The Problem: Disengaged Kindergarten Students Struggle Academically

There is a large body of research that shows that students that demonstrate disruptive behavior in Kindergarten will often have difficulties succeeding academically. In one such study, “A Structured Observation of Behavioral Self-Regulation and Its Contribution to Kindergarten Outcomes” by Matthews, Morrison, Ponitz and McClelland (published in a 2009 issue of Developmental Psychology), researchers created an original tool to measure students’ abilities to self-regulate their actions and also asked their teachers to rate the students’ behavior at the beginning of the school year. They compared this data with student assessment scores in the spring, and found that a higher ability to self-regulate behavior (as rated by the teacher and the observation tool) correlated with higher achievement scores in math. This study demonstrated that young students’ ability to self-regulate behavior can have important implications for achievement as well as for instruction.

The study examined 343 students in two distinct locations in the United States. The researchers came up with a new tool to measure levels of behavioral self-control based on a tool that was previously successful with younger children. The new tool is called the “Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders Task”. Students were instructed to touch their heads when ordered to touch their toes or vice versa, and to touch their knees when told to touch their shoulders and the other way around. This simple test assessed three different elements of behavioral self-regulation. Students had to pay attention to the instructions before performing the task. They also had to apply their short-term memory to recall these directions of what they were actually supposed to do for each oral command. Finally, they had to suppress the automatic response to do what they were told at that moment (for example, if they were told to touch their knees, they had to suppress the urge to touch their knees and instead touch their shoulders). This task could be connected to the challenges of the classroom, which often require students to recall and act on specific directions while suppressing undesirable behaviors. These abilities have also been tied to academic success or failure in various studies.

The researchers found that the “Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders” test correlated with teacher evaluation of student’s behavioral self-control. Students that performed better on the test and that had higher ratings of self-regulation by teachers at the beginning of the school year had higher math scores on end-of-the-year assessments as well as continued higher behavior ratings by the teacher. The researchers also looked at end-of-the-year literacy and vocabulary assessments but did not find such a correlation. They also did not find a connection with ratings of interpersonal skills. The researchers theorized that the reason that the correlation between higher levels of self-regulation is clear with achievement in math and not in other areas is that Kindergarten students often get exposure to vocabulary and literacy concepts in many areas of their lives, not just in school, whereas the learning of mathematical concepts is more restricted to the classroom setting.

One implication of this study and others that show the connection between academic achievement and the ability to self-regulate behavior is that it is of great importance that early elementary teachers support their students’ efforts to learn to regulate and control their behaviors. The skills that this study assessed with the “HTKS” task (attending to oral directions, recalling instructions and inhibiting inappropriate responses) are skills that should most likely be taught explicitly to help children become successful students early on. I also suspect that teachers need to focus on meeting the developmental needs of young students for movement and engagement to help minimize disruptive behavior and promote self-regulation. I suspect that when these developmental needs are not being met is also when students that find self-regulation challenging will act up even more, resulting in lower achievement levels. Perhaps if teachers regularly find ways to engage students with movement, all students will be better able to focus and control their behaviors, setting them up for success in the classroom.

Matthews, J. S., McClelland, M. M., Morrison, F. J., & Ponitz, C. C. (2009). A structured observation of behavioral self-regulation. Developmental Psychology, 45 (3).