Enhancing Children’s Enhancing Children’s School ReadinessSchool Readiness

Kirstie CooperKirstie CooperFunded by 125Funded by 125thth PhD Studentship PhD Studentship

Supervised byDr Tracey Bywater

School of PsychologyBangor University

Presentation Content

• What is ‘School Readiness’?

• The School Readiness Programme

• The evaluation

• Aims and research questions

• Design and method

• Proposed measures

• Expected outcomes

What is ‘School Readiness’?

• No concrete definition

• Multi-dimensional construct:

– Children’s engagement in learning

– Emotion regulation

– Communication and language skills

– Social competence

– Pre-literacy skills

The School ReadinessProgramme

• More children arrive in school without social and self-regulatory skills

• Low academic achievement and poor relationships

• The IY School Readiness Programme was developed to address risk factors associated with children’s lack of academic readiness and poor home-school connections

(Webster-Stratton, 2004)

The School Readiness Programme

Child-directed play: Strengthening children’s

social, emotional, and cognitive skills

Emotion coaching to build emotional expression

Building children’s self-esteem and creativity

Teaching children to problem-solve

Building children’s language skills

Part 1

Part 2

Encouraging social, emotional, academic and

problem solving skills through interactive reading

Building children’s self-esteem and self-confidence

in their reading ability

Having fun with books

Letting the child be the storyteller

Using the Reading With CARE building blocks

Commenting and describing

Asking open-ended questions

Responding with encouragement

Expanding on what the child says

Reading with CARE building blocks

CARE

• The IY Basic Parent & TCM Programmes have been successfully delivered and researched across Wales

• These programmes do not specifically address the dimensions of school readiness

• The IY School Readiness Programme has never been researched

The evaluation

To establish:

A battery of effective measures to assess children’s school readiness

The effectiveness of the new Programme in improving children’s school readiness

Any difficulties or barriers in implementing the programme

Aims

1. Does the programme benefit all children and parents?

2. For which children and families is the intervention most effective?

3. What are the environmental/contextual circumstances that improve the likelihood of success?

Research Questions

Randomisation

• Schools randomly allocated 2:1 to intervention

and control conditions

Sample

• 6 schools (4 intervention, 2 control)

• Gwynedd and Anglesey

• Approx 12 parents in each group

• Maximum N = 6 x 12 = 72

Design and Method (i)

Recruitment of parents

• Participating schools will give information to all families of 4-5 year old children starting school in September 2010

• Parents will be invited to attend the course and participate in the evaluation

• A researcher will conduct an initial home visit

Design and Method (ii)

Inclusion criteria for participating

• Parent has a child aged 4-5 years of age in their first year of full-time schooling

• The parent targeted is the primary caregiver

• Parents able to attend the group for 4 weeks (2 hrs / week) in either the Autumn 2010 or Summer 2011 term

Design and Method (iii)

Data Collection

• 3 data collection points

• Groups will run between baseline and 6-month follow-up for intervention and after 6-month follow-up for control

• Parent and child data will be collected through school and home visits

Design and Method (iv)

TBC, but may include:

• Demographics

Housing, income, health

• Parent reports

Child behaviour (ECBI)

• Direct observation

Child-directed play & interactive reading

Proposed Measures

Expected Outcomes

Improved child behaviour

Interactive reading

Child-directed play

Thank you for listeningDiolch am wrando