NSF Award Abstract - #9973396

AWSFL008-DS3

POWRE: The Transition to Elementary School: An Attachment Perspective

Abstract

A child's adjustment to school and school life is set early in the educational process. Those children who adjust well in the early years appear to have more promising school lives through time than those who have difficulties in adjusting during the early years. For both theoretical and policy reasons, then, it makes great sense for scientists as well as policy makers to understand the early schooling process. Preliminary indicates the importance of the family in the child's early adjustment to school. Although these initial studies indicate a connection between family experiences and school experiences, there is still much to understand about this important linkage, with significant social policy and intervention implications for society at large. This research will be the first comprehensive study on how the family, and particularly parent-child attachment relationships and the emotional climate in the family, affect the child's adjustment to school. Families will first be seen when the children are in preschool and followed for one year as the children make the transition to elementary school. During the preschool period, numerous in-depth assessments will be conducted, including the observed emotional availability in the parent-child relationship, maternal accounts of their own early child-rearing experiences, and children's narratives about affective relationships. After children begin kindergarten, the research will feature in-depth assessments of children's peer relationships, including children's popularity/lack of popularity, children's style of interactions with peers, teacher's estimation of children's peer relationships in the classroom, and just as importantly, the children's own views of the school experience. Because of its emphasis on multiple sources of information (teachers, classmates, and the children), this investigation has the great potential to enhance our understanding of the relational processes involved in a child's successful versus less successful adjustment to kindergarten. Results from this basic research will enable investigators to plan for intervention projects and to inform social policy decisions on the early schooling process. This POWRE grant will enable the principal investigator to reestablish herself in a research milieu and to pursue a new direction in her research, thus enhancing her visibility and viability