Читать книгу The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Social Development - Группа авторов - Страница 20

Cultural and economic changes made childcare and formal schooling foci for social development research. A primary aim for childcare research, as detailed later, was to elucidate the impact of early nonparental care on young children’s socioemotional development. Another investigative thrust centered on the evaluation of compensatory programs for economically disadvantaged preschoolers. Programs such as Head Start, which were designed to prepare children for school, eventually expanded their objectives to include social as well as pre‐academic competencies (Raver & Zigler, 1997).

With older children, researchers endeavored to elucidate the social features and consequences of formal schooling (Wentzel, 2015). Inquiry was wide‐ranging and included factors such as school structure and organization (e.g., size, gender groupings, school transitions, race/ethnic composition), instructional environments and methods (e.g., open vs. traditional classrooms, didactic vs. peer‐mediated learning), and classroom interpersonal dynamics (e.g., classmate and teacher–child relations). Among other discoveries, researchers found that smaller schools facilitated children’s engagement in extracurricular activities which, in turn, predicted favorable student outcomes (Schaefer et al., 2011). School transitions, in contrast, were associated with unfavorable student outcomes, such as stress, declining self‐esteem, and disengagement (Eccles & Roeser, 2003). Research on classroom instruction and dynamics revealed, among other findings, that peer‐mediated learning improved children’s collaborative and interpersonal relations with classmates (Roseth et al., 2006; Tolmie et al., 2010).

Research on after‐school arrangements for school‐age children arose in response to the growth of dual‐earner families. Studies of self‐care (i.e., allowing children to look after themselves after school) often documented hazards and risks (e.g., stress, drug use, antisocial behavior; Lord & Mahoney, 2007). In contrast, children were found to benefit from structured, adult‐supervised after‐school programs (Vandell et al., 2005).