SELF-REGULATION, EMOTION EXPRESSION & CLASSROOM ...

Chapter 3: Statement of Problem
Over the last several years researchers and practitioners have demonstrated
increasing attention to areas of self-regulation, on-task involvement, and classroom
learning behaviors (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000; McClelland et al., 2007). However, many
of these areas of research and practice remain disjointed, failing to integrate with other
areas of the field to make a cohesive model that clearly explains these relations, and
synthesize these findings for broader application (Valiente et al., 2008). Although there
is a developing picture in the literature regarding the connection between selfregulation
and classroom learning behaviors in the early childhood classroom, there are
still major gaps in our understanding. For example, there are an abundance of
investigations of children’s regulatory capacity and their social and academic outcomes.
However, research pertaining to the associations between the various facets of selfregulation,
on-task involvement and classroom learning behaviors remain rare in this
population (for an exception see Blair & Razza, 2007). Even fewer studies have looked at
these items as a cohesive model while also taking into account the mediating effects of
the child’s classroom involvement as well as the moderating effects of the child’s gender
and socioeconomic differences (for an exception see Weinberg, Tronick, Cohn, & Olson,
1999). As a result, a primary purpose of this investigation is to begin to fill this gap in the
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