Abstract
Developing children’s self-regulation and engagement skills are primary goals of early childhood education. These skills are fostered in both home and preschool environments and can lead to improved educational outcomes. This qualitative case study investigated how a refugee family and Head Start teachers fostered the self-regulation and engagement skills of a 4-year-old boy at risk for disability. It found that adult expectations and practices related to protection, intervention, and affective response in his home environment differed greatly from those in his Head Start environment. His skills steadily improved in both settings during the 4-month study’s duration. Implications include using a framework of the three domains—protection, intervention, and affective response—to guide future research.
Keywords
Violence has created more than 15 million refugees worldwide. According to the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees, a refugee is someone who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country. (United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees [UNHCR], n.d.)
During 2011, a total of 56,424 refugees were resettled in the United States (U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, & U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2012). Refugees arriving in the United States are sent to live in various cities, and local resettlement agencies help provide transitional housing, social work services, and cash subsidies for the first 4 to 8 months in their new country. Despite this support infrastructure, it is widely acknowledged that significant challenges face refugees as they start their lives in the United States (U.S. Department of State et al., 2012). Because 34% of refugees admitted to the United States in 2011 were below 18 years of age (U.S. Department of State et al., 2012), the role of the U.S. education system in refugee families’ successful transition to the United States cannot be overstated. The Office of Refugee Resettlement recently called for local resettlement agencies to collaborate with local Head Start agencies to provide comprehensive services to refugee families with young children (Integrating Refugees into the Head Start Community, n.d.). The Administration for Children and Families encourages collaboration between its agencies with similar missions, including the Office of Refugee Resettlement and the Office of Head Start (Integrating Refugees into the Head Start Community, n.d.).
Since its founding in 1965, Head Start has always served diverse low-income populations and promoted local adaptation to the communities they serve (Bridging Refugee Youth & Children’s Services [BRYCS], n.d.; Zigler & Styfco, 2010). Head Start services include education, nutrition, health care, and mental health care. Its mission—namely, to promote school readiness by enhancing the social and cognitive development of children through the provision of educational, health, nutritional, social, and other services (About Head Start, n.d.)—fits well with the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s mission (Integrating Refugees into the Head Start Community, n.d.). Furthermore, Head Start’s diverse population currently includes children of refugees living in the United States, most of whom meet the Head Start income eligibility guidelines (BRYCS, n.d.).
Although scant, research on refugee families with young children in preschool in the United States provides three conclusions applicable to the present study. First, refugee families are often unaccustomed to the teaching and discipline techniques in U.S. schools and may disagree with their appropriateness for their children (Birman, Trickett, & Bacchus, 2001; Dachyshyn & Kirova, 2008; Tadesse, Hoot, & Watson-Thompson, 2009; Walker-Dalhouse & Dalhouse, 2009). Second, refugee families often have a genuine interest in their children’s education but may not be involved in the ways schools expect, due to a host of barriers (e.g., lack of communication with the school, economic and family demands, lack of cultural and linguistic knowledge; McBrien, 2005, 2011; Walker-Dalhouse & Dalhouse, 2009). Third, refugee families’ expectations for children’s behavior at home often differ greatly from schools’ expectations (Hurley, Medici, Stewart, & Cohen, 2011; Tadesse et al., 2009; Walker-Dalhouse & Dalhouse, 2009).
Expectations for children’s behavior that differ between home and school are often related to children’s abilities to self-regulate and engage in their environments (Abery & Zajac, 1996; Palmer et al., 2013). Efforts to develop children’s skills must be responsive to their home cultures (Erwin et al., 2009; Frankland, Turnbull, Wehmeyer, & Blackmountain, 2004; Kalyanpur & Harry, 2012; Palmer et al., 2012; Rogoff, 2003). Limited research, however, has focused on fostering children’s self-regulation and engagement skills within the home environment (Abery & Stancliffe, 1996; Shogren & Turnbull, 2006).
Self-regulation manifests itself when children respond to input from their environment through managing their emotions (Kochanska, Philibert, & Barry, 2009), behavior (Ponitz, McClelland, Matthews, & Morrison, 2009), and attention (Palmer et al., 2012; Posner & Rothbart, 2009; Sheese, Rothbart, Posner, White, & Fraundorf, 2008). Self-regulation is necessary for successfully making choices and learning to engage appropriately in activities (Palmer et al., 2012). Engagement occurs when children are involved with the environment (teachers, peers, or materials) in ways that are appropriate for their age, ability, and context (McWilliam & Bailey, 1992; McWilliam & Casey, 2008). Children who are actively engaged have increased interactions with people and materials, which lead to improved learning, problem-solving skills, and peer relationships (McWilliam & Casey, 2008). Typically, 4-year-olds can follow routines at school and home, spend time interacting with people, and be engaged in what is happening around them.
Because adult behavior in both the home and school settings influences a child’s development of self-regulation and engagement skills (Palmer et al., 2012), for this study, we used Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological theory of human development as an organizational framework in which the child was in both the microsystem of the home (where the family fostered his skills) and the microsystem of the Head Start agency (where the staff fostered his skills). We theorized that young children may encounter difficulties with determining and meeting adult expectations when moving between home and school environments if expectations within these environments differed significantly, and this difficulty would be manifested in inappropriate behavior in one or both environments. Specifically, the underlying principles of promoting children’s self-regulation and engagement inherent to American education (Trainor, 2005) may differ from the way refugee families fostered these skills in their children before and during their Head Start enrollment, and the differences in expectations between these contexts might manifest as inappropriate behavior. The clash between home and school cultures is not limited to children from refugee backgrounds, but the purpose of this specific qualitative case study was to investigate the following research question:
How do Head Start staff and a refugee family foster self-regulation and engagement skills of a young child at risk for disability?
As a qualitative case study, this research is not intended to unearth generalizable principles (Creswell, 1998) but rather to present an exploration of themes that might point the way to further research.
Method
Researcher Background
As a research team, we are investigators in family- and school-based research. The lead author is a PK–8 certified teacher who has taught for 8 years, lived and worked in several countries in North America, Africa, and Europe, and volunteers to help refugees settle into life in the United States. The other authors have successfully conducted early childhood research for a number of years and worked with many diverse families. Collectively, we have repeatedly experienced the differences between expectations in home and school around children’s development of self-regulation and engagement skills. Because recognizing our relevant experience and bias and assuming a self-critical stance can help guard against imposing our own assumptions on this study (Maxwell, 2005), we state openly that we are awed by refugees’ resilience and have a deep respect for the work and responsibilities of Head Start staff.
Research Design
The data answering this research question come from a descriptive case study design. Yin (2009) defined a case study as “an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon in depth and within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident” (p. 18). A case study design was an appropriate method for answering this research question because it had the “ability to deal with a full variety of evidence—documents, artifacts, interviews, and observations” (Yin, 2009, p. 11)—to explore the complex social phenomenon under investigation (Yin, 2009).
Participant Selection
Using purposeful sampling (Patton, 2002), we sought a Head Start agency that (a) was located within a 50-mile radius of our office, (b) served refugee families, and (c) was open to an outside researcher conducting participant observation for 4 months. We contacted several Head Start agencies and interviewed staff at two Head Start agencies that met all three criteria. We selected Riley Head Start (RHS; all names used in this article are pseudonyms) because of its diversity; exactly half of the families (66 out of 132) spoke a language other than English at home; and its refugee families came from Somalia, Sudan (North and South), Liberia, Nigeria, Vietnam, Haiti, Burma, and Iraq. In addition, the education director was interested in learning more about the broad topic of differing behavioral expectations for children at home and Head Start, such as those for children from immigrant families from Somalia and Myanmar, as presenting an ongoing challenge for the RHS children, families, and staff.
Within the RHS community, we sought one child who was (a) enrolled in RHS (assumed age 3–5), (b) had parents or guardians who were refugees and willing to participate in this study, and (c) had a diagnosed disability or several disability-related risk factors. The education director and teachers identified several possibilities; one boy, Habib, who was born in the United States to parents who were refugees from Somalia, particularly stood out due to his behavior and risk factors. We received university institutional review board (IRB) approval for this research, and Habib’s family and Head Start staff gave informed consent.
Data Collection
We collected data using multiple methods, including observations, semi-structured interviews, and documents. Data collection happened simultaneously, as information from each source triangulated data from other sources (Maxwell, 2005) and informed subsequent data collection (Yin, 2009).
Observation
The first author observed in Habib’s classroom for approximately 50 hr (18 visits) during the first 4 months of school (September–December). Classroom observations typically lasted 3.5 hr, the length of a day’s session, and occurred either 1 or 2 times per week. She concurrently observed in Habib’s home for periods of 30 min to 4 hr for approximately 20 hr (9 visits).
The observations were conducted as participant observations, in which the first author was principally an observer and secondarily a participant (Adler & Adler, 1994). She tried to minimize the effect of her presence on the behaviors she was observing. For example, when Habib or another child showed difficulty self-regulating, she would distance herself from the situation and observe the actions of the responsible adults. During observations, she would interact with all students in the room and help with classroom chores as if she were a classroom volunteer. To confirm what she had observed or to clarify her understanding of instances, she conducted numerous dialogical interviews following participant observations (Carspecken, 1996).
Field notes
The first author’s field notes began with “jottings” and “head notes” (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995, p. 19) taken in the field to remember notable details when writing field notes later. As a way to process the information (Agar, 1996; Emerson et al., 1995), she captured her field experiences while still fresh in her mind on an audio recorder immediately afterward. Before returning to the field, she used jottings, head notes, and audio recording of field notes to generate typed field notes.
Semi-structured interviews
In addition to numerous dialogical interviews that sought to clarify the researcher’s observations, the first author conducted semi-structured phenomenological interviews (Charmaz, 2006) with 16 adults (staff at RHS and Habib’s family members). These interviews sought to understand the experiences of interviewees and followed a semi-structured interview protocol through main “organizational categories” (Maxwell, 2005). The first author focused the interviews on learning about the interviewees’ lives, how the interviewees perceived their roles in fostering the child’s self-regulation and engagement, and what the interviewees desired most for the child now, in the near future, and in the distant future. These interviews lasted from 30 min to 2.5 hr. She audio recorded and transcribed all interviews with the exception of two interviews where interviewees declined recording; she took copious notes during those interviews.
Document collection
Document collection, an important method for triangulating evidence from other sources as well as informing existing and opening new lines of inquiry (Yin, 2009), included gathering lesson plans, newsletters, notes sent to families, assessment data, enrollment forms, Head Start policies, curriculum guides, and enrollment statistics.
Data Analysis
The iterative nature of qualitative research requires that data collection and preliminary data analysis occur fluidly and simultaneously to inform each other (Maxwell, 2005). We used a recursive five-part cycle of data analysis: compiling, disassembling, reassembling, interpreting, and concluding (Yin, 2011).
Using NVivo 10 (QSR International, 2012), the first author created a database organizing all field notes (audio and written), interviews (audio and transcriptions), and documents. While collecting data, she wrote analytic memos about themes emerging from all data sources as well as from her personal responses to the data (Maxwell, 2005). She shared these analytic memos with two colleagues biweekly, who responded in writing and/or discussion. These memos, notes from the discussions, and colleagues’ written responses became part of the NVivo database representing a tentative component of the analytic process (Maxwell, 2005).
As the first author entered data into the database, she disassembled it by using open-coding to create Level 1 codes (Yin, 2009). To create a chain of evidence (Yin, 2009), she used NVivo to highlight parts of data that supported each tentative code. After collecting all data and completing open-coding, the first author reread all documents to revise codes and look for patterns in which data could reassemble. She sought themes within the data that specifically answered the research question for this study. These patterns enabled her to reassemble and interpret the data. As these interpretations emerged, she conducted member checks with the lead teacher in Habib’s classroom, Habib’s mother, and the family advocate; everyone agreed with the findings with a few minor changes (Yin, 2011). We then confirmed the conclusions presented in this article with Habib’s father and the educational director.
Findings
Picturing Habib at the heart of this study, as well as his family and the RHS staff, is imperative to understanding the adults’ behaviors aimed at fostering his self-regulation and engagement skill development. Therefore, we first introduce the participants as they were at the study’s beginning. Next, we explain three continua of adult behavior that emerged from the data (i.e., protection, intervention, and affective response) and use it to describe the adult behaviors that fostered Habib’s skill development. Finally, we describe the participants at the conclusion of the study.
Participants at Beginning of Study
Habib
With chocolate-colored skin and large brown eyes that danced when he shyly showed his perfect white smile, Habib was average weight and height for his 4 years. He lived in a three-bedroom apartment in the outskirts of a large Midwestern city with his mother, Ugaaso, father, Muuse, grandmother, Fatu, and three younger siblings (Zahra, 3 years; Abdu, 2 years; Amina, 6 months). Attending RHS in August was the first time Habib and Zahra were outside their home without their parents, and immersion in an English-language environment was also a new experience for them.
Habib displayed unpredictable and often inappropriate behaviors when overstimulated or in new situations. Upon entering the classroom the first time, during the “parent orientation” preceding the start of school, Habib clung to Muuse’s fingers, and his wrinkled brow and questioning eyes showed his intense fear. Muuse smiled, encouraged his son, and spoke openly and clearly in English. Wide-eyed, Habib watched his teacher cue up a Spanish and English “hello song” on the smartboard, still grasping his father’s hand. As the music and dancing started, Habib crumpled to the floor, screaming. Frantically, he pulled blocks from the shelf and threw dolls he found in a basket. He curled up in the fetal position, and his father picked him up and held him in a standing position. When his father went to Zahra’s room for a few minutes (the classroom orientations were concurrent), Habib ran after him until a teacher caught him and held the door shut so he could not escape. Behaviors such as these were commonplace for Habib (occurring almost daily), and, after a few months of school (halfway through this study), they caused the teachers to refer Habib for a special education evaluation.
At the onset of this study, Habib’s parents said he would run into the parking lot as soon as they opened the door to the apartment, regardless of oncoming traffic. According to his parents, they did not have any toys out with which the kids could play because Habib and his siblings would just break them. They said, overall, he was hard to control.
Adult participants
The main adult participants were Habib’s family and his teachers at RHS.
Habib’s family
Habib’s parents had married 5 years earlier in the Midwestern city where they lived. Muuse had come to the United States in 2000 as a refugee from Somalia by way of Nairobi, Kenya. He was 16 years old when he arrived, could not read or write, and had never been to school. He enrolled in English as a Second Language (ESL) classes at the local high school and graduated in 4 years. At the time of this study, he was 30 years old. Ugaaso, Habib’s mom, was 15 years old when she arrived in 2006. She had lived in Dadaab, a large refugee camp in eastern Kenya, since she was a toddler. Ugaaso never went to school in Somalia or in the United States. She learned English by taking some adult ESL classes and watching TV. Habib’s grandmother, Fatu, grew up in the Danakil Desert and moved to the United States 6 years prior, when she was 60.
Habib’s family emanated a jovial calm, and their unconditional love for their children permeated their home. Fatu would spend hours holding Amina, singing to her in Somali and laughing, but she did not interact much with Habib in the first author’s presence. Habib’s family wanted their children to be happy, safe, and successful; and Ugaaso said, “whatever makes them happy, we give it to them.” They recognized their children as individuals, agreeing that Habib was “shy” and “smart,” Zahra was “easy,” Abdu was “the troublemaker,” and Amina was “just like her sister.” Habib’s parents explained that children in Somalia played in “enclosed buildings with an open area in the middle . . . like a courtyard . . . You are not scared about people grabbing and stealing them. They play outside with their cousins and friends and do whatever they want.” Within their apartment, reprimands or directives to their children were rare, and they seemed to find their children’s behavior within the home appropriate. Although perhaps more active in intentionally shaping skills other than those in focus for this study (e.g., intentionally working on building his literacy and numeracy skills), the family demonstrated a passive acceptance of Habib’s self-regulation and engagement skill level and, despite expressing their frustration with some of his behaviors, did not try to accelerate his development of these skills within their home.
Teachers
Cassie, the lead teacher in the Turtle Room, had been working in early childhood for 16 years, 5 of which were at Head Start, but this was her first year at RHS. Youthful, articulate, and cheerful, Cassie had been a single teenage mother who persevered to complete college and become a certified teacher. She understood from experience some of the challenges many of her students’ families encountered. The assistant teachers in the room were Sharon and Nina. Sharon had taught for 14 years at RHS as an assistant and lead teacher. A mother of five children, she was deeply religious and saw her work as “ministry” to help those in need. Nina, a self-described former illegal Mexican immigrant and single mother who experienced substantial hardship during her quest for citizenship, came to the United States 25 years prior to this study and started at RHS as a cook 3 years later. She worked as an assistant teacher and a lead teacher for the 12 years prior to this study.
RHS subscribed to several curricula, including Creative Curriculum’s “The System,” Conscious Discipline, and Second Step. Obvious threads from these curricula related to the skills under investigation, and each teacher had her own style as well as gravitation toward specific strategies depending on classroom needs. The teachers did not implement an intervention specifically with Habib. Sharon stated, “We all have the same values and we just get along”; the findings illustrate, however, that their techniques for fostering Habib’s self-regulation and engagement skills varied greatly.
Relationship between Habib’s family and teachers
At the beginning of this study, the relationship between Habib’s parents and teachers was generally respectful but limited. They had only met at the parent–teacher conference at Habib’s home prior to start of school. Although Ugaaso spoke English well, the teachers assumed she did not speak English because Muuse did most of the talking during the conference. The only details about the family the teachers knew were that they were Somali and the children had never been to school. After the parent–teacher conference at their home, Ugaaso did not know the teachers’ names and said they came to “fill out some papers.” Because the teachers conducted 34 home-based parent–teacher conferences in a week (a visit to each of their students’ homes), they recalled limited detail from this home visit.
Adult Behaviors Influencing Self-Regulation and Engagement Skills
Most adult behaviors that influenced Habib’s development of self-regulation and engagement skills can be described by their degree of protection, intervention, and affective response. In Figure 1, we display three metaphorical continua that describe the adult behavior influencing Habib’s development of these skills. These metaphorical continua enable us to describe, organize, and contrast the adult behavior that influenced Habib in both environments, but there are no pre-determined points within them, and we rarely observed adult behavior that was at the absolute ends of the continua. We present the continua to compare and contrast behaviors and beliefs without judgment.
Continua of adult behavior domains.
Figure 1 displays three domains of adult behavior: protection, intervention, and affective response. The behavior we describe in the protection domain ranged from adults restricting Habib’s behavior to encouraging his freedom. Structure represented the center of this range. The behavior we describe in the intervention domain ranged from low adult direction to high adult direction of child behavior. Intentional interaction was the center of this continuum, when the adult provided strategic support to enhance child skill development and build on child interest. The behavior we describe in the affective response domain ranged from cold to warm, centered on neutral. Adult behavioral norms for raising children vary greatly between and within cultures, and there is no ideal point on these continua where universally all behaviors should occur.
Adult behaviors varied according to contextual factors in the two environments: Habib’s home and his Head Start classroom. Likewise, the behavior of the two groups of adults, Habib’s family and his teachers, influenced Habib’s development of self-regulation and engagement skills. The following section describes the behavior of these two sets of adults within these two environments according to the three domains of adult behavior.
Protection
The protection domain ranged from restriction to structure to freedom. In an effort to protect Habib, adults sometimes restricted opportunities for him to develop self-regulation and engagement skills.
Family
Inside the apartment, Habib’s family allowed him relative freedom with limited materials, yet they restricted his opportunities to go outside. Within the apartment, Habib’s family permitted the children freedom (i.e., few rules) with what and how they engaged. For example, Habib would run quickly in the long hallway of the house and jump onto the couch. The children would eat snacks on the couch and were allowed to choose what and how much of the snacks they ate. During one observation, they made a mess of the snacks, but the parents did not reprimand them. When they had access to toys, the children would break them, and they dirtied their clothes, the rug, and the couch when they had access to art supplies. Habib’s parents restricted access to such materials. There were usually no toys available to Habib and his siblings, but when they did have access to toys, they had freedom to engage however they wanted with them. The parents had bought toys for their children, but Ugaaso explained that they “just break them” and “don’t know how to treat toys.” Ugaaso explained that young children did not understand how to treat toys until they are about 7 years old. In addition, the parents kept all the doors to bedrooms locked during the day so the children did not “trash the rooms.” Because the children would unravel the toilet paper, they kept it locked up in the bedroom.
According to Habib’s parents, the best way to correct a child’s behavior is to limit the child’s opportunities to engage in negative behavior by limiting access to materials or situations. Ugaaso said, “I like that they play, but I don’t like that they break the [toy] cars. I just take them away. I don’t know how to teach them not to break the [toy] cars.”
Due primarily to safety concerns, the family restricted Habib’s opportunities to go outside. The family was extremely concerned about their children running into the parking lot in front of their apartment. Numerous locks held the door shut (including one at the top of the door, out of the children’s reach). The children wanted desperately to get outside. When the children managed to get outside the apartment, they would run as quickly as they could onto the asphalt and physically roll on the pavement in the parking lot. They conceived creative ways to get the door open for them to do this: One time, they put a toy car (that the first author had brought) through a hole in the screen window and called their mother to come get it. When she opened the door to get the car, the three older children bolted in different directions and started to roll on the pavement. Ugaaso panicked and collected the children as quickly as she could. They repeated the tactic later in the day, but Ugaaso left the car outside, shut the windows, put on the air conditioning, and did not say anything about the toy car lying on the ground. The concern about safety outside caused the parents to restrict their outings and never leave the home with all children unless both parents were present.
Teachers
While Habib’s family members allowed their children to develop their skills with some restriction and some freedom, his teachers generally used structure to establish behavioral expectations and scaffold activities for the whole class. A large part of the classroom structure explicitly established clear expectations about classroom rules and basic expectations. Cassie explained, “We need to teach what listening looks like and practice that . . . Show them what it looks like, model it, think through it together, and then use some of your older children as examples.”
Teachers were clear and assertive when enforcing rules. This clarity helped children understand expectations. For example, children were not allowed to touch food until all students were seated at the tables. When Habib reached out to touch the plastic wrap on the food, Sharon sternly said, “Habib, we wait for everyone to be ready before touching the food. Keep your hands on your lap while you wait.”
Teachers usually held the children accountable for the choices they made, strengthening the structure of the classroom. For example, when Habib decided to move from the block area to the science area, Sharon said, “You took out the blocks to play with them. You can change your mind, but you need to put away the blocks before you make another choice.” However, the teachers did not always hold Habib to the same standards as the children who were more accustomed to the RHS context. For example, Habib often forgot to move his name shape to the center where he was working. Teachers rarely corrected this behavior because they perceived he did not understand it. Eventually, he understood its purpose and began to move it on his own.
Another aspect of structure was explicitly teaching and modeling how to engage in new activities. For example, Cassie taught a whole-group lesson in which she modeled putting tissue paper in water in a clear plastic cup. She engaged the students by calling it “magic,” activated their prior knowledge by asking them to predict what would happen when she placed the tissue paper in the water, and allowed them to assess their predictions by yelling out if they were correct as the water changed color. The students’ enjoyment of the lesson was obvious, and those who chose to engage with that activity at center time knew exactly what to do. In addition to engaging with their own plastic cups of “magic” water, the students engaged in predicting and assessing their prediction of their classmates’ work, as Cassie had modeled with her example. No teacher interacted with the children during this activity; the proactively established structure allowed them to engage freely. Habib engaged in the activity for 20 min without adult support, surprising his teachers and the first author with his prolonged engagement.
At times of potential danger or disorder, the teachers restricted Habib’s movement to control his behavior, especially during the first month of school. During the first week of school, for example, Nina made sure the door was closed so Habib would not run into the hallway and guarded the bathroom door so he did not go into the adjoining classroom (the bathroom was between the two classrooms). Sharon and Cassie often held him on their laps when reading books. After she suspected that he pulled the fire alarm on the first day of school, Sharon stood in front of the fire alarm to ensure Habib did not pull it again (in her thinking). As Habib’s self-regulation and engagement skills improved, teachers restricted his movements less.
Intervention
The adult intervention continuum (see Figure 1) ranged from low adult direction to intentional interaction to high adult direction. Activities with low adult direction were initiated by children on their own; adults were passive in these activities. Activities characterized by high adult direction were initiated by adults to meet their goals and did not take into account children’s interests or needs. Intentional interaction refers to adults acting purposefully to provide or respond to children’s actions to help children develop specific skills (Epstein, 2007).
Family
The freedom usually permitted to Habib and his siblings within their home was congruent with the low adult direction of activities in that environment. The children engaged at will with materials, food, or each other. In contrast, his parents’ restriction of engagement in potentially hazardous activity (e.g., going outside) was an example of high adult direction. Thus, although they engaged in both ends of the intervention continuum shown in Figure 1, the parents were never observed to engage in intentional interactions to guide behavior. Ugaaso and Muuse either did not engage in a situation (let the children direct themselves) or ended the situation.
An example occurred during one of the final data collection days with the family. While the first author was in Fatu’s corner of the living room, the children started to look through her backpack. Ugaaso noticed and took away the backpack without speaking to them. The first author asked her then: “I notice you take things away from the kids instead of teaching them that they have made a bad choice. Like my backpack just now. How can they learn if you do not explain it to them?” She responded, “They don’t know. They don’t understand. They just do that and they shouldn’t. So I move it so they stop.”
Teachers
Teachers used a variety of intentional interaction strategies that blended adult-directed and child-directed learning to respond to the situation at hand and maximize learning opportunities (Epstein, 2007). Teachers intentionally arranged the environment, engaged with students, and responded to student need.
Teachers intentionally arranged themselves and the environment to help students develop their self-regulation and engagement skills. The classroom was broken into clearly defined areas. A safe, cozy area was next to the smartboard, private enough to be comfortable but close enough to the main areas of the classroom to not be secluding. During center time, there were a variety of different activities (e.g., blocks, science, reading, computer, pretend, art), positions for engaging with materials (e.g., on the carpet, in chairs at a table, on a reclined chair), and noise levels (e.g., headphones for computer, quiet area for reading, loud exploration at the science center).
Teachers also planned their responsibilities and locations to maximize their efforts and enable them to remain present with the students, similar to Casey and McWilliam’s (2005) Zone Defense System. During typical whole-class sessions, one teacher taught, one teacher supported students to engage and self-regulate, and one teacher cleaned up and/or set up materials for the next activity. When students were at centers, the teachers each had either areas or specific children to monitor. If a student would benefit from individualized coaching on self-regulation or engagement, usually the teacher in that area or the teacher specifically monitoring that student was available to provide necessary guidance.
Teachers often engaged with students to intentionally improve their self-regulation and engagement skills. For example, when Habib was curiously touching the play dough, Sharon asked him whether he could make it flatter and encouraged him, “Look! When you pushed it, it got flatter! Can you make it even flatter?” Activities were more adult-directed when targeted toward children who teachers perceived would benefit from more explicit instruction. Especially in the beginning of the year, Habib’s activities were often more adult-directed than his peers’ activities. Sharon described Habib to be “like a kid in a candy shop” at school, overwhelmed by so many opportunities. When the students had the broad assignment to draw their self-portraits, for example, Sharon sat next to Habib and told him to draw each part of his body. She said each body part and then pointed to it on herself.
The Turtle Room teachers almost constantly adjusted their behavior to intentionally respond to student need. During the second week of school, Habib had a particularly difficult day of adjustment and was not engaging with peers or materials. At independent book time, Cassie stretched out her arms and gently said, “Come sit with me.” Habib sat in her lap, and she hugged him and read the book with him. She whispered in his ear, and he smiled. She allowed him to stay in her lap as she transitioned to leading the class in Mother Gooney Bird.
Affective response
Adults’ affect in response to Habib ranged from cold to neutral to warm. With some exceptions, both Habib’s family and teachers usually had a warm affect in response to him. The ways they displayed this warmth varied greatly, however.
Family
Interactions with and observations of Habib’s family demonstrated their deep and constant love for Habib and his siblings. They spoke about their children with pride and unconditional acceptance of their natural personalities. They did not, however, praise their children in their children’s presence. For example, Muuse whispered when he told the first author Habib was “a smart guy” but “kind of shy.” Although usually warm in response to Habib, Ugaaso reprimanded him strongly when he ran outside, indicating a cold response when he made a dangerous choice. No child-produced work was noticeable in the apartment, but photos of the children were displayed on both parents’ phones and the start-up screen to Muuse’s computer read, “I love my kids.”
Teachers
Although teachers were consistent and assertive, they were also usually warm when fostering self-regulation and engagement skills, especially when children showed an improvement in the skill or set a positive example for other students. This warmth consisted of praise, acknowledgment of good work, and positive redirection. There were occasional cold responses to Habib as well.
Often, teachers praised children’s specific behaviors. For example, when he sat down on the rug without prompting, but a few other students played around in the circle area, Cassie said, “I love the way Habib is sitting on the carpet, waiting calmly. He is making a good choice and setting a great example!” At this point in the year, Habib did not usually sit calmly on the carpet. In addition, the weekly newsletter sent home always included pictures of children engaged in activities, and children’s work was prominently displayed on the bulletin board in the hallway, praising the children’s engagement and resulting productivity.
When children made unacceptable choices, teachers usually spoke to them calmly and helped them understand both natural and imposed consequences with a warm affect. For example, during a read aloud, Habib repeated every word aloud as Cassie read it. Cassie stopped reading and said, “Habib, I am losing my focus when I hear you repeat the words. If you sit in the back, I will be less distracted, and we can all enjoy the book more.” Although she was clearly exhausted by his difficult behavior, Cassie still spoke to Habib with kindness and respect.
Participants at Conclusion of Study
Habib
During the 4 months of this study, Habib’s self-regulation and engagement blossomed. As he became accustomed to his Head Start environment, his skills improved at RHS and at home. Habib no longer ran into the parking lot at home when the door opened. Ugaaso reported he listened much more and was “nicer.” Cassie said, I feel like he wants to please us [and] tries hard to follow the rules and stay where he’s at . . . I think that happened gradually, as he noticed the positive response to his actions. There’s been a big change!
He showed the highest level of engagement, persistence (McWilliam & Casey, 2008), by communicating with words; engaging with materials, peers, and teachers in appropriate symbolic manners; and transferring his skills to help his parents care for his younger siblings (e.g., telling his brother not to climb on the counter).
Family
The behaviors of Habib’s family changed slightly throughout this study. His family continued to love him unconditionally and allow him the freedom to develop inside his apartment without intervening. When he started to help take care of his younger brother, however, Ugaaso and Muuse began to praise his behavior. As Habib’s skills improved, the apartment became more relaxed and quieter, and his siblings’ engagement and self-regulation skills grew as well. Habib’s freedom increased outside the home as he showed more self-regulation; Muuse started bringing Habib on outings to do errands. At the end of this study, the first author noticed some instances of the parents using intentional teaching directed at Abdu (but not at Habib).
Teachers
The behaviors of Habib’s teachers changed as Habib’s behavior changed. In the beginning of the study, they were, overall, collectively more restricting, adult-directed, and cold. At the end of this study, they gave Habib more freedom, interacted more intentionally, and were significantly warmer when responding to him. Cassie especially showed a genuine fondness for Habib, saying he had “a quirky sense of humor that always makes me laugh” and was “one of the quickest learners I have ever seen.”
Relationship between teachers and family
Ugaaso and Muuse upheld their respect for Habib’s teachers throughout this study but did not get to know them well. They demonstrated their respect by expressing their gratitude to the teachers for teaching Habib how to behave so well. Cassie, the teacher responsible for maintaining Habib’s assessment portfolio and conferring with his family, showed respect to his father by consistently being positive when talking with him and about him.
Habib’s parents and teachers did not, however, appear to have a collaborative and goal-oriented partnership characterized by trust and two-way communication (Head Start Act, 2007). Although Muuse developed an understanding of the expectations Habib’s teachers had for his self-regulation and engagement skills, the teachers did not have a clear understanding of his family’s expectations for them in their home environment. In addition, communication was mostly one way; there was no established system for the family and teachers to communicate reciprocally.
Discussion
This study examined how teachers and family members of one child from a refugee family fostered his self-regulation and engagement skills. Habib encountered difficulties with these skills, especially at the beginning of this study. The adult behaviors aimed at fostering Habib’s skills fell into three domains: protection (ranging from restriction to freedom), intervention (ranging from low adult direction to high adult direction), and affective response (ranging from cold to warm). Overall, RHS teachers’ behaviors for fostering Habib’s skills were structured and intentional, contrasting greatly with his family’s low adult direction and allowance of freedom within their apartment’s protected space. During this study, Habib’s self-regulation and engagement in both home and school environments greatly improved. As a result, his teachers’ affective responses toward Habib became warmer and their instruction even more intentional and structured while his family permitted him more freedom and recognized his good behavior more explicitly.
This qualitative case study was meant to explore this complex phenomenon within the home and school microsystems of this specific child. The findings might transfer to other specific situations, but it is the responsibility of the “potential appliers” (Lincoln & Guba, 1985, p. 316) to reach such a conclusion. This exploratory study focused solely on one child and is meant to demonstrate the specific experience of a child navigating two parallel worlds and propose a framework to guide future research. This study does not generalize to all Somali families, children at risk for disability, or Head Start agencies, but we have attempted to provide enough detail for readers to apply, with caution, this study’s findings to their work.
Limitations
This study has two limitations. First, the 4-month time span of this study beginning at the start of the school year did not permit a longitudinal view of the child’s development and adult behaviors over the entire year. More time would have allowed a deeper insight into the dynamic relationship between Habib’s behavior and the adult responses to it. We also would have developed more trust with the participants, perhaps enabling us to observe more natural circumstances than we saw in this 4-month time span. Second, the timing of the observations of Habib’s family inhibited gaining an understanding of adult behaviors at all times. All observations in the home took place during the day or early evening; we considered it too intrusive to observe during morning and nighttime rituals.
Connection to Literature
The research base on young children’s self-regulation and engagement is increasing (Erwin & Brown, 2003; McWilliam & Casey, 2008; Palmer & Wehmeyer, 2003). Limited research, however, has focused on how these skills might develop across diverse home and contrasting preschool environments. We found no research conducted with young children from refugee or other immigrant families focusing on adult behaviors to foster these skills in either environment. This study started to fill this gap by describing and analyzing both environments of one focal child from a refugee family.
This study’s findings were consistent with previous literature that has found that expectations for children’s behavior and foundational skill development in the home and school environments varied considerably (Day & Parlakian, 2004) and had few linkages (Bronfenbrenner, 1994; Garbarino, 1992). Researchers have reported that expectations for children from refugee families’ behavior at home often differed greatly from what was expected of them at school (Hurley et al., 2011; Tadesse et al., 2009; Walker-Dalhouse & Dalhouse, 2009). This study’s findings that the adult behaviors for fostering self-regulation and engagement can be contrasted using three continua (i.e., protection, intervention, and affective response) offer a new framework for regarding these differences. This framework might facilitate discussions about teaching and discipline techniques at home and school that researchers (Birman et al., 2001; Dachyshyn & Kirova, 2008; Tadesse et al., 2009; Walker-Dalhouse & Dalhouse, 2009) have been found to be potentially contentious.
Implications for Research
This exploratory study has two main implications for future research focusing on exploring and documenting experiences of children with or at risk for disability from refugee families and their families as they encounter the school system in the United States. First, research should explore how refugee families and school staff partner around fostering children’s self-regulation and engagement development. Family–professional partnership is an important component of successful educational experiences (e.g., A. Turnbull, Turnbull, Erwin, Soodak, & Shogren, 2011) and, as such, is inherent in disability (H. R. Turnbull & Stowe, 2001) and early childhood education (e.g., U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children’s Services, & Office of Head Start, 2011) policy. Due to their potentially limited experiences with the U.S. education system, developing family–professional partnerships with refugee families of preschool children with or at risk for developing disabilities is of the utmost importance (Haines, Summers, Turnbull, & Turnbull, 2013). Researchers can use the framework of three continua for adult behavior presented in this study to guide creation and evaluation of interventions aimed at increasing family–professional partnership with refugee families.
Second, researchers could use the intervention framework of adult behaviors presented in this study to assess and iteratively create culturally responsive interventions for increasing children’s self-regulation and engagement skills across both their home and school environments. Using design-based research methods (Anderson & Shattuck, 2012), interventions used in the school environment could be assessed using the framework presented herein and then applied in the family context. Using the three continua of adult behavior, researchers could evaluate the effectiveness of practices across both environments.
Conclusion
This case study demonstrates that children’s home environments may differ greatly from their preschool environment, and this difference may be difficult for children (especially children with disabilities or at risk for disability) to navigate. Adult behavior within three domains (i.e., protection, intervention, and affective response) in each environment fosters children’s development of self-regulation and engagement skills. In addition, the interactions between home and school environments foster children’s development of these skills. Adults in each environment should have an understanding of the adult behaviors within these three domains in the other environment to understand the child’s behavior and needs. This framework for intervention has the potential of guiding future research and practice.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The first author was funded by the Office of Special Education Programs grant titled Leadership in Family-Professional Partnership Enhancement (Grant/Award Number: H325D080047).