Research published by the American Psychological Association shows that children from low-income backgrounds who receive high-quality child care as infants, toddlers, and preschoolers perform better in STEM subjects throughout high school.
The journal Developmental Psychology is where the findings were published.
Data from 979 families who took part in the Early Child Care and Youth Development Study conducted by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development from the time of the child’s birth in 1991 until 2006 were examined.
Children who spent 10 or more hours per week at a daycare or preschool were observed by trained researchers. The caregivers’ use of rich language, questions to probe the children’s thinking, and feedback to deepen their understanding of concepts were all rated by the observers, who checked in on the kids when they were 6, 15, 24, 36, and 54 months old.
After that, the researchers checked in on the students’ STEM-related grades from elementary and high school. Success in STEM was evaluated by looking at the students’ performance on a standardized test’s math and reasoning sections in third through fifth grade. Standardized test scores, the highest level of science or mathematics taken in high school, and both science and mathematics grade point averages were considered by the researchers.
As a whole, they discovered that better caregiving (in terms of both cognitive stimulation and sensitivity-responsivity) predicted higher STEM achievement in late elementary school (grades three through five), which in turn predicted higher STEM achievement in high school (age 15).
Children from low-income families benefited more from sensitive and responsive caregiving in early childhood than children from higher-income families did when it came to high school STEM performance.
