A preschool program’s ability to prevent later behavior problems may rest in part on its choice of curriculum, findings from a 15-year study released this week suggest.
The study, which traced the development from preschool to high school of 54 children from low-income families, found that, at age 15, those youths who had taken part in highly academic, teacher-controlled preschool programs reported twice as many instances of drug abuse and juvenile delinquency and up to five times as much involvement in property destruction and other violent acts as those who had attended programs stressing child-initiated activities.
It also found that the teen-agers who had attended child-directed preschool programs were more well adjusted generally, participating more in sports and other extracurricular activities and having better relations with their families.
The study was conducted by the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation of Ypsilanti, Mich., and appears in the premiere issue of the Early Childhood Research Quarterly, a journal published by Ablex Publishing Corporation.
According to its authors, the Michigan study confirms earlier research findings that high-quality preschool programs can “improve the life chances” of disadvantaged children. But the new data, they said, add “a plea for caution” to the current debate over the academic content of early schooling.
“These long-term results should give pause to public-school educators who want to extend academic schooling down to age 4,” said David P. Weikart, president of High/Scope, which also conducted the Perry Preschool Project, an often-cited longitudinal study showing the benefits of early intervention.
“While good early-childhood programs can help improve the life chances of disadvantaged children,” he said, “formal academic programs with highly directive teachers may not produce the desired effect on social behavior.”
Three Preschool Models
The foundation’s report, “Consequences of Three Preschool Curriculum Models Through Age 15,” examines the effects of preschool programs offered by the Ypsilanti public schools between 1967 and 1970 and employing three popular and well-implemented curriculum approaches.
In the teacher-controlled model, represented by the DISTAR direct-instruction preschool program, the teacher initiated activities and the child responded to them.
DISTAR, a registered trade name, is a highly structured program created by theorists Siegfried Engelmann and Carl Bereiter. Now published by Science Research Associates Inc. of Chicago, the program is based on the notion that all children can be taught the basic skills. It relies heavily on theories of behavioral psychology. Teachers move through scripts that tell them exactly what to say and do, with specific activities broken down in sequential order. Children’s motivation is strengthened through positive reinforcement, and concepts are repeated until children get them right.
In 1976, DISTAR was compared with nine other educational models in a multi-million-dollar study of more than 9,000 3rd graders who had participated in Head Start’s “Follow Through” program. DISTAR was the only program of the nine in which students approached or exceeded national norms in the basic skills. The study’s methodology, however, was later criticized as seriously flawed.
In one of the High/Scope study’s two child-initiated models—High/Scope’s own cognitively oriented preschool curriculum—the teacher and child both planned and initiated activities, which revolved around key experiences intended to promote intellectual and social development.
In the third model, represented by a typical nursery-school program, the child initiated and the teacher responded. Teachers encouraged children to engage in free play and activities that met their interests.
At-Risk Children
All of the children who participated in the study were from low-income families and had been identified through test results at age 3 as being at risk for school failure. They were randomly assigned to the three preschool programs and began attending them at ages 3 and 4.
In each program, the classes operated two and a half hours a day, five days a week, with one teacher for every eight children, according to the report. A teacher visited each child’s home for an hour and a half every two weeks, encouraging the mother to engage her child in learning activities that fit the curriculum approach used in that classroom.
The curriculum models were operated under similar administrative conditions; in each, an attempt was made to maintain high standards.
Based on interviews at age 15 with 54 children—or 79 percent of the original sample—the High/Scope researchers found that:
- All children, regardless of which of the three preschool programs they took part in, gained an intellectual “head start” in school. The average I.Q. of children in the study rose 27 points during the first year of program participation, from 78 to 105. Half of this gain eventually disappeared, but at age 10, their average I.Q. was still 94.
- Those students who participated in the teacher-controlled curriculum reported twice as many delinquent acts as did the other two curriculum group—including five times as many acts of property damage and more than twice as many instances of drug abuse and such “status offenses” as running away from home.
- The youths who were part of the DISTAR group also reported relatively poor relations with their families, less participation in school activities, fewer appointments to school offices or jobs, lower expectations for educational attainment, and less ''reaching out to others” for help with personal problems.
- There were no significant differences among the three curriculum groups in questions relating to employment and financial affairs.
The researchers—Mr. Weikart, Lawrence J. Schweinhart, and Mary B. Larner—acknowledge in their report that the findings of the study are not definitive, due both to the small size of the sample and the fact that the study cannot be generalized beyond well-implemented versions of the three curriculum models.
They note that because the results suggest possible effects of different preschool curriculum models, they warrant “careful consideration,” especially among policymakers.
“The general picture of group differences that emerges at age 15 is that, when compared to the other two groups, more of the DISTAR group’s members reported that they were not socially well-adjusted,” the report notes. “The DISTAR group reported that they much more frequently engaged in all sorts of juvenile-delinquent behavior, particularly offenses involving property damage, possibly reflecting lack of respect and even anger towards authority.”
“While knowledge that young children gain in several curriculum approaches may appear to be the same as the knowledge that is dispensed to the child, the social consequences for the child may be very different,” the researchers write. “Apparently, a preschool curriculum that emphasizes direct transmission of knowledge is less successful in helping children adapt to the interpersonal realities of rules and conventions.”
Use of teacher-directed learning methods in early-childhood education should be subjected to careful scrutiny and evaluation, the researchers suggest. “What these data add to the debate is a plea for caution.”
In addition, they say, further longitudinal studies of teacher- and child-initiated curriculum approaches should be undertaken to determine their long-term intellectual and social effects.
High/Scope officials said the foundation plans to continue collecting data on the youths who took part in the current study, surveying them again in late adolescence and after high-school graduation.
Officials at S.R.A. Inc., which publishes DISTAR, last week said they had not yet seen the High/Scope study and thus could not comment on the findings.
