School Readiness and Self-Regulation: A Developmental Psychobiological Approach

By Clancy Blair, C. Raver. Annual Review of Psychology, 2014

1,116 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Research on the development of self-regulation in young children provides a unifying framework for the study of school readiness. Self-regulation abilities allow for engagement in learning activities and provide the foundation for adjustment to school. A focus on readiness as self-regulation does not supplant interest in the development of acquired ability, such as early knowledge of letters and numbers; it sets the stage for it. In this article, we review research and theory indicating that self-regulation and consequently school readiness are the product of integrated developmental processes at the biological and behavioral levels that are shaped by the contexts in which development is occurring. In doing so, we illustrate the idea that research on self-regulation powerfully highlights ways in which gaps in school readiness and later achievement are linked to poverty and social and economic inequality and points the way to effective approaches to counteract these conditions.

Subfields: Education, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/59dd78ec1a0db0dd4fb7410a81cf4ffa1eb78d5c

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Education

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Self-regulation in childhood as a predictor of future outcomes: A meta-analytic review. (2020, background): “…might be anticipated given that mathematical problem-solving requires cognitive Self-regulation in Childhood 32 control skills (Bull & Lee, 2014; Zhou, Chen, & Main, 2012) and prefrontal regions of the brain (Allan et al., 2014; Blair & Raver, 2015) that are considered critical for self-regulation.”
The development of emotional and behavioral self-regulation and their effects on academic achievement in childhood (2018, methodology): “A growing body of literature has shown the malleability of self-regulation during childhood, using more restrictive methods such as randomized control trials (Blair, 2016; Blair & Raver, 2015; Schmitt et al., 2015).”
Executive Function: Implications for Education. NCER 2017-2000. (2016, background): “Indeed, EF is central to school readiness and early school achievement (Blair 2002; Blair and Raver 2015).”
The Classroom as a Developmental Context for Cognitive Development: A Meta-Analysis on the Importance of Teacher–Student Interactions for Children’s Executive Functions (2018, background): “Additionally, we found one review study and one book chapter including a section on teacher–child interactions and EFs (Blair & Raver, 2015; McGrath, Thurman, Raisch, & Lucey, 2016) and one meta-analysis on the associations between observations of teacher–child interactions at the classroom level…”
Measurement Matters: Assessing Personal Qualities Other Than Cognitive Ability for Educational Purposes (2015, background): “And exercising self-control also relies on executive function, a suite of top-down cognitive processes, including working memory (Blair & Raver, 2015; Diamond, 2013).”
Developing together: The role of executive function and motor skills in children’s early academic lives (2019, positive): “…can be used to predict how children’s EF and motor skills provide children with the experiences necessary to acquire the academic skills needed for early school success and how that process can reciprocally strengthen EF and motor skill development (Blair & Raver, 2015; McClelland et al., 2015).”
Examining the Relations Between Executive Function, Math, and Literacy During the Transition to Kindergarten: A Multi-Analytic Approach (2017, background): “For children to take advantage of learning opportunities in classroom contexts, they must be able to pay attention, persist on challenging tasks, and avoid distractions (Blair & Raver, 2015; McClelland, Geldhof, Cameron, & Wanless, 2015).”
A dose of nature: Two three-level meta-analyses of the beneficial effects of exposure to nature on children's self-regulation (2019, background): “Individual differences in self-regulation capacities are mostly explained by biological, familial and school factors (e.g., Blair & Raver, 2015; Bridgett, Burt, Edwards, & Deater-Deckard, 2015).”