Parent Perception of Teacher Quality and Teacher Cultural Sensitivity and Responsiveness as Mediators of Growth in Mathematics Understanding in Racially Minoritized and Non-Racially Minoritized Head Start Preschoolers
Parent Perception of Teacher Quality and Teacher Cultural Sensitivity and Responsiveness as Mediators of Growth in Mathematics Understanding in Racially Minoritized and Non-Racially Minoritized Head Start Preschoolers
Date
2023
Authors
Mann, Melody
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Daubert, Emily N.
Xu, Yiyuan
Xu, Yiyuan
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Psychology
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The U.S. educational system fails to provide equitable educational experiences for racially minoritized students, also called racially minoritized learners (RMLs), who are from historically underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds, including African American/Black, Hispanic/Latinx, Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Indigenous backgrounds. Compared to their White peers, RMLs face sociocultural disparities as early as the preschool years that can lead to early gaps in learning opportunities and achievement in fundamental academic domains, such as mathematics, which are crucial for academic and career success. In early childhood education, parent perceptions of 1) Teacher Quality and 2) Teacher Cultural Sensitivity and Responsiveness (CSR) are positively related to the mathematics understanding of RMLs. Using a large-scale data set of diverse young learners, this study evaluated the effect of parents’ perception of Head Start Teacher Quality and CSR in the early childhood Head Start centers on RMLs’ growth in mathematics understanding over the course of one preschool year. Analyses were conducted using the base year data of the 2014-2017 Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES), a nationally representative dataset of children enrolled in Head Start programs across the U.S. The goal of the current study was to evaluate whether or not RML status impacts mathematics understanding in Head Start preschoolers, and if so, to test whether Teacher Quality and Teacher Cultural Sensitivity Responsiveness mediate this relation. Children’s RML status was related to their growth in mathematics understanding in Head Start Preschool. Contrary to hypotheses, Teacher Quality and Teacher CSR were not mediators of the relation between RML Status and growth in Mathematics Understanding. Thus, the current findings do not support the hypothesis that Teacher Quality and Teacher CSR influence RMLs Mathematics Understanding over the course of the preschool year. Investigations into the current topic are timely and important as classrooms across the United States are growing to represent the cultural and linguistic diversity of the nation, but schools are failing to keep up with the changing needs of the evolving demographic of young students in the U.S.
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Educational psychology,
Education,
early childhood education,
Head Start,
inclusion,
mathematics,
preschool,
racially minioritized learners
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