Abstract
The IECEI (India Early Childhood Education Impact) study summarized in Chap. 2 demonstrates a positive association between developmentally appropriate curriculum in preschool education and overall school readiness levels of children at the point of school entry. The findings, while documenting very low levels of cognitive readiness in children, also indicate a wide gap between prescribed and actual field practice with the latter dominated by formal, teacher-centered teaching. This chapter moves beyond these findings to explore the association between the nature of the curriculum and school readiness in children through a further analysis of the IECEI data. It statistically probes the nature of the association between two kinds of curriculum, formal and developmentally appropriate, with scores on deconstructed school readiness indicators to gain deeper insights into this relationship. It also identifies a positive association between preschool type and school readiness and flags this as an area requiring further research.
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Notes
- 1.
For more details, please refer to the full report (Kaul et al., 2017).
- 2.
Refer to the EFA Global Monitoring Report (2007).
- 3.
For the sampling method and a description of the tools, see Kaul et al. (2017).
- 4.
Quality parameters included physical infrastructure and materials, class management and organization, content and process in terms of language and reasoning experiences (including pre-literacy and numeracy), creative activities, fine and gross motor activities, social development, formal teaching of the three R’s, and teacher disposition.
- 5.
Socioeconomic factors included caste, consumer durables, and mother’s education level and learning environment available at home in terms of the print environment at home and family support in learning activities.
- 6.
The significant coefficient of curricular aspects covered during an assessment of the quality of ECE programs is given against all competencies assessed as part of school readiness; these are plotted in Fig. 7.3. The coefficients plotted in Fig. 7.3 show by what proportion a child’s score in different task/items of school readiness changed if activities for different domains of development were provided. The figure also represents a comparative association/impact of developmentally appropriate practices and formal teaching on different competencies assessed as part of the school readiness instrument .
- 7.
Figure 7.6 represents significant coefficients for different types of ECE programs attended by children where the base category is Anganwadi centers. It plots the possible increase in the children’s scores in a particular competency if the child shifts from an Anganwadi center to any of the mentioned program types, keeping the other variables the same.
- 8.
The coefficients of composite schools plotted in Fig. 7.7 represent the significance associated with different school readiness competencies with base category Anganwadi centers.
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Chaudhary, A.B., Kaul, V. (2019). What Works for School Readiness? Understanding Quality in Preschool Education. In: Kaul, V., Bhattacharjea, S. (eds) Early Childhood Education and School Readiness in India. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7006-9_7
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