Household chaos, the home learning environment, and preschoolers' language and literacy development

HOUSEHOLD CHAOS, THE HOME LEARNING ENVIRONMENT, AND PRESCHOOLERS’ LANGUAGE AND LITERACY DEVELOPMENT By Tricia Foster Finger This dissertation considers home influences on preschool children’s early development in language and literacy, core competencies in the transition to formal schooling, within an ecological systems framework. In Study One, I examine associations between the contextual feature of household chaos and children’s outcomes, testing for direct links, as well as indirect links through the learning activities parents provide via the home learning environment (HLE). In Study Two, I make specific practical recommendations for families and those who work with families based on my findings from Study One, also drawing from the broader field of research and theory on household chaos and children’s development. In Study One, I examine household chaos in the lives of preschoolers and their families. Household chaos has been negatively associated with a variety of parenting behaviors and children’s developmental outcomes, but little is known about how it relates to the home learning environment (HLE) or to children’s language and literacy outcomes once the HLE is accounted for. Using a diverse sample of 342 preschoolers ranging in age from 34 months to 67 months and their parents, I test whether parent reported household chaos is related to children’s early language and literacy outcomes both directly, and indirectly through its influence on parental provision of the HLE. Results using mediation analysis within a structural equation modeling (SEM) format indicate that household chaos is indirectly related to children’s language and literacy outcomes through the HLE. Additionally, there is a direct effect of household chaos on children’s language skills for those families not in poverty. Future directions for research on household chaos are discussed, along with practical implications for working with children and families, which are expanded upon in Study Two. In Study Two, I underscore the importance of creating environments that promote children’s learning and engagement, with a discussion about practical ways that families can reduce overall levels of household chaos. Specifically, this paper reviews findings from Study One, and, together with the larger body of work on environmental chaos, makes practical recommendations for ways that practitioners can support families in increasing the degree of order and organization in the home while limiting noise and instability. Consistent with other work, Study One suggests that specific elements of household chaos, such as the presence of the television and participation in family routines may be particularly important for family functioning. Basing recommendations for practitioners on the current study findings along with the field at large, this paper focuses on three areas known to be important indicators of household chaos as they relate to child and family functioning: the presence of the television in the home, the occurrence of family routines, and the degree of order and organization in the home. Study One helps to provide insight into the ways that household chaos contributes to parent-child interactions around learning, and to children’s language and literacy development in particular. Building on these findings, Study Two delves deeper into the literature on specific elements of household chaos, providing practical strategies that families can employ to reduce the harmful effects of television usage, and capitalize on the positive influences of family routines and orderly learning spaces.