Citation

Duong J, Bradshaw CP. Am. J. Community Psychol. 2017; 60(3-4): 538-554.

Affiliation

Johns Hopkins Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence, Johns Hopkins Center for Prevention and Early Intervention, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1002/ajcp.12201

PMID

29105091

Abstract

Guided by the social-emotional learning (SEL) framework, we studied developmental trajectory patterns of five key competency outcomes spanning middle through late childhood: altruism, empathy, self-efficacy, aggression, and hyperactivity. We then assessed their links to middle childhood home, parental, and community contexts. Data from the Institute of Education Sciences' Social and Character Development Program, which comprised nearly 2,400 elementary school students who were followed from Grades 3 through 5, were analyzed using growth mixture modeling. Three trajectory groups emerged for each outcome, which were linked to childhood contexts. Positive parenting was associated with a lower likelihood of following a negative empathy trajectory among children. Neighborhood intergenerational closure promoted a stable self-efficacy trajectory. Residing in a high-risk community was linked to increasing normative beliefs about aggression. These findings suggest an important role of contexts in influencing childhood social-emotional development in the later elementary school years.

© Society for Community Research and Action 2017.

Language: en

Keywords

Competence; Contexts; Late childhood; Middle childhood; Social-emotional learning