Groundbreaking, peer-reviewed research by lead author Dr. Donna Housman, founder of Housman Institute, throws early childhood educators and parents a lifeline for improving young children's self-regulation and executive functioning skills at a time when children's social-emotional development and learning has suffered significantly due to the pandemic.
The research demonstrates that the linchpin to preparing a child for emotional health, well-being and lifelong learning is developing social and emotional competencies during the first years of life, when a brain is the most malleable.
The study shows that Housman Institute's flagship program begin to ECSEL (Emotional, Cognitive, and Social Early Learning), designed to promote young children's emotional competence, significantly increases children's self-regulation, executive functioning and ability to learn. The model is based on emotional foundations of learning and cognition.
Begin to ECSEL uses everyday emotional situations to teach young children appropriate strategies for managing feelings, behavior, and thinking, thereby fostering their development of self-regulation and executive functioning skills.
In the study, 94 children, ages 2 to 6, were enrolled in the begin to ECSEL preventive intervention program and matched with a comparison group not enrolled in the program.
The study applied a series of tests from the Preschool Self-Regulation Assessment of children's self-regulation and executive challenge functioning skills, measuring both "hot" and "cool" executive functions to assess impulse control and cognitive control, involving attention, thoughts and behaviors.
The outcome was compelling–the children enrolled in begin to ECSEL demonstrated significantly better self-regulation and executive functioning skills than the comparison group who was, on average, one year older.
"When a child is overwhelmed by dysregulated emotions, they cannot learn. This research is critical to understanding how fostering emotional competence and regulation from birth provides a pathway for children's mental health and learning," said Dr. Donna Housman. "In this study, begin to ECSEL profoundly enhanced participating children's self-regulation and executive functioning skills."
Millions of children born since the pandemic are at an increased risk of developmental delays not only due to maternal stress, but also due to postnatal isolation and limited socialization during critical formative years. This research could not be better timed as it offers early childhood educators a path forward to addressing issues of children's mental health, well-being and learning that did not exist in the same magnitude prior to the pandemic. Learn more about begin to ECSEL here.