Persistence and the ecology of poverty: Failure responses of disadvantaged preschool children

Many low-income children begin school with skill deficits and face failure experiences at school entry. Responses to these experiences could help explain diversity in educational outcomes among economically disadvantaged youth. This study tested the ecological hypothesis that ecological risk factors (indirectly) and implicit theories of intelligence, motivational factors, and behavior (directly) predict the failure responses of preschool children. Results support the importance of implicit theories and behavioral factors such as attention/executive function for predicting children's persistence in the face of challenge and failure on academic tasks. Results also support an important role of motivational factors such as parents' educational values, although the results are in the opposite direction than predicted for this low-income sample. Results support direct and indirect effects of ecological risk factors. Implications concern differentiating between initial and continuing causes of academic underachievement and understanding diversity in the educational trajectories of low-income students.