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.
