Proceedings of The World Conference on Research in Teaching and Education
Year: 2019
DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.33422/worldte.2019.12.922
Analysis of Children’s Primary School Readiness According to Some Variables
Yalçın Bay and Dondu Neslihan Bay
ABSTRACT:
The aim of this study was to determine the primary school students’ readiness for school and analyze it according to some socio-demographic characteristics. Furthermore, the research will contribute in terms of revealing how much the children are ready to begin the process of elementary school in Turkey, which has a different education system and culture. The research was conducted in the general survey model, one of the quantitative research methods and 402 children attending the first grade of primary school in Eskisehir province participated in the study. In the study, “Primary School Readiness Scale” (Canbulat and Kırıktaş, 2016) was filled by teachers for each child. Children’s readiness for school was analyzed in cognitive, affective, psychomotor and self-care skills sub dimensions of the scale. In the analysis of the data descriptive statistics were calculated; Mann Whitney U, Wilcoxon sign-rank and Chi-Square tests were used. As a result of the research, it was found that primary school readiness levels of the following children groups were significantly higher (p <0.05): the children who had preschool education compared to the children who had not; the children who are 72-84 months old compared to the children who are 60-72 months old; the, children whose mothers’ education level are high compared to the children whose mothers have lower education and the children whose fathers are working compared to the children whose fathers are not working. In addition, significant differences were found in primary school readiness level of some subgroups in the following dimension: girls are significantly more ready in affective dimension; the readiness of the children whose mother is working is higher in cognitive dimension; and children whose father had university education and more are more ready in cognitive, affective and psychomotor dimensions (p <0,05). The results obtained from the research were discussed in line with the related literature.
Keywords: school readiness; preschool; primary school; cognitive; affective.