Associations between School Readiness and Student Wellbeing: A Six-Year Follow Up Study

T. Gregory (), E. Dal Grande, M. Brushe, D. Engelhardt, S. Luddy, M. Guhn, A. Gadermann, K.A. Schonert-Reichl and S. Brinkman
Additional contact information
T. Gregory: University of Western Australia
E. Dal Grande: University of Western Australia
M. Brushe: University of Western Australia
D. Engelhardt: South Australian Department for Education
S. Luddy: South Australian Department for Education
M. Guhn: University of British Columbia
A. Gadermann: University of British Columbia
K.A. Schonert-Reichl: University of British Columbia
S. Brinkman: University of Western Australia

Child Indicators Research, 2021, vol. 14, issue 1, No 14, 369-390

Abstract: Abstract It is well established that children’s school readiness is associated with their later academic achievement, but less is known about whether school readiness is also associated with other measures of school success, such as students’ social and emotional wellbeing. While some previous research has shown a link between early social and emotional development and student wellbeing, results are mixed and the strength of these relationships vary depending on whether data is based on child, teachers or parents ratings and which specific student wellbeing outcomes are measured. The present study explored the association between teacher-rated school readiness (Mage = 5.6 years) across five developmental domains (physical, social, emotional, language and cognitive, and communication and general knowledge) and four aspects of student wellbeing (life satisfaction, optimism, sadness and worries) in Grade 6 (Mage = 11.9 years) in a sample of 3906 Australian children. After adjustment for background child and family-level factors, children’s early physical, social and emotional development were associated with all four wellbeing outcomes in Grade 6, but early language and cognitive skills and communication and general knowledge skills were only associated with internalising behaviours (sadness and worries). Mechanisms through which these different aspects of development might influence later wellbeing are discussed, as well as ways that schools and governments can support students’ social and emotional wellbeing.

Keywords: Child development; Social and emotional wellbeing; Life satisfaction; Optimism; Internalising behaviour; Subjective wellbeing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12187-020-09760-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:chinre:v:14:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1007_s12187-020-09760-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... f-life/journal/12187

DOI: 10.1007/s12187-020-09760-6

Access Statistics for this article

Child Indicators Research is currently edited by Asher Ben-Arieh

More articles in Child Indicators Research from Springer, The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().