool attendance was associated with early reading skill for these children, it did not contribute to oral language functioning in Spanish or English, at least in terms of the measures used. Efforts to improve preschool attendance for Latino children (Liang et al., 2000) should be mindful of curricular and instructional limitations to affect children’s oral/academic language functioning. Kindergarten attendance, however, did appear to help: By the spring, oral language differences reduced slightly in Picture Vocabulary and Verbal


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Analogies and drastically diminished in Oral Vocabulary, where children were performing in the low-average range by the end of the year. Another hypothesis to explain the Latino paradox—a key conjecture of the present study—is that the social competencies that Latino children develop at home, consistent with cultural models of educación, are not recognized as assets by teachers. In the analyzed sample we found significantly different ratings of the same children’s social skills by their parents and teachers. On average, parents rated children as being more socially competent than did teachers. These differences during the fall semester were as large as 1.41 SD. Though incongruence between raters—especially between teachers and parents—is common (Gresham et al., 2010), typically differences are not so stark (Achenbach, McConaughy, & Howell, 1987). Further theory development and research are needed to determine the cause(s) (De Los Reyes & Kazdin, 2005). Are rating differences due to actual behavioral differences across settings, perceptual differences, cultural differences in socialization values, or some combination? Bridges et al. (2012) asserted that differences can be cultural—that Mexican-origin mothers value a different set of social competencies than teachers in mainstream U.S. classrooms. For example, the SSIS instrument operationalizes cooperation very differently than a recent scale designed for Mexican American children and families—the Mexican American Socialization Scale (Bridges et al., 2012). Cooperation items from the SSIS address compliance (e.g., “follows classroom rules”) and attention (e.g., “ignores classmates when they are distracting”), whereas Mexican American Socialization Scale items address accommodation (e.g., “goes along with a non-preferred activity”) and collaboration (e.g., “works together with others”). These distinctions illustrate the pervasive bias of “Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic” (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010) values that pervades many of the psychological instruments widely used in current research. That said, we found evidence—especially model fit indices—that both parent and teacher ratings of child social competencies are important in predicting Latino oral language development. These effects were found for both fall and spring language outcomes. Stronger social functioning was associated with stronger oral language performance, though the significance and strength of prediction varied by semester, outcome, and rater. In the fall, parent ratings were more predictive of Verbal Analogies than teacher ratings. The opposite was the case for Oral Vocabulary in the spring. This suggests that both parent and teacher perceptions of what it means to be socially competent, rather than one or the other, matter to the oral/ academic language functioning of Latino children. Both perspectives demonstrated predictive validity, begging the question of how best to amalgamate them in ways that enrich social activity and associated opportunities to develop oral language in the classroom. In terms of the effects of parent–teacher differences in social skill ratings on children’s oral language development, we had hypothesized that more congruent ratings would be predictive of oral language performance across semesters and subtests. Our rationale was that parent–teacher congruence represented an alignment of cultural values regarding ideal child behavior and thus how to socialize children. This alignment, we suspected, would translate into teacher–child interactions that were more culturally sensitive and that utilized children’s culturally situated social competencies to build stronger oral language. Our findings, however, were mixed. In some cases congruence was indeed associated with stronger performance (e.g., Verbal Analogies in the fall). In others incongruence was associated with stronger performance (e.g., Picture Vocabulary in the fall).



951

It may be helpful to think of the effects of rating (in)congruence in relation to the corresponding effects of teacher and parent ratings on academic outcomes. We observed, for example, that rater disagreement was associated with stronger oral language when teachers’ ratings were significant predictors and parents’ were not. We also found some evidence for the opposite: Congruent ratings were associated with stronger language outcomes when parents’ ratings were significant predictors and teachers’ were not. It could be that rating congruence matters when parents’ perceptions of child social behavior are more closely aligned with academic knowledge and skill, whereas incongruence matters when teacher perceptions are more aligned. More study and theorizing are needed to understand how parent and teacher perspectives of Latino children’s social functioning are associated with the development of specific academic and language skills. It is especially important to identify the mechanisms by which social behaviors facilitate academic competencies for Latino children in classrooms and other settings (Jensen, 2013). What is clear from our findings is that Latino social competencies matter to children’s oral language development and that rater differences can bear meaningful effects. The complex and contextual nature of both oral language and social development requires more nuanced analyses to provide deeper insight regarding how they interact, for whom, and under what conditions. Limitations There are two important limitations to this study. First are the measurement limitations. The cultural mismatch of the SSIS with socialization values of Latino immigrant populations (Fuller & Garcia Coll, 2010) is a critical concern. Future studies should use other more culturally specific scales of child social-behavioral development (e.g., Bridges et al., 2012). Moreover, it appears that skewed variation in Oral Vocabulary was due to basal effects: Most children in the fall struggled with the simplest items on this subtest. This undermined the effects of social competence in the fall. Additional measures of oral language should also be used in subsequent research addressing relationships with social-behavioral development, especially those addressing oral narrative structure (Páez, Tabors, & López, 2007). Second, sampling is a major limitation of the study. Ours was a relatively homogenous sample in terms of children’s socioeconomic and immigrant origin. Virtually all children came from low-income, Mexican immigrant households. This constrained the effects of background variables on children language and literacy development and perhaps the effects of social competence ratings as well. Our analytic sample was also especially limited in terms of its size, which undermined the statistical significance of regression coefficients. Indeed, discrepancies between the R2 for model fit and the p values for associated regression coefficients were due to the small sample. Future study will require larger and more diverse samples to model relationships between Latino children’s social competencies and their language/academic development. Implications We confirm findings from other studies that Latino social competencies are an important resource for strengthening academic performance (e.g., Galindo & Fuller, 2010)—oral language in this case. Nearly one fifth of the variation in Oral Vocabulary and Verbal Analogies in the spring was explained by children’s social competence. Higher social skill ratings were


952


associated with stronger oral language functioning. We found evidence to suggest that part of the developmental paradox of Latino children could be due to cultural differences that underlie teacher and parent perceptions of social competence. Overall Latino parents perceived their children as being more socially competent than did teachers. Teacher ratings, parent ratings, and the differences between them all bore on children’s oral language performance. Seeking to understand how social competence is characterized in Latino homes could help teachers provide opportunities for Latino children to activate these competencies and perform more strongly in classrooms. We consider teacher–child interactions as critical mechanisms for building on the social strengths of Latino children (Reese, Jensen, & Ramirez, 2014). Teachers who are responsive to the ways in which Latino children are raised to be bien educado at home are aware of parents’ values and belief systems (Goldenberg & Gallimore, 1995). They create social activities in the classroom that allow Latino children to interact with peers, adults, and the content in culturally familiar ways. Studies with larger samples are needed to explore relationships between specific social and academic/language skills and the dimensions of classroom interactions that catalyze these relationships (Denham & Brown, 2010). REFERENCES Achenbach, T. M., McConaughy, S. H., & Howell, C. T. (1987). Child/adolescent behavioral and emotional problems: Implications of cross-informant correlations for situational specificity. Psychological Bulletin, 101(2), 213–232. Arnold, D. H., Kupersmidt, J. B., Voegler-Lee, M. E., & Marshall, N. A. (2012). The association between preschool children’s social functioning and their emergent academic skills. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 27, 376–386. Baker, C. (2001). Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism (3rd ed.). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters. Bialystok, E. (2001). Bilingualism in development: Language, literacy, and cognition. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Bridges, M., Cohen, S. R., McGuire, L. W., Yamada, H., Fuller, B., Mireles, L., & Scott, L. (2012). Bien educado: Measuring the social behavior of Mexican American children. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 27, 555–567. Brooks-Gunn, J., & Markman, L. B. (2005). The contribution of parenting to ethnic and racial gaps in school readiness. The Future of Children, 15(1), 139–168. Bruner, J. (1983). Child’s talk: Learning to use language. New York, NY: Norton. Bus, A. (2001). Joint caregiver-child storybook reading: A route to literacy development. In S. B. Neuman & D. K. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook of early literacy research (Vol. 1, pp. 179–191). New York, NY: Guilford Press. Capps, R., Fix, M., Murray, J., Ost, J., Passel, J. S., & Herwantoro, S. (2005). The new demography of America’s schools: Immigration and the No Child Left Behind Act. Washington, DC: Urban Institute. Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.): Hillsdale, NJ. Crowe, L. M., Beauchamp, M. H., Catroppa, C., & Anderson, V. (2011). Social function assessment tools for children and adolescents: A systematic review from 1988 to 2010. Clinical Psychology Review, 31, 767–785. Cumming, G., & Finch, S. (2005). Inference by eye: Confidence intervals and how to read pictures of data. American Psychologist, 60(2), 170–180. Cummins, J. (1990). Interdependence and first- and second-language proficiency in bilingual children. In E. Bialystok (Ed.), Language processing in bilingual children (pp. 70–89). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Cunningham, A. E., & Stanovich, K. E. (1997). Early reading acquisition and its relation to reading experience and ability 10 years later. Developmental Psychology, 33, 934–945. De Los Reyes, A., & Kazdin, A. (2005). Informant discrepancies in the assessment of childhood psychopathology: A critical review, theoretical framework, and recommendations for further study. Psychological Bulletin, 131, 483–509. Denham, S. (2006). Social-emotional competence as support for school readiness: What is it and how do we assess it? Early Education & Development, 17, 57–89.



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