Investigating differences in how parents and teachers rate students' self-control

Area of Science:

• Educational Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Social-Emotional Learning (SEL)

Background:

• Social-emotional learning (SEL) is increasingly emphasized in education.
• Self-control is a key SEL construct linked to academic success, but findings are debated.
• Inconsistent results may arise from multi-rater assessments (parents, teachers) for young children.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the overlap between parent and teacher ratings of early childhood self-control.
• To examine how student characteristics, such as race, are associated with discrepancies in these ratings.
• To understand the impact of rater discrepancies on the assessment of students' self-control.

Main Methods:

• Utilized data from a widely adopted measure of early self-control with parallel parent and teacher forms.
• Employed statistical analyses to quantify agreement between parent and teacher self-control ratings.
• Examined the relationship between rater discrepancies and student demographic variables, including race.

Main Results:

• Found relatively low agreement between parent and teacher self-control ratings.
• Observed evidence suggesting that discrepancies in ratings are associated with student race.
• Indicated that multi-rater perspectives yield different insights into a child's self-control.

Conclusions:

• Parent and teacher perceptions of children's self-control are not highly consistent.
• Rater discrepancies in self-control assessments may be influenced by student race.
• Future research should account for rater effects in SEL and self-control evaluations.