# Children's Early Educational Experiences and their Social and Behavioral Development

> **NIH NIH R03** · OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $72,252

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Preschool or kindergarten represents the start of children’s educational careers. These early educational
opportunities are viewed as critical investments because they offer a great deal of promise for improving
children’s school success (Phillips et al., 2017). With that said, there remain questions about how these early
experiences shape social and behavioral development (Huston et al., 2015). To date, much of the research on
these early years has focused on academic outcomes and examines only preschool or kindergarten. This is a
significant oversight given that schools are more than academic institutions (Rimm-Kaufman et al., 2002) and
children’s preschool experiences may shape their adaptation to kindergarten (Vitiello et al., 2020). Given the
key role early social and behavioral skills have in shaping later health and well-being (Jones et al., 2015),
understanding the ways in which they are shaped by classroom environments is a key public health question.
Given the above, understanding how malleable aspects of the preschool and kindergarten classroom, and the
alignment across them (or lack thereof), contribute to children’s development is key to ensuring that
investments in preschool are maximized. This is particularly important with regards to children’s social
behavioral development given findings that suggest the long-term benefits of early educational experiences
manifest through changes in these domains (e.g., Gray-Lobe et al., 2021). Despite this emerging pattern of
findings, our knowledge of the social behavioral benefits of early education has been greatly limited.
The current proposal seeks to further our understanding regarding the key aspects of children’s preschool and
kindergarten classroom experiences and their predictive associations with children’s social and behavioral
development. We plan to leverage three large, diverse, and longitudinal datasets of preschoolers and
kindergarteners that collectively allow for a more comprehensive assessment of children’s educational
experiences. We will use these data to: 1) examine what aspects of the kindergarten classroom context shape
children’s social and behavioral development, and how these patterns vary for children who did or did not
attend preschool; 2) determine the extent to which the alignment between preschool and kindergarten
classrooms shape children’s social and behavioral development; and 3) assess whether the development of
children from different subgroups is differentially shaped by aspects of the classroom environment.
This proposed work will generate much needed evidence across multiple data sources to provide insight into the
ways in which children’s early educational experiences contribute to their development of key social and
behavioral skills that lay the foundation for long-term development (Heckman, 2006). Such an understanding is
of increasing importance given the growing investments in early educational opportunities in the U.S.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10810724
- **Project number:** 5R03HD108552-02
- **Recipient organization:** OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Arya Ansari
- **Activity code:** R03 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $72,252
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2023-04-01 → 2026-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10810724

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10810724, Children's Early Educational Experiences and their Social and Behavioral Development (5R03HD108552-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10810724. Licensed CC0.

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