Self-regulation and Academic Achievement in the Transition to School 1 Running Head: Self-regulation and Academic Achievement in the Transition to School Self-regulation and Academic Achievement in the Transition to School Self-regulation and Academic Achievement in the Transition to School 2

Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning. Significant advances in our understanding of children's cognitive and social development have occurred over the last three decades. Particularly with regard to those skills critical for academic success, research has revealed that multiple, interacting factors in the child, home, school, and larger sociocultural context all contribute to children's literacy, numeracy, language and social skills starting early in life and continuing throughout the school years (Morrison, Bachman & Connor, 2005). One factor, self-regulation, has surfaced recently as a crucial skill which uniquely predicts children's early school success. Poor self-regulation has been linked to high rates of expulsion, most dramatically in preschool classrooms (Gilliam & Shahar, 2006). Self-regulation refers to a complex of acquired, intentional skills involved in controlling, directing, and planning one's cognitions, emotions, and behavior (Schunk & Zimmerman, 1997). In investigations beyond the classroom, scientists from a broad range of perspectives have converged on the centrality of successful self-regulation as a marker of adaptive development. Findings demonstrate, at an emerging level of specificity, how biological and neurological processes interact with psychological and experiential factors to determine how children regulate themselves in a given setting. Biological factors such as temperament, or an individual's predisposed reactivity and regulation of reactions to stimuli, underpin these additive and interactive processes. Self-regulation also develops through early experiences and social interactions, where caregivers and other significant individuals structure and shape children's In this chapter, we examine self-regulation and its role in academic development, focusing on the transition to formal schooling. We posit that adaptive development depends upon children's ability to manage their reactions and specifically, their task-related behaviors in the school context. Moreover, successfully self-regulating depends upon environmental influences Self-regulation and academic achievement in the transition to school 3 and interactions with others as well as child factors and predispositions. We focus on the construct of behavioral self-regulation, which is closely aligned with executive function, and which we define as the execution and manifestation of cognitive processes in overt behavior. Remembering and using information, attending to and understanding what others are saying, directing motor actions, and persisting toward goals are all indicators of adaptive behavioral Our goals in the chapter are to examine behavioral regulation in the context of early childhood and the transition to school, elucidating how children's skills contribute to achievement. First, we demonstrate links between behavioral regulation and academic achievement prior to formal schooling and throughout elementary …