Family resilience processes predicting low-income kindergarten children's approaches to learning and reading achievement

The purpose of this study was to use a family resilience theoretical perspective to identify three resilience factors in low-income families that influence children's academic success. Using data from 3,066 low-income families from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study- Kindergarten (ECLS-K) database, relationships among indicators of three family resilience processes (i.e. family belief systems, family organizational patterns, and family communication) and children's school outcomes were examined. Comparisons between this study sample and the total ECLS study sample were reported. Significant differences by gender were reported for children's approaches to learning but not for their reading achievement. Although teacher's and parent's assessment of children's approaches to learning were strongly correlated with each other and with reading achievement, none of the family resilience variables predicted teacher's assessment of a children's approaches to learning. However, connectedness and open emotional expression significantly contributed to the prediction of parent's assessment of their child's approaches to learning and the family organization process of connectedness significantly contributed to the prediction of children's reading achievement scores. Although findings (i.e. confirmatory factor analysis, reliability, fix indexes) revealed that the hypothesized model showed promise for measuring the relationships between family resilience processes, reading and children's approaches to learning, the final analysis revealed need for model adjustment. Implications for research, theory and practice are discussed.