Preschool Teacher Stress Levels Linked to Expulsions
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Joan Oleck -- School Library Journal, 1/14/2008 2:05:00 AM
The level of stress experienced by a preschool teacher has a direct impact on the number of children who are expelled, warns a new Yale University study. What's more, children in preschool—the first formal education for most four-year-olds—are three times more likely to be expelled than those in kindergarten through 12th grade, the study says.
The implications are far-reaching, says "Expulsion: A Severe Response to Challenging Behaviors," released this week by Yale's Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy. "Children with severe behavioral challenges obviously need considerable support to be ready to succeed in school. Therefore, expelling the children most in need of classroom socializing opportunities runs counter to the mission of school readiness," the report says.
The study looked at 4,000 state-funded pre-K classes randomly selected nationwide. Among those classes, 10.4 percent of pre-K teachers reported at least one expulsion in their classes during the 12 months prior to the survey. There were approximately 6.7 expulsions per 1,000 preschoolers, and the highest rates were reported for older preschoolers and African Americans. Boys were 4.5 times more likely to be expelled than girls.
Looking at stress and depression, the study found that of the pre-K teachers describing an elevated level of job stress, 14.3 percent reported an expulsion in the previous year, compared to only 4.9 percent reporting low levels of job stress.
Teachers who had elevated symptoms of depression were "somewhat more likely" to engage in child-care practices rated as less sensitive to children's needs, either more intrusive or more negative, the study says.
An effective means for decreasing the expulsion rate for children displaying "challenging" classroom behaviors may be the availability of mental health consultation services, the report continues. Pre-K teachers who report ongoing relationships with classroom-based mental health consultants were about half as likely to report expelling a preschooler as teachers with no support.
"Unfortunately, only 23 percent of preschool teachers report regular classroom access to a mental health consultant," the report notes.
Along with teacher stress, expulsion rates were further linked to class size, the ratio of students to teachers, and the length of the program—whether, for instance, preschoolers were enrolled in extended-day classes of eight or more hours.
In state-funded programs with fewer than eight children per adult enrolled, only 7.7 percent of pre-K teachers reported an expulsion, compared to 12.7 percent when 12 or more children per adult were enrolled. Another reason offered for expulsion was teacher beliefs about discipline.
Although pre-K teachers' length of experience apparently was linked to better teacher-child interactions, the study says, this and the educational level of teachers did not appear to be predictors of pre-K expulsion.
