Early Childhood

Latino Kindergartners’ Social Skills Found Strong

By Mary Ann Zehr — May 03, 2010 4 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

A majority of Latino children enter kindergarten with the same social skills as middle-class white children, while low-income Latinos demonstrate stronger social skills than low-income African-American kindergartners at the start of school, says a study published in the May issue of Developmental Psychology.

The article is one of seven focusing on factors leading to the success or lack of success of Latinos in school published this month in both the print and online editions of the journal. The studies show that, overall, Latino children tend to start school with some strong assets, but those early gains are likely to soon disappear if they attend low-quality schools and live in low-income neighborhoods.

“We need to get beyond this myth that low-income parents always raise disadvantaged children,” said Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, who co-edited the articles and was a researcher for the study looking at kindergarteners’ skills. Latinos appear to have some cultural practices that make their children ready to learn, he said. “We were surprised by how strong these kids’ social skills looked.”

Mr. Fuller and Claudia Galindo, an assistant professor in language, literacy, and culture at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, drew on a database of 19,590 kindergartners, called the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, to compare the social skills of children from different ethnic and racial groups at the start of kindergarten. The researchers also looked at how having those social skills, which were rated by teachers, translated into kindergartners’ acquisition of mathematics knowledge.

The researchers found a strong correlation between their social competency when entering kindergarten and the gains they made in math skills during kindergarten. They looked at several social areas: self-control, interpersonal skills, approaches to learning, and internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors.

The study found that the children’s competence in “approaches to learning”—their engagement in classroom tasks—had the greatest impact on their math gains. It is measured by factors such as how well a child can sit still at a table and work on a task or how interested the child is in classroom activities, Mr. Fuller said.

Differences Within

The researchers aren’t the first to publish findings on the social skills of Latino children entering kindergarten using that database. But they are the first to draw on it to report differences among subgroups of Latino kindergartners, Mr. Fuller said. For example, the study found that children of Mexican heritage start kindergarten with social skills and task engagement very comparable to those of white children. But that’s not the case with Puerto Rican children, who, on average, enter school with significantly less social competence than white children.

What’s also new are some of the findings in the study about the impact of social-class differences on social skills. While a majority of Latino kindergartners had the same social skills as their white middle-class peers, the study did show a gap, on average, for Latinos from low-income households with white middle-class kindergartners.

An even bigger gap was found, in fact, between the low-income children and the white children in math understanding at the start of kindergarten.

Such results indicate that schools should build on Latino children’s social skills to further their cognitive development, Mr. Fuller said.

Robert Crosnoe, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin who conducted previous research on Latinos using the same national database, said the Developmental Psychology study is in line with his findings.

“Their parents do a great job of getting them school-ready in a behavioral or socioemotional sense, even if their academic skills (e.g., knowledge of math or reading ability) are somewhat lower than those of other children,” he wrote in an e-mail. He said the implication of the collection of studies on Latinos in the most-recent issue of the journal is that “we need to make the investment at the start of school, when [Latino children] are eager and enthusiastic and motivated but before the many disadvantages they face (e.g., lower-quality schools, watered-down curricula) start to chip away at the socioemotional advantages they bring into school.”

Linda Espinosa, a recently retired professor of early-childhood education from the University of Missouri, in Columbia, said the study shows “there is something going on culturally that is protecting [Latino children] during their early-childhood years.”

Unfortunately, she said, the assets that Latino children bring to school may be overshadowed in the minds of educators by the fact that some don’t speak English and are from low-income homes. Educators need to build more on the strengths of Latinos, she said.

A lot of the curricula that focuses on helping Latino mothers prepare their children for kindergarten, Ms. Espinosa said, emphasizes moving parents and children to English as soon as possible, which she contends isn’t the best approach.

She added: “We have some evidence of real capabilities [in Latino youngsters] that our school people are missing once academics starts to take center stage.”

Related Tags:

A version of this article appeared in the May 12, 2010 edition of Education Week

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Recruitment & Retention Webinar
Exploring Staff Shortage Impact on Education
Learn about the impact of staff shortages, changing roles of educators, and how technology supports teachers & students.
Content provided by Promethean
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Assessment Webinar
Improving Outcomes on State Assessments with Data-Driven Strategies
State testing is around the corner! Join us as we discuss how teachers can use formative data to drive improved outcomes on state assessments.
Content provided by Instructure
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Equity & Diversity Webinar
Classroom Strategies for Building Equity and Student Confidence
Shape equity, confidence, and success for your middle school students. Join the discussion and Q&A for proven strategies.
Content provided by Project Lead The Way

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Early Childhood Q&A An Investment in Early-Childhood Education Is Paying Off Big
Richard Tomko believes that expanding the early education pipeline buffers schools against enrollment loss and academic struggles.
2 min read
Dr. Richard Tomko, Superintendent of Belleville Public Schools in Belleville, N.J., visits science teacher Paul Aiello’s Medical Academy Field Experience class on Tuesday, January 10, 2023. The Medical Academy’s class uses Anatamoge tables, an anatomy visualization system that allows students to garner a deeper, comprehensive understanding of the human body and medical tools to prepare them for careers in the medical field.
Richard Tomko, superintendent of Belleville Public Schools in Belleville, N.J., has expanded academic programs while restoring trust in the school system.
Sam Mallon/Education Week
Early Childhood Opinion What K-12 Can Learn from Pre-K
Early-childhood education has valuable lessons to share with K-12.
5 min read
Image shows a multi-tailed arrow hitting the bullseye of a target.
DigitalVision Vectors/Getty
Early Childhood Which States Offer Universal Pre-K? It's More Complicated Than You Might Think
Universal pre-K is growing in popularity. Here are the states that have already established universal preschool programs or policies.
2 min read
Early Childhood Support for Universal Pre-K Grows as More States Jump on Board
New Mexico became the latest state to approve investments in pre-K programs.
5 min read
A Pre-K student plays with the class guinea pig at Positive Tomorrows in Oklahoma City, Okla., on Aug. 17, 2021. Oklahoma is one of a handful of states offering universal pre-k to all students.
A prekindergarten student plays with the class guinea pig at Positive Tomorrows in Oklahoma City, Okla., in 2021. Oklahoma is one of a handful of states offering universal pre-K.
Sue Ogrocki/AP