Exploring Social Competence as a Mediator of Head Start’s Impact on Children’s Early Math Skills: Evidence from the Head Start Impact Study

ABSTRACT

Children from low-income families often enter kindergarten academically behind their higher income peers. Recent findings also indicate gaps in social-emotional aspects of school readiness, raising questions about cross-domain relations. Using a subsample (N = 3,485) of 3- and 4-year-olds attending center-based programming in the Head Start Impact Study, we investigate whether improvements in children’s social competence may mediate the effect of Head Start assignment on children’s early math skills. We posit that social competence can be effectively captured via a combination of two distinct constructs: social skills when interacting with peers and teacher–child relationships. Indeed, confirmatory factor analyses revealed good fit for a measurement model of social competence using indicators of these constructs, each of which measure different, yet complementary, aspects of children’s interpersonal skills. Structural equation modeling showed that, although random assignment to Head Start did not impact early math skills or social competence in this subsample, children’s social competence was positively related to math achievement during the preschool year. Taken together, results suggest that preschoolers’ relationships with others – effectively interacting with both peers and teachers in classroom settings – positively predicts math skills. Findings can guide curricular decision-making and time allocation, particularly in preschools serving children from low-income families.

Acknowledgments

Portions of this manuscript have appeared as part of a dissertation. The first author would like to thank members of that dissertation committee, Catherine Snow, Robert Selman, and Meredith Rowe (in addition to Dana McCoy), who provided invaluable feedback throughout the dissertation process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. When released for secondary data analysis, children from Puerto Rico were excluded from the data set for privacy reasons and so could not be included in this analysis.

2. Since the HSIS did not report outcome data for COR or the STR scale for children during the HS year, psychometrics were not reported in the technical manual (Camilla Heid, personal communication, April 29, 2016); thus, psychometrics have been obtained from original documentation for each scale.

Additional information

Funding

The research reported here was partially supported by the Harvard Graduate School of Education Dean’s Summer grant funding program as well as the Spencer Early Career Scholars program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Harvard Graduate School of Education or the Spencer Foundation. Neither funder had involvement in the design or preparation of this research.