UNIVERSITY PARK – School readiness for pre-kindergarten children is increasingly being accepted from two angles, according to a Penn State professor. Not only must pre-K programs get kids ready for school, but schools must get ready for the kids.
Jim Johnson, professor of early childhood education, said the two sides of school readiness — preparing the child for school and preparing the school for the child — should be addressed simultaneously.
“Administrators must be sure to have the formal pre-K educational systems in place for our youngest students, the 3- to 5-year-olds,” he said. “This allows continuity and a smooth transition to the first, second and third grades on the ladder of learning.”
The rungs of the ladder need to be appropriately spaced between the pre-kindergarten years and the early elementary years.
“If there’s too much space between rungs, the demand becomes too great for the child entering first grade,” said Johnson. “Then all of the pre-K benefits dissipate and the child can become frustrated.”
Johnson emphasized this message during his recent participation at The International Conference on Early Childhood Education. Johnson presented two papers: “Schools Preparing Teachers to Help Children with School Readiness” and “How to Help Teachers Prepare Students for School with Different Curricular Models.”
He suggested a blending of the approaches that are traditionally used at the pre-kindergarten and the early-elementary school levels.
“It’s no longer that pre-K is entirely about play and primary grade school is entirely about learning,” he explained. “It’s better to use a balanced approach and integrate the two strands — to integrate learning and play throughout the pre-K to third-grade years. The task is finding ways to integrate the two strands.”
Johnson pointed to a number of curriculum models — including Bank Street, Montesorri, High/Scope and Waldorf — that are important ingredients in the preparation of early-childhood teachers.
“These models have a developmental focus and can inform us how to have a coordinated and aligned pre-K and K-3 system,” said Johnson.
The cultural diversity among nations, he added, makes adapting the recognized education models a challenge.
“Educators in other countries must find ways to relate the models to their indigenous cultures in order to be contextually appropriate,” he said. “The Netherlands conference underscored the importance of early childhood education. It revealed how widespread this recognition is becoming, even in the developing countries that do not have the economic resources.”
Over the past few decades, Johnson has observed greatly increased interest in early-childhood education.
“New hard data are coming out, and more journals are being published,” he said. “It’s no longer a question of whether we should invest in early childhood education, but how we should invest in it.”