Abstract

Social skills and vocabulary are important areas of development involved in early reading achievement, yet little attention has been given to understanding the dynamic associations among them during the elementary years. This study examined the relations among three dimensions of social skills—cooperation, assertion, and self-control—vocabulary and developing reading comprehension (RC) skills in a longitudinal sample of first graders (n = 468). Using Structural Equation Modeling, reciprocal effects were observed between vocabulary and RC as well as direct effects among social skills, vocabulary, and RC after controlling for the influence of problem behaviors. This study highlights the reciprocal nature of students’ vocabulary and RC skills as well as provides preliminary evidence suggesting that social skills play a role in developing vocabulary and RC skills, and further, vocabulary and RC skills play a role in social development during middle childhood. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

Discussion

This study evaluated direct and reciprocal relations among students’ social skills, vocabulary, and developing reading comprehension (RC) skills from the beginning to the end of first grade—a critical transition in middle childhood. The contributions that this study brings to the current literature are twofold. Firstly, much of the previous literature has focused on early childhood education, whereas this study extends findings to a sample of elementary students. Secondly, we explored a more nuanced relation among social skills, vocabulary, and RC—examining reciprocal paths between vocabulary and RC and modeling RC and vocabulary as predictors of social skills as well as modeling social skills as a predictor of vocabulary and RC. Overall, the results of this study support our hypotheses and our theoretical framework that incorporates dynamic systems theories (Sameroff, 2009) and the lattice model (Connor et al., 2014, 2016), which emphasize the dynamic and reciprocal nature of learning and development in the context of the classroom. This framework posits that multiple developmental domains simultaneously work together to shape learning over time, such that the individual skills that students bring with them into the classroom will influence each other to impact development and learning. Findings from this study provide evidence that students’ RC skills contribute to vocabulary and social development. Vocabulary and RC influenced each other reciprocally as well as predicted social skills, and further, social skills predicted students’ vocabulary and RC skills. The indicated importance of each upon the other suggested in this study may have important implications for various aspects of education.