Workshop on Human Potential (Amy Claessens, Harris School)

Amy Claessens, Assistant Professor, Harris School of Public Policy,  will present "Understanding Elementary School Disengagement: Maternal Depression and Children’s School Attendance."

Abstract: School disengagement is an important predictor of subsequent academic failure and school dropout; one of the largest and most costly educational problems we face as a society. School disengagement is the result of multiple contextual influences. Familial factors, including maternal mental health, are important determinants of children’s academic and behavioral outcomes in both early childhood and adolescence. Using a nationally representative sample of kindergarteners, we examine the relationship between maternal depression and children’s concurrent and subsequent school engagement.  We examine how maternal depression, measured during kindergarten, predicts children’s school attendance, achievement, and engagement from kindergarten through 5^th grade.  We also examine whether and how changes in maternal depression while children are in elementary school relate to school performance, and how persistent maternal depression relates to these outcomes. Results indicate that maternal depression that occurs during a child’s early elementary school years has a small but significant association with subsequent school achievement, behavior, and attendance, and that persistent maternal depression appears to be particularly detrimental for children’s school outcomes. Implications for educational policy and practice will be discussed.

Bio: Amy Claessens, an assistant professor in the Harris School, studies education, child development, and public policy. Her work investigates how policies and programs influence child development and how early achievement and socioemotional skills relate to subsequent life outcomes. Claessens has investigated a wide-range of issues surrounding child development and public policy including an experimental work support program and how achievement and socioemotional skills at school entry relate to later school achievement. This research on school readiness was featured in the New York Times. Currently, Claessens is working on two mixed methods studies including an experimental elementary school truancy intervention and a study of child care subsidy stability in Illinois and New York.  Claessens holds a PhD in human development and social policy from Northwestern University's School of Education and Social Policy. Prior to joining the faculty at the Harris School, Claessens was a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Human Potential and Public Policy at the University of Chicago.

The Workshop/Working Group on Human Potential is one of the core intellectual activities of the Center for Human Potential and Public Policy. It is an interdisciplinary forum for graduate students, post docs, and faculty whose work concerns behavior, health, and well-being across the lifespan and the ways in which technology and public policy shape human potential and achievement. The Workshop/Working group has active members in the areas of the social, behavioral, health, and policy sciences.

The Workshop/Working Group on Human Potential alternates between two types of sessions. Not only do we regularly invite outside speakers for a traditional "workshop" presentation, but we also provide a forum for faculty, post-doctoral fellows, and graduate students to present research-in-progress in order to receive critical and constructive feedback.