Characterizing the Social Ecology of the Preschool Classroom and Exploring Its Relationship With Young Children’s Long-Term Experience of Peer Rejection and Development of Social Competence

Abstract

The social ecology of a classroom—comprising settling-level features that emerge from the characteristics and interactions of the people in the classroom—shapes the opportunities a child has for forming relationships, as well as the way children experience these relationships (Bierman, 2004). In this dissertation, I examined how two aspects of the preschool classroom’s social ecology influenced children’s subsequent experience of peer rejection and subsequent development of social competence during elementary school. Unlike the majority of research published about social competence, peer rejection, or preschool classroom characteristics, in this dissertation I took a longitudinal approach and examined the independent and joint contributions of two aspects of the preschool classroom social ecology—the classroom composition of child externalizing behaviors and the quality of the emotional and relational climate of the classroom—to the subsequent development of my outcomes of interest. I found that, on average children’s trajectories of peer rejection did not demonstrate change over time (estimated IRR = 1.00, p = 0.76). I also found that, on average, children’s social competence grew from age four to age five (β = 0.32, p < 0.001). In addition, the preschool classroom composition of externalizing behavior was related to the elevation of children’s subsequent developmental trajectories of social competence from age 4 to age 5 such that children in preschool classrooms with relatively lower proportions of children with externalizing behaviors displayed subsequent developmental trajectories of social competence with higher elevations than did children in preschool classrooms with relatively higher proportions of children with these behaviors. This relationship, in turn, was moderated by the preschool classroom emotional quality such that children had subsequent trajectories of social competence that were higher in elevation when they had attended preschool classrooms with more positive emotional climate compared to children taught in preschool classrooms with less positive emotional climate, providing the level of the preschool classroom composition of externalizing behaviors was held constant. I discuss these findings and their implications in the following thesis.