| Ana Useche
University of Florida
Effects of family, school, and community contexts on children's self-regulation, competence in mathematics and reading, and social and emotional adjustment
Experiences in the first years of elementary school set the trajectory for students' success or failure in school. In particular, children's ability to regulate their thoughts, behaviors, and emotions will at least in part determine whether they succeed in school. The purpose of my dissertation is to investigate whether modifiable family, school, and community contexts have the potential to influence children's self-regulation, which in turn is expected to affect their academic competence in mathematics and reading and social and emotional adjustment. To achieve that goal, using ecological theory as a theoretical framework and the ECLS-K dataset, I will examine the direct and indirect effects of distal (i.e., socioeconomic status, ethnicity, neighborhood quality) and proximal variables (i.e., parental warmth and demandingness, school community, and child participation in extracurricular activities) on self-regulation. I will examine simultaneously the effects of behavior control and attention control, that is, the ability to control attention and persist in a task on children's academic and socioemotional outcomes.,and whether the school context (i.e., teacher feedback and reflective practice) mediates the association between self-regulation and child academic achievement and adjustment. I will study these questions through the use of structural equation modeling. The ECLS-K database offers a sufficiently large and representative sample to address these important developmental relationships that are likely to affect children's success in school and future success in life. My research will provide important information regarding the possibility that modifications in family, school, and community contexts can improve the academic and social and emotional outcomes for children.
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