Pre-Elementary, Early Childhood, Kindergarten Teacher Education Commons^™

Preparing Children For Kindergarten Readiness: Early Childhood Teachers’ Goals And Practices, Julie Chappell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Literature in the field of early childhood education suggests that standardization and the accountability movement in the United States has changed the way that teachers approach kindergarten, resulting in less play and more teacher-directed activities. This pedagogical shift causes challenges for early childhood educators striving to promote developmentally appropriate, play-based and child-centered approaches to learning for young children while preparing children for the expectations of kindergarten. The purpose of this qualitative study was to gain an understanding of prekindergarten teachers’ views about their role in preparing children for kindergarten. The study was guided by two research questions: How do prekindergarten …

The Power Of Play: The Role Of Children’S Museums In Kindergarten Readiness, Catie Davis

All Dissertations

This study explores the transformative potential of play in preparing young children for Kindergarten, focusing on the intersection of children's museums, caregiver interactions, and school readiness. The study, conducted over an eight-week Pop-Up Classroom program at The Flowerfield Children's Museum, included 52 participants, primarily from low-income backgrounds. Through a mixed-methods approach, including participant observations and caregiver surveys, the research aimed to answer the fundamental question: What is the role of play in preparing children for Kindergarten?

Two significant findings emerged. Firstly, the study illuminated the pivotal role of play in nurturing social-emotional development and communication skills among children. Structured observations …

Predictors Of Growth In Socioemotional Functioning From Kindergarten Entry To 5th Grade For Students With And Without Disabilities, Sydney Shupe

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The link between socioemotional functioning and academic achievement is well established, as is the evidence showing that children with disabilities often develop socioemotional functioning differently than peers without disabilities. However, few studies have considered how early skills are associated with growth of socioemotional functioning for children, and how that may differ for children with disabilities. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the effect of academic, social, and behavioral skills at the start of kindergarten on the growth of socioemotional functioning from kindergarten to 5th grade; early socioemotional functioning, academic and cognitive skills were analyzed in a series …

Helpful Entry Level Skills Checklist, Beth S. Rous

Educational Leadership Studies Faculty Publications

The Helpful Entry Level Skills Checklist is a practice-oriented tool designed to support early childhood transition planning by helping families, teachers, and program staff identify skills that may assist children as they enter or move across early childhood classroom settings. The checklist organizes entry-level skills across five domains: classroom rules, work skills, communication skills, social/behavioral skills, and self-management skills. The tool allows users to document whether a child demonstrates selected skills, identify target skills for instruction or support, and add comments across multiple dates. This fourth edition updates and preserves a resource originally developed through Project STEPS and subsequent outreach …

Functional Assessment Of Behavioral And Social Supports, Beth S. Rous

Educational Leadership Studies Faculty Publications

The Functional Assessment of Behavioral and Social Supports is a practice-oriented assessment tool designed to help early childhood teams identify children’s behavioral, social, communication, classroom, work, and self-management skills and the supports needed for successful participation in early childhood settings. The assessment allows teams to document whether skills are present, emerging, inconsistent, or not present; identify adult or classroom supports; describe patterns of support; and summarize priority skills for intervention. The tool is intended for use by teachers, families, and assessment team members as part of early childhood transition, intervention planning, and classroom support processes.

Instructional Strategies Manual, 4th Edition: For The Helpful Entry Level Skills Checklist, 4th Edition, Beth S. Rous

Educational Leadership Studies Faculty Publications

The Instructional Strategies Manual, 4th Edition is a companion resource for the Helpful Entry Level Skills Checklist. The manual provides teachers, families, and early childhood teams with strategies, activities, and adaptations to support young children’s development of social, behavioral, communication, classroom, work, and self-management skills during the transition from preschool to school-age programs. The manual is organized around five major skill areas: classroom rules, work skills, communication skills, social behavior skills, and self-management skills. It includes strategies that can be embedded into daily classroom routines, family activities, and individualized supports, with adaptations for children with hearing, vision, cognitive, physical, speech/language, …

An Examination Of The Roles Of Classroom Quality And Approaches To Learning On The Early Academic Skills Of Latino Dual Language Learners Enrolled In Head Start, Marcela A. Galicia

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examined the relationship between classroom quality, approaches-to-learning, and early academic skills among 384 Latino dual language learners (DLLs) enrolled in Florida Head Start programs. The children were living in low-income homes where Spanish was the primary language spoken by at least one parent. The study analyzed the extent to which approaches-to-learning behaviors moderate early literacy and numeracy skills in Head Start classrooms of varying quality. During the spring of their prek-4 year, the children were administered the English and Spanish Letter-Word Identification and Applied Problems subtests of the WJ-III (Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather, 2001) and the Batería III …

Perceptions Of School Readiness, Developmentally Appropriate Practices, And The Role Of Professionalism, Brittany Kristine Mcallister

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Research supports the knowledge that there exist many models on and definitions of school readiness within early education. Additionally, research shows that utilizing developmentally appropriate practices (DAP) produces positive short and long term results for students; indicating the effectiveness and necessity for DAP in the classroom. The study sought to inform teachers via presentation on the subjects of school readiness and DAP; as well as gain insight on the barriers teachers face in utilizing their school readiness and DAP knowledge base in the classroom. To accomplish this, the study used a pre-survey, presentation with discussion, and a post-survey to collect …

School Readiness Of First Grade Charter School Students: An Evaluation Of An Early Childhood Program, Dr Shandowlyon L. Hendricks-Williams

Dissertations

This program evaluation studied the effectiveness of an early childhood program as it relates to school readiness. The early childhood program of a charter school located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin had been operating for over thirty without an evaluation of its effectiveness. To examine the effectiveness of the early childhood program, seventy-two students were evaluated using a teacher-developed First Grade Readiness Checklist; the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) Test and Success for All (SFA) Assessment. School readiness, as a multifaceted construct, included five domains: academic, behavioral, emotional, social and self-help-skills.

The results of the survey indicate that the early childhood program …

Literature Review Relating To The Current Context And Discourse Surrounding Indigenous Early Childhood Education, School Readiness And Transition Programs To Primary School, Jacynta Krakouer

Indigenous Education Research

Since the educational experiences of Aboriginal Australians are often framed from a ‘deficit’ perspective, whereby the failures of Indigenous people to engage with the mainstream educational system are seen as the ‘problem’, an alternative approach to Indigenous early childhood education discourse is preferable. This alternative approach highlights the strengths that many Aboriginal children possess when commencing school, strengths that may result from Indigenous child-rearing practices. Consequently, this literature review utilises a strengths-based perspective for Aboriginal early childhood education and school readiness, noting that Aboriginal children are frequently expected to adapt to a foreign educational system whereby school expectations differ from …

Early Childhood Perspective Of The K-12 Common Core State Standards Implementation, Anita Lesh Benson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The importance of school readiness and social-emotional development for children who live in poverty is well established. Head Start programs have championed the development of the whole child across all learning domains. The implementation of the K-12 Common Core State Standards (CCSS) focuses instructional skills on reading language arts, and math. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore Head Start teachers' perceptions and experiences of the CCSS implementation. The study was guided by the constructivist learning framework of Piaget and Dewey. Research questions explored the understanding and effects of the K-12 CCSS implementation from a group of …

Head Start Classrooms And Children’S School Readiness Benefit From Teachers’ Qualifications And Ongoing Training, Seung-Hee Claire Son, Kyong-Ah Kwon, Hyun-Joo Jeon, Soo-Young Hong

Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families, and Schools: Faculty Publications

Background Teacher qualifications have been emphasized as a basis of professional development to improve classroom practices for at-risk children’s school readiness. However, teacher qualifications have often not been compared to another form of professional development, in-service training.

Objective The current study attempts to investigate contributions of multiple types of professional development to school readiness skills of low-income preschoolers. Specifically, we examined the significance of teachers’ education level, degree, teaching certificate, teaching experiences as well as specialized in-service training and coaching support as these teacher trainings are linked to preschoolers’ school readiness through proximal classroom practices.

Method We used a multi-level …

The Impact Of Preschool Education On Students' Kindergarten Readiness And Subsequent Kindergarten Performance, Kelsey Musselman Carroll

Education Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of preschool education on students' kindergarten readiness and subsequent kindergarten performance in a low socioeconomic primary school. There are several factors that influence a child's readiness for school, including the children's natural talents and abilities, their families, their early environments, their schools, and their communities.

The setting for this research was a primary school located within a small, urban school district in the piedmont area of North Carolina. For the purpose of this study, all kindergarten students were placed into three subgroups: kindergarten students who attended the prekindergarten program at …

Implementation Of A Relationship-Based School Readiness Intervention: A Multidimensional Approach To Fidelity Measurement For Early Childhood, Lisa L. Knoche, Susan M. Sheridan, Carolyn P. Edwards, Allison Q. Osborn

Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families, and Schools: Faculty Publications

The implementation efforts of 65 early childhood professionals involved in the Getting Ready project, an integrated, multi-systemic intervention that promotes school readiness through parent engagement for children from birth to age five, were investigated. Digital videotaped records of professionals engaged in home visits with families across both treatment and comparison conditions were coded objectively using a partial–interval recording system to identify and record early childhood professionals’ implementation of intervention strategies and their effectiveness in promoting parent engagement and interest in their child. Adherence, quality of intervention delivery, differentiation between groups, and participant responsiveness were assessed as multiple dimensions of fidelity. …

Promoting Parent Partnership In Head Start: A Qualitative Case Study Of Teacher Documents From A School Readiness Intervention Project., Carolyn P. Edwards, Tara Hart, Kelly Rasmussen, Y. M. Haw, Susan M. Sheridan

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

To advance the field of children’s services, implementation and generalization studies are needed to help us reveal the inner workings of intervention projects and how they do (or do not) achieve their outcomes. This paper provides a case study of Head Start teachers’ uptake of the Getting Ready school readiness intervention, intended to strengthen professionals’ capacity to support parental engagement in young children’s development and learning. The qualitative method of document review was used in scrutinizing home visit reports and classroom newsletters as a source of authentic evidence about teachers’ implementation and generalization of an early intervention model. Home visits …

Getting Ready: Promoting School Readiness Through A Relationship-Based Partnership Model, Susan M. Sheridan, Christine Marvin, Lisa Knoche, Carolyn P. Edwards

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

School readiness is determined by the life experiences of young children between birth and enrollment in formal education programs. Early intervention and education programs designed to promote school readiness often focus on skills a child fails to demonstrate that are believed to be of importance to social and academic success. The Getting Ready model of early childhood intervention (Sheridan, Edwards, & Knoche, 2003) recognizes the transactional nature of young children’s development and the important role parents play in pre-school readiness and school-age success. In the Getting Ready model, collaborative partnerships between parents and professionals are encouraged to promote parent’s competence …