Promoting school readiness in economically-disadvantaged preschoolers: Initial outcomes of Head Start REDI

This paper presents the preschool outcomes of the Head Start REDI (Research-based, Developmentally Informed) trial. This program integrated research-based instructional strategies targeting social-emotional skills and language-emergent literacy skills into Head Start programs in three counties in Pennsylvania. The program hoped this comprehensive intervention would foster more positive learning engagement and reduce disruptive/off-task behaviors. Intervention teachers implemented the Preschool PATHS Curriculum (Domitrovich, Greenberg, Kusche, & Cortez, 2001) and a coordinated set of emotion-coaching and positive inductive strategies, targeting four social-emotional skills: 1) prosocial skills, 2) emotional understanding, 3) self-control, and 4) social-problem solving.

The trial included two cohorts of 4-year-old children (Total N=354, 19% Hispanic, 26% African American; 54% girls) in 44 Head Start classrooms, with classrooms randomly assigned to intervention or control groups. Multi-informant assessments were conducted at the beginning and end of the year, including observations conducted by “blind” research assistants. Preliminary findings for Cohort 1 suggest that research-based instructional practices can be integrated effectively into traditional Head Start programs to promote significant gains in behavioral and academic school readiness. Compared to control children, REDI participants showed gains in social-problem solving skills (% competent solutions) and greater accuracy on the Emotion Recognition Questionnaire. Teacher ratings showed significant intervention effects on prosocial behavior, emotion regulation, and anxious-withdrawn behavior. Observer ratings demonstrated that children in REDI classrooms were more actively engaged (less “off-task”) in both social and academic tasks than comparison children. Outcome analyses using HLM on the complete sample will soon be completed and be included in this presentation.