Influence on Learning and Improvement

Environmental Influences

poverty
parenting practices
ethnic background
school-based interventions

Poverty - Stressors related to poverty can negatively impact the neural networks associated with self-regulation. As a result poverty hinders student acquisition of the skills needed to stressful situations manage situations in an appropriate manner.

Parenting Practices - With including problem-based situations in parenting through practicing personal awareness and understanding the needs of others, parents can explicitly teach self-regulatory skills to their kids and will reflect in the classroom.

Ethnic Background - Cultural values can shape an individual’s interpretation and perception of the world, and different cultures have different expectations of their children.

School-Based Interventions - Various forms of self-regulation practices in schools can be effective, such as yoga, circle time games, and explicit teaching of self-regulatory strategies.

Poverty

In a study, it was found that children who have moved out middle/high income communities and into high poverty neighborhoods during their early childhood demonstrated poorer self-regulation, when compared to their peers who did not move away.

Conversely, children who had moved out of high poverty neighborhoods and into middle/high income communities did better in their regulation, compared with with their peers who remained in those areas.

Even so, other studies have shown that environmental mediators, such as parenting practices, may buffer the negative impacts of poverty on students self-regulation.

Parenting Practices

Positive

High levels of warmth and responsiveness

Low levels of harshness

Encourage autonomy by allowing their children to take the lead in decision-making

Negative

High levels of maternal distress

Less warm parenting styles

Spending less time cognitive development due to personal stress

High assertions of power,

set high levels of control

utilize extreme harshness (e.g., physical punishment)

The literature suggests that high levels of control do not allow for children to make their own decisions in either behavioral or cognitive self-regulation

Ethnic Background

Children make decisions about how they will comply with the demands of their surroundings based upon their cultural values learned through their upbringings.

Example:

American girls tend to have higher levels of self-regulatory skills than boys, but in Korea there is no gender differences in self-regulation. Self-regulation can be highly predictive of early literacy and numeracy skills for American children, but not predictive of academic outcomes in Korean children.

School-Based Intervention

One study examined the effectiveness of a year-long, mindful yoga intervention in a preschool classrooms which showed a significant increases in self-regulation in students who participated that those students who did not. Most importantly, the children who were deemed most at-risk in their self-regulation development due to out-of-school factors that I had mentioned previous made the greatest gains in this intervention. Additionally, an in-school playgroup-based intervention also found gains made by preschoolers, particularly those most at-risk for poor self-regulation when also considering these out-of-school factors.

Applying Positive Influence for Learners

For parents, although you may not have complete control over the influences in your kids lives (such as poverty) you can change somethings. Using the topics discussed above, be sure to give your kids the best environment possible through cultural values and the behaviors you enforce while raising your kids.

For teachers, try to incorporate the school-based interventions stated above in not only your classroom, but in your school and find ways to make all of your students interested and engaged in the activities.

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