Enhancing the Academic Development of Shy Children: A Test of the Efficacy of INSIGHTS

This study investigated the efficacy of the INSIGHTS into Children’s Temperament intervention in supporting the academic development of shy kindergarten and first-grade children. INSIGHTS is a temperament-based intervention with teacher, parent, and classroom programs. The participants included 345 children from 22 low-income, urban elementary schools who were randomly assigned to INSIGHTS or a supplemental after-school reading program. Growthcurve modeling showed that shy children in INSIGHTS evidenced more rapid growth in critical thinking and math than their shy peers in the attention-control condition during kindergarten and the transition to first grade. The effects of INSIGHTS were partly indirect through improved behavioral engagement. INSIGHTS enhances the academic development of early elementary school children with shy temperaments. Ensuring that all children are ready to learn in early elementary school remains a concern of educators, researchers, and interventionists. Academic success in the early elementary school years has a clear link to subsequent social, economic, and health outcomes (Heckman, 2006). Because of its importance, a large body of research has focused on identifying factors related to early academic skill development. Although the magnitude of associations has been modest, shy temperament is consistently related to early academic skill difficulties, with negative trajectories worsening across middle childhood (see Evans, 2010, for a review). It may be particularly important to examine this temperamental risk for lowincome, urban children, already at risk for low academic achievement (Elias & Haynes, 2008). A number of terms such as socially withdrawn, isolated, and anxious-solitary are used to describe children with shy temperaments, but they have common characteristics despite the term being used. In this study, we describe temperamentally shy children as being fearful, anxious, wary, and reluctant to take part in interactions with others in situations that involve uncertainty, novelty, and actual or perceived judgment by others (Evans, 2010). In accord with Evans (2010), we use the term shy when making generalizations across studies that examine the effects of these behavioral tendencies on academic skill development. The properties of many classroom environments and teacher expectations are often not aligned with shy children’s styles of behaving. As early as kindergarten, teachers expect their students to participate in classroom Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to Erin E. O’Connor, Department of Teaching and Learning, New York University, 239 Greene St, New York, NY 10003; e-mail: [email protected] Copyright 2014 by the National Association of School Psychologists, ISSN 0279-6015, eISSN 2372-966x School Psychology Review, 2014, Volume 43, No. 3, pp. 239–259