From the author’s work as an educational psychologist in a Scottish local authority and her initial literature review, concerns were raised by her colleagues and local education authority about delaying school entry of children with additional support needs. This study aimed to: explore how the decision making process for delaying school entry operated; develop and trial a methodology to capture the children’s perspective and explore the experiences of the children and their families in nursery and during their first year of school. A qualitative case study approach was used to explore the decision making process for six children and their families and the experiences of five children and their families. Techniques from the mosaic methodology (Clark and Moss, 2001) were adapted to capture the children’s voices. The study revealed that participants held different models of school readiness, in line with other international research, and this influenced their decision to retain. Participants reported a range of positive and negative outcomes of delayed school entry and identified factors that had been supportive in managing the children’s transitions. Children’s perspectives were captured and often offered a unique insight into the children’s views. At the end of the children’s first year in primary school four parents were still happy with their decision to delay school entry but one parent regretted her decision. In conclusion it is suggested that a more interactionist (Meisels, 1998) approach to school readiness should be taken when supporting the transition from nursery to school. A moderated system should be developed to support the decision making process for delaying school entry, with an inbuilt process to follow up longer-term outcomes for the children and families concerned. The methodology developed for gathering children’s views offered a way for children with additional support needs to express their own views and take an active role at this important transition point. There is potential to develop this methodology further to ensure that children’s voices are heard in this first universal educational transition.

La mémoire de travail (MdeT) est le sujet de plusieurs études récentes, notamment en raison des liens qu'elle entretient avec des variables d’intérêt telles que l’intelligence (Kuhn, 2016), le langage (Dehn, 2008) et les apprentissages (Alloway & Alloway, 2010). Le modèle de la MdeT de Baddeley et Hitch (1974) est le plus souvent utilisé dans les études sur le développement cognitif (Kroesbergen, van’t Noordende, & Kolkman, 2014). Ce modèle est dit multi-composantes puisqu’il divise la MdeT en trois principales composantes, soit l’administrateur central, la boucle phonologique et le calepin visuo-spatial. Ces trois composantes sont liées à la performance générale en mathématiques (p. ex., De Smedt et al., 2009, Meyer, Salimpoor, Wu, Geary, & Menon, 2010; Rasmussen & Bisanz, 2005). Par contre, les résultats restent divergents quant aux liens entre les composantes de la MdeT et des habiletés mathématiques spécifiques. La présente recherche vise donc à préciser, en premier lieu, les liens qui unissent les composantes de la MdeT à la performance en arithmétique et en résolution de problèmes chez des enfants tout-venant de 1re et de 2e année. Pour ce faire, 77 enfants tout-venant ont été évalués. Les résultats montrent que la MdeT est liée à la performance en arithmétique et en résolution de problèmes. Par contre, le calepin visuo-spatial n’est pas impliqué, ce qui sous-tend l’usage de stratégies verbales dès la 1re année. L’implication des deux autres composantes de la MdeT varie, quant à elle, selon le niveau scolaire, mais pas selon l’habileté mathématique. Effectivement, alors que l’administrateur central est impliqué en arithmétique et en résolution de problèmes en 1re et en 2e année, la boucle phonologique n’est impliquée qu’en 1re année, ce qui sous-tend un changement vers des stratégies de récupération directe en mémoire à long terme en 2e année. La présence de liens entre la MdeT et les mathématiques ouvre par ailleurs la porte à des interventions prometteuses, telles que l’entrainement de la MdeT, pour améliorer les performances en mathématiques. Notre recherche vise donc, en second lieu, à vérifier les effets d’un entrainement de la MdeT sur les principales composantes de la MdeT et sur la performance en arithmétique et en résolution de problèmes chez des jeunes du premier cycle du primaire. Pour vérifier les effets de l’entrainement, 73 participants ont été séparés entre un groupe contrôle de type liste d’attente et un groupe expérimental qui a bénéficié d’un entrainement de la MdeT pendant 6 semaines. Les enfants ont été évalués à trois reprises, soit avant l’entrainement, tout de suite après l’entrainement et 6 mois plus tard. Les résultats révèlent que l’entrainement informatisé de la MdeT améliore seulement les capacités de l’administrateur central; ces gains, dans la modalité verbale, tendent à se maintenir sur 6 mois contrairement à ceux en modalité visuo-spatiale. Les bienfaits de l’entrainement ne se transfèrent pas à la performance en mathématiques. En revanche, un effet compensatoire est observé en résolution de problèmes, puisqu’une amélioration de la performance est observée chez les enfants qui avaient une plus faible MdeT au départ. Ainsi, les effets de l’entrainement sont spécifiques; de façon générale, à la MdeT et plus particulièrement à l’administrateur central, et de façon différentielle, aux habiletés de résolution de problèmes pour les élèves ayant de plus faibles capacités de MdeT.

Children’s entry into school at appropriate ages and their successful progression through the primary grades are strong predictors of later life opportunities and successes. This retrospective study focuses on factors that can influence age appropriate school entry and grade progression with children who were eight at the time of the study and who live in a peri-urban community in Uganda. Children in this resource constrained community face risks of educational exclusion and longer term underachievement that arise from social, health and economic disadvantages, inequalities and inadequate services. The most disadvantaged children, those who live in households with life stress events such as the absence of one or more parents or the impact of diseases such as HIV and AIDS, are at risk of not enrolling in school at an appropriate age or not advancing successfully. Such risks may be mediated through family composition and family demographic variables and may be ameliorated through the presence of community programs designed for young children. This study examined the influence of family variables, home environment life stress events, and exposure to early childhood development (ECD) services on the educational transitions of young children. The study determined that children living with biological parents, and parents with higher educational levels, had more opportunities of exposure to community-based ECD programs, had higher success in enrolling in school at an age-appropriate time, and more successfully progressed through the grade levels. For the purposes of this study, data were collected from 535 children and their 535 caregivers in the peri-urban community of Kyanja in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda. The findings provide a backdrop for a discussion regarding the relationship between home environment life stress events, community ECD services for young children, and the current educational status of children aged eight years. A major focus lies on whether enrolment in ECD can help close the gap created by events in and the structure of the home environment. / Graduate

Background: The transition from pre-school to kindergarten can be complex for children who need special assistance due to mental or physical disabilities (children with “special needs”). We used a longitudinal mixed-methods approach to explore parents’ experiences with service provision as their children transitioned to school. Methods: Parents (including one grandparent) of 37 children aged 4 to 6 years completed measures assessing their perceptions of and satisfaction with services, as well as their perceptions of the children’s behaviour. Teachers completed measures indicating children’s school readiness and school adjustment. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with parents to understand their experiences with services. Findings: Post-transition, parents reported lower perceptions of services and decreased satisfaction than pre-transition. Pre-transition perceptions of services and satisfaction with services were associated with some of the children’s outcomes important for school success. Socio-economic characteristics of parents did not predict change in their perceptions of services or satisfaction with services post-transition. The following themes emerged from the qualitative data: qualities of services and service providers, communication and information transfer, parent advocacy, uncertainty about services, and contrasts and contradictions in satisfaction. The qualitative findings indicate parents were both satisfied and concerned with aspects of the post-transition service provision. Conclusions: While the quantitative results suggested that parents’ experience with services became less positive after their children entered school, the qualitative findings illustrated the variability in parents’ experiences and components of service provision that require improvements to facilitate a successful school entry. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

This thesis studies the impacts of school entry policy and information revelation on student outcomes using a sample of students from the province of British Columbia (BC), Canada. The questions examined by the first two essays arise from a policy used by many industrialized countries, whereby students born within a 1-year time span all begin school at the same time. This policy creates large differences in age among students in the same class, which are thought to affect their academic performance along a number of dimensions. In the first essay, I contribute to the literature by establishing the persistence in test score differentials among students in the same class who differ in age. I show that in grade 4 older students outperform younger students by a large margin in numeracy, reading and writing, an effect that persists to a lesser magnitude until grade 10. The persistence is strongest for the writing skill, and it is also much stronger for girls than for boys. The strength of the test score differential in grade 10 suggests that the effects of age could have more lasting effects on cognitive and labour market outcomes. In the second essay, I take a closer look at how age affects outcomes, by disentangling the entry age effect from the test age effect. Nearly all studies in this literature interpret age-related differences in student outcomes as the result of entry age, but because students who enter later are also older at every stage in compulsory schooling, the entry age effect has not been separated from the test age effect. Using a set of students entering school at the time of BC's dual entry experiment, I show that test age is largely responsible for age-related differences in the probability of repeating grade 3, and entry age is largely responsible for age-related differences in grade 10 numeracy and reading scores. I show further that having an extra year of schooling reduces the likelihood that a student repeats grade 3, but has a negligible impact on grade 10 test scores. Both the entry age and test age effects are stronger for boys than they are for girls. The final essay examines whether school choices change when parents are exposed to a new source of information on school quality. I model the effect of new information on choices using a simple expected utility framework and show that parents will use the new information to make different choices if they do not perceive it to be too noisy and if they have poor prior information on school quality. Furthermore, they make increasing use of the new information as more observations become available, since it becomes a more accurate predictor of true quality. Using the sudden release of BC's new standardized testing regime, I then study whether there is empirical support for the model. I show that the likelihood of switching out of a school increases when a school performs worse on the test, and that enrollment into kindergarten responds positively to increases in test scores. The response becomes stronger when more test score observations are available. Finally, I show variance in the response among parents living in less-educated neighbourhoods and among those who do not speak English at home, suggesting that prior information does play a role in the information use. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The thesis is dedicated to stimulations programs for preschool children and children with postponed schooling. The work is divided into five chapters. The first few chapters are focused on the information which is necessary for understanding the topic. These are about a psychological definition of pre-school age, as well as the issue of entering into a school, followed by a chapter about diagnostics, which usually come before the stimulation. Another chapter is focused on the actual stimulations programs, it contains their theoretical description, but also the information needed to create them. In the fifth chapter, an example of stimulation program was created. Its functionality is supported by the observations at the beginning of the program and during the program. The aim is to make a guide about creating of stimulation programs in the frame of the preschool preparation.

<p>This dissertation consists of two original empirical studies on the determinants of teenage childbearing in the United States. The first study examines the impact of educational attainment on teenage childbearing, using school entry laws as an instrument for education and a highly detailed North Carolina administrative dataset that links birth certificate data to school administrative records. I show that being born after the school entry cutoff date affects educational success in offsetting ways, with a negative impact on years of education but positive impact on test scores. Using an IV regression strategy to distinguish the impacts of years of education and test scores, I show that both educational measures have negative impacts on teenage childbearing.</p><p>The second study examines potential causes of the decline in the U.S. teenage birth rate between 1991 and 2010. Using age-period-cohort models with Vital Statistics birth data and Census population counts, I show that the decline was driven by period changes in the early 1990s but by cohort changes between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s. I also use a difference-in-differences model to investigate the extent to which social policies in the 1970s-1980s can explain these cohort changes. The evidence suggests that while legalization of abortion for adult women and unilateral divorce laws had a significant impact on teenage birth rates in the 1990s-2000s, abortion legalization is unlikely to be a major explanation for the observed decline.</p> / Dissertation

This study was an exploration of 450 Utah kindergarten teachers' perceptions of problems children face at the time of kindergarten entry, as well as an examination of the teachers' developmentally appropriate beliefs and practices. Consistent with previous research, teachers' beliefs were found to be more developmentally appropriate than their reported practices. This study also investigated the relationship between both teacher and classroom/school demographics and teachers' developmentally appropriate beliefs and practices. Further, the relationship between teachers' perceptions of children's transition to kindergarten and beliefs, practices, teacher demographics, and classroom/school demographics was studied. Study findings indicated that teachers perceive 20% of kindergarten children as experiencing a difficult school entry, with some teachers reporting 100% of their class as having a difficult entry into kindergarten. Teachers reported 25% of children as not being ready for kindergarten, with about 20% of teachers judging at least half of their class as not being ready, and an additional 7% of teachers estimating that 75% or more of their class was not ready for kindergarten. "Lack of academic skills" was the transition problem rated as most prevalent for kindergarteners, while "immaturity" was the item perceived as the least problematic at kindergarten entry. Findings also exhibited a trend that teachers with more appropriate beliefs perceived a higher percentage of children experiencing very successful entry than did teachers with less appropriate beliefs. Special education and early childhood licensed teachers, as well as those who had received their ESL endorsement, consistently judged "half or more" of their class as having a number of transition problems, including "problems with social skills," as well as "difficulty communicating/language problems," and not having a "non-academic preschool experience." Overall, as the percentage of special education children enrolled increased, and the number of children qualifying for free lunch increased, teachers perceived more children as not ready for school and/or having many problems upon entry. Another trend was that teachers in urban schools consistently reported fewer numbers of children as experiencing successful kindergarten entry, and larger percentages of children as not ready for school. Limitations, implications, and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Anecdotal evidence indicated vaccine coverage disparities among foster-care (FCA) and natural-home adolescents (NHA). Arkansas laws require 5 vaccines for school entry (FVSE) to prevent 9 common childhood diseases. The study problem was that Pulaski County, Arkansas adolescent birth cohort (PCABC) immunization rates were low compared to U.S. adolescents for these FVSE. This study examined the extent to which (1) PCABC immunization rates were significantly different from those estimated for U.S. adolescents in 2006–2008, (2) NHA and FCA immunization rates were different in 2003– 2008; (3) sociodemographic variables mediate associations between home of residence (HOR), NHA or FCA, and up to date (UTD) status for FVSE; and (4) vaccination game theory (VGT) estimated deaths differ between individual-equilibrium and group-optimum behaviors. The methodologies applied were direct standardization, χ2, multiple logistic regressions, and VGT to analyze PCABC retrospective secondary data from the Arkansas immunization registry. The results revealed that U.S. adjusted UTD coverage rates for Hepatitis B, measles-mumps-rubella, and varicella were greater than those for PCABC. Race-adjusted FCA immunization rates were 120% higher than for NHA. Race mediated the association between HOR and UTD FVSE status, and African Americans had 80% greater odds of being UTD with FVSE compared to Caucasians. Group-optimum behavior was associated with fewer estimated deaths than individual equilibrium; thus, it is protective against disease outbreaks. Positive social change may occur among the PCABC when healthcare providers include these results in communications with parents at FCA and NHA community health clinics. Parental vaccine acceptance for their children may increase vaccinations and improve PCABC health and wellness.

L'une des influences les mieux documentées dans la prédiction des problèmes de comportements externalisés et internalisés des enfants est la qualité de la relation mère-enfant, souvent opérationnalisée par la sécurité d’attachement et la qualité des comportements maternels. Cependant, bien que ces deux variables soient reliées empiriquement et théoriquement, elles n’ont pas été examinées simultanément dans la prédiction des problèmes de comportements des enfants. Ce mémoire visait à examiner les contributions uniques de deux mesures de sécurité d’attachement ainsi que des comportements maternels (mesurés par la sensibilité maternelle et le soutien maternel à l’autonomie) dans la prédiction des problèmes de comportements des enfants. L’échantillon comprenait 73 dyades mère-enfant. Les comportements maternels ont été mesurés lorsque les enfants étaient âgés entre 15 mois et 2 ans. Les problèmes de comportements internalisés et externalisés des enfants ont été rapportés par leurs professeurs en maternelle et en première année d’école. Les résultats montrent que les deux mesures d’attachement ainsi que les comportements maternels expliquent une portion comparable de la variance des problèmes de comportements anxieux/dépressifs des enfants. Ensemble, ils prédisent trois fois plus de variance que les variables considérées séparément. Les recherches futures devraient considérer une approche multi-méthodes pour mesurer la qualité de la relation mère-enfant, du moins lorsqu’elles tentent d’expliquer le développement des comportements internalisés des enfants. / One of the best-documented predictors of young children’s externalizing and internalizing behavior problems is the quality of mother-child relationships, often operationalized through attachment security and the quality of maternal behaviors. However, although empirically and theoretically interrelated, these aspects of mother-child relationships have not been considered simultaneously in the prediction of children's behavior problems. In addition, attachment is often measured once only, despite its modest stability. This paper aimed to examine the contributions of two assessments of attachment security along with assessments of maternal behaviors (sensitivity and autonomy support) to the prediction of children’s behavior problems. The sample included 73 mother-child dyads. Maternal behaviors and mother-child attachment were assessed when children were between 15 months and 2 years old. Children's internalizing and externalizing problems were reported by their teachers in kindergarten and first grade. The results indicated that each assessment of attachment security and maternal behaviors explained a comparable portion of the variance in children’s anxious/depressed behaviors, together predicting more than three times the variance that would have been explained by either measure of attachment alone. Researchers should consider a multidimensional approach to the assessment of the quality of mother-child relationships, at least when attempting to explain the development of child internalizing problems.