The roles of emotion regulation and peer context in childrens achievement

The roles of emotion regulation and peer context in childrens achievement The roles of emotion, regulation, and peer context in children?s achievement The Roles of Emotion Regulation and Peer Context in Childrens Achievement The goal of the parent grant is to determine if, when, and why students emotions are concurrently and prospectively related to their relationship with their teacher, social competence and problem behaviors at school, classroom engagement, and subsequent learning and achievement. A multimethod, multireporter, prospective design is being used to accomplish this goal. The first aim is to document the concurrent and prospective relations between children's emotions and their achievement and socioemotional functioning at school. The second aim is to investigate the potential moderating effects of students self-regulatory skills and their peers emotionality and self-regulation in the relations between students emotion and their school outcomes, including achievement. Aim three is designed to identify processes that might mediate the relations between children's emotions and their achievement, including students' relationships with their teachers, their adjustment, and their motivation versus avoidance towards, and engagement in, the classroom. The aims are being examined in the context of a longitudinal study from kindergarten to 2nd grade. Parents and teachers report on students' emotions, self-regulation, relationships with teachers, social competence, problem behaviors, and school engagement. Teachers report on the emotionality and selfregulation of the peers that target children associate with at school. Children participate in tasks that assess their perceptions of peers, their regulation, and their academic achievement. Students' emotions are being observed while they interact with peers during recesses and during class time, while their engagement is being observed throughout the school day. Multivariate, longitudinal analyses will be used to examine prospective direct, mediated, and moderated relations. The PIs and the Candidate have developed three additional aims that capitalize on ways to blend existing data from the parent grant with some additional data and/or analyses that provide an opportunity to contribute to Dr. Diazs training. The candidate will investigate the role of sleep on childrens developing social as well as academic competence. Given that many children are sleeping fewer hours than recommended, it is important to examine factors that may influence sleep and subsequent child outcome at an infrequently studied age. The second aim will examine whether variability in childrens emotions relates to relationships with peers, teachers, and social competence, and hence, academic outcomes. Examining variability in emotions, in addition to overall level, will help develop a more complete understanding of the dynamic nature of emotions and its subsequent association with academic achievement. Aim 3 will investigate how ethnicity may moderate some of the key relationships studied in this grant to determine if relations of individual differences in emotionality and regulation to school-related outcomes differ for Hispanic and non-Hispanic, white children.