The early childhood environment and challenging behaviors

There is an increased awareness among educators, parents, researchers, and policymakers that many young children are beginning their primary school experiences without the essential emotional, social, behavioral, and academic skills that will be necessary for later success. Research indicates that many children who have difficulty with the successful transition from preschool to kindergarten programs continue to show social and emotional problems throughout their school careers and possibly into adulthood (Dunlap, Fox, & Powell, 2002, p. 208). As documented in a number of texts, there may be a relationship between the presence of challenging behaviors in the early childhood classroom and the physical classroom environment. In the following sections, the most current information on the relationship between the early childhood environment and challenging behaviors will be discussed, techniques and procedures that may help an educator reevaluate the classroom environment to reduce the presence of challenging behaviors, and a research study investigating ten early childhood classrooms will be discussed. The purpose of the research study is to see if there is any correlation between the challenging behaviors displayed by young children, specifically children ages three to five, and the physical early childhood classroom environment. Through the study the main objectives are to see the following: * If the environment does influence the onset of a challenging behavior * If there are certain measures an educator can take to reduce the frequency of the challenging behavior. I propose that there will be a negative correlation between the number of incidents of challenging behaviors that are observed in the early childhood setting and the quality of the program. Therefore, as the quality of the early childhood program decreases, the presence of challenging behaviors in the classroom will increase