Preschool Experience and Self-regulation Skills: Lessons from Rural China

Abstract

Self-regulation skills predict children’s school readiness and later academic achievement and research has shown that preschool attendance and quality influence the development of these skills. However, most of this research has been conducted in western contexts and only a few studies have included Asian children from urban areas. Children from poor and rural backgrounds typically receive lower quality preschool education and this may adversely impact their self-regulation skills (SRS). Against this background, this study investigated the influence of preschool experience on the SRS of poor and rural Chinese children. Participants were 190 Grade 1 children from an impoverished county in Southwest China. They had attended a kindergarten (n = 60), separate pre-primary classes (n = 55), merely “sat in” Grade 1 classes before school (n = 54) or had no preschool experiences (n = 21). Children were administered the revised Head-Toes-Knees- Shoulders task (Ponitz, McClelland, Matthews, & Morrison, 2009) tapping behavioral regulation at the beginning (alpha coefficient = .91, Wave 1) and the end of Grade 1 (alpha coefficient = .88, Wave 2) and seven tasks tapping cognitive self-regulation at the end of Grade 2 (alpha coefficient = .83, Wave 3). Results indicated that after controlling for maternal education, child’s age and preschool experience, children’s selfregulation skills in Wave 1 accounted for 37% and 40% of the variance in their SRS in Waves 2 and 3, respectively. A repeated- measure ANCOVA and an ANCOVA controlling for maternal education and child’s age indicated that preschool experience influenced self-regulation skills. Children from the kindergarten and pre-primary classes performed significantly better than (i) children with no preschool experiences in all three waves; and (ii) those whose preschool experience involved merely “sitting-in” Grade 1 classes in Waves 1 and 3. Further, a comparison between children with initially high and low SRS indicated that while significant differences in SRS skills existed this gap decreased over time. This is indicative of the positive influence of primary education. In summary, children who received inappropriate (“sitting-in” a Grade 1 class) or no preschool experience showed poorer SRS than those with developmentally appropriate experiences (kindergartens and separate pre-primary classes). Further, behavioral regulation skills at the beginning of Grade 1 predicted cognitive regulation skills at the end of Grade 2. Implications of these findings for scaling-up and enhancing the quality of preschool programs in rural China are considered.