Pathways to school success: Self-regulation and executive function, preschool attendance and early academic achievement of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children in Australia's Northern Territory

With the pending implementation of the Closing the Gap 2020 recommendations, there is an urgent need to better understand the contributing factors of, and pathways to positive educational outcomes for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children. This deeper understanding is particularly important in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2021-11, Vol.16 (11), p.e0259857
Main Authors: He, Vincent Yaofeng, Nutton, Georgie, Graham, Amy, Hirschausen, Lisa, Su, Jiunn-Yih
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic achievement
Academic Success
Age
Australia
Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples
Australian aborigines
Biology and Life Sciences
Child
Child, Preschool
Children
Darwin, Charles (1809-1882)
Demographic aspects
Demography
Early childhood education
Education
Educational aspects
Educational Status
Evaluation
Executive function
Executive Function - physiology
Female
Humans
Learning
Literacy
Male
Medical research
Multivariate statistical analysis
Native peoples
Northern Territory
Numeracy
Pathways
People and Places
Policies
Problem solving
Schools
Self-Control - psychology
Skills
Social Sciences
Sociodemographics
Success
Territory
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Summary:With the pending implementation of the Closing the Gap 2020 recommendations, there is an urgent need to better understand the contributing factors of, and pathways to positive educational outcomes for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children. This deeper understanding is particularly important in the Northern Territory (NT) of Australia, in which the majority of Aboriginal children lived in remote communities and have language backgrounds other than English (i.e. 75%). This study linked the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) to the attendance data (i.e. government preschool and primary schools) and Year 3 National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). Structural equation modelling was used to investigate the pathway from self-regulation and executive function (SR-EF) at age 5 to early academic achievement (i.e. Year 3 reading/numeracy at age 8) for 3,199 NT children. The study confirms the expected importance of SR-EF for all children but suggests the different pathways for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children. For non-Aboriginal children, there was a significant indirect effect of SR-EF (β = 0.38, p
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0259857