Education Commons^™

Examining The Impact Of Pre-K And Kindergarten Classroom Alignment On School Readiness Outcomes, Margaret Deane Franko

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study explored children’s experiences of instructional alignment from prekindergarten to kindergarten and analyzed the impact of those alignment experiences on children’s school readiness outcomes. The study answered the following overarching research question: Does the alignment of children’s learning experiences between prekindergarten and kindergarten impact school readiness outcomes? Three sub-questions drove the research design: (1) How do children’s prekindergarten and kindergarten learning experiences align; (2) To what extent does the alignment of early learning experiences predict children’s school readiness outcomes; and (3) Does the quality of prekindergarten classroom teacher interactions moderate the impact of any PK-K alignment effects? Using cluster …

(De)Composing A Garden For Children's Play, Debra Jean Deverell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Kindergarten has been a part of the educational landscape of the United States since 1856, when the first kindergarten opened in Watertown, Wisconsin. If we fast-forward more than a century and a half to the present, it is clear that the landscape composition of the garden-ideologically, culturally, socially, and politically for children's play has drastically changed.

The purpose of this study, (De)Composing a Garden for Children's Play, is to examine kindergartners' play set against changing school polices and practices of recent years in one Colorado school district. Four research questions guided this inquiry:

1. What does kindergarten look like …