It is well documented that the language skills of preschool children differ substantially and that these differences are highly predictive of their later academic success and achievements. Especially in the early phases of children’s lives, the importance of different structural and process characteristics of the home learning environment has been emphasized and research results have documented that process characteristics such as the quality of parental interaction behavior and the frequency of joint activities vary according to the socio-economic status of the (...) family. Further, both structural and process characteristics are associated with children’s language development. As most of the studies focus on single indicators or didn’t take the dynamics of parenting behavior across age into account, the present paper aims to investigate the associations of different characteristics of the home learning environment as well as their potentially changing impact on the language skills of 2-year-old children. Using data of 2.272 families of the infant cohort study of the German National Educational Panel Study, longitudinally assessed process characteristics and structural characteristics were considered. Language skills of the children at the age of two were measured by a standardized and validated parent report instrument. Results showed that all three process characteristics of the home learning environment are associated with the family’s SES; across three assessment waves nearly all process characteristics predicted children’s vocabulary and grammar skills with some process-specific changes across waves; despite separate direct effects of nearly all HLE-process characteristics in each wave, the amount of explained variance in a joint model including the HLE facets from each wave is hardly higher than in the separate models; and socioeconomic background predicted both language facets of the children in each model even when controlling for the assessed process characteristics of the home learning environment. (shrink)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, students were facing great challenges. Learning was shifted from the classroom to the home of the students. This implied that students had to complete their tasks in a more autonomous way than during regular lessons. As students’ ability to handle such challenges might depend on certain cognitive and motivational prerequisites as well as individual learning conditions, the present study investigates students’ cognitive competencies as well as affective-motivational factors as possible predictors of coping with this new learning (...) situation at home. The study uses data of Starting Cohort 2 of the German National Educational Panel Study. Data of two measurement points are analyzed: Predictors were assessed at the earlier time point, when students mostly attended seventh grade of a secondary school. They completed competence tests in reading as well as mathematics and rated affective-motivational aspects in terms of willingness to exert effort, learning enjoyment, and intrinsic motivation. One and a half years later − during the COVID-19 pandemic and the first period of school closures − the second measurement point took place. Students’ parents rated the situation of learning at home with respect to students’ coping with the new situation and parents’ difficulties to motivate them. Regression analyses controlling for school track, students’ gender, and parents’ educational level and parental stress revealed that students’ reading competencies and their willingness to exert effort were significant predictors of their coping with the new learning situation at home. Moreover, parents reported that boys were more difficult to motivate to learn during this time as compared to girls. Other predictors turned out to be non-significant when entered simultaneously in the regression analyses. The results point to the importance of children’s prerequisites for autonomous learning situations without structuring elements by teachers within the school context. (shrink)

This study aimed to advance our understanding of 5-year-olds’ behavioral difficulties by modeling and testing both mediational protective and risk pathways simultaneously. Drawing on two national samples from different Western European countries—the United Kingdom and Germany, the proposed model considered observed sensitive parental interactive behaviors and tested child vocabulary as protective pathways connecting parental education with children’s behavioral outcomes; the risk pathways focused on negative parental disciplinary practices linking parental education, parental distress, and children’s difficult temperament to children’s behavioral difficulties. (...) Further, the tested model controlled for families’ income as well as children’s sex and formal child care attendance. Children with comparatively higher educated parents experienced more sensitive interactive behavior, had more advanced vocabulary, and exhibited fewer behavioral difficulties. Children with a comparatively higher level of difficult temperament or with parents who suffered from distress tended to experience more negative disciplinary behavior and exhibited more behavioral difficulties. Additionally, children’s vocabulary skills served as a mechanism mediating the association between parental education and children’s behavioral difficulties. Overall, we found similar patterns of results across the United Kingdom and Germany with both protective and risk pathways contributing simultaneously to children’s behavioral development. The findings suggest that promoting parents’ sensitive interactive behaviors, favorable disciplinary practices, and child’s vocabulary skills have potential for preventing early behavioral difficulties. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed many challenges, especially for families. Both the public and the scientific community are currently discussing the extent to which school closings have worsened existing social differences, especially with regard to children’s academic and socio-emotional development. At the same time, parents have had to manage childcare and home schooling alongside their jobs and personal burdens posed by the pandemic. Parents’ possibilities for meeting these cognitive and emotional challenges might also depend on the different conditions in families. (...) For this reason, the present paper investigates the structural and process characteristics of the family as well as children’s and parents’ psychological characteristics that predict how parents assess their ability to support their child’s learning during homeschooling as well as parents’ perceived emotional stress caused by school closure. The study analyses data of the Newborn Cohort Study of the German National Educational Panel Study. The two dependent variables were measured during the COVID-19 pandemic after the first school closure in Germany, at a time when the children of this cohort were attending second grade. Besides a number of control variables, families’ structural characteristics [socioeconomic status, education], process characteristics, parents’ psychological characteristics, and the child’s psychological characteristics from earlier waves were included as predictors. The results of structural equation models show that perceived stress was associated with structural factors and the preceding psychological stress of parents. Parents with higher preceding stress reported higher perceived stress. Interestingly, higher-educated parents also reported more stress than lower educated parents during the pandemic. The effect was the other way around for SES – parents with lower SES reported more stress than parents with higher SES. The self-reported abilities to support the learning of the child seemed to be mainly predicted by the parent’s education as well as preceding psychological stress. To sum up, the results identify important aspects that determine how parents handle the challenges of the school closures. Especially, socially disadvantaged families carry their burden into the pandemic. (shrink)