Developmental Readiness of Kindergarten Pupils

Abstract

The first five years of the life of a learner are critical to his lifelong development. It is along this line that kindergarten education aims to achieve its goals through concrete activities that are generated by young children who engage with their environment enthusiastically. In the Philippine context, preschool education aims to develop children's physical, social, emotional, and cognitive skills so they will be better prepared to cope with the demands of formal schooling; hence, this study was conducted. Multiple quantitative methods research analyses were used in the study. An evaluation of the teacher-respondents on the domains of learner development was carried out using the ECCD Checklist in the Kindergarten Report Card. This was to gain an understanding of how well the learners are performing in school. An informal interview with teachers was also conducted to verify their numerical evaluation of their learners. The researcher analyzed the level of achieved development of the learners using the descriptive method of analysis.The second area of investigation was the extent of the effect of the identified factors on the level of domain development of the learners assessed with the aid of a survey checklist patterned after the Child and Family Policy for the Build Initiative. Then the factors were assessed if they were significant predictors to the domains of development. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used in the treatment of the gathered data. The teacher-respondents who assessed the level of development of the learners in the different domains indicated that the kindergarten learners were on average development along with the fine motor, receptive language, cognitive, and socio-emotional development while on slight delay along with the gross motor, self-help, and expressive language development. Meanwhile, the identified factors--personal, family, and social--were found to be of very high effect on the level of domains of development of the kindergarten learners as rated by both the teacher-and the parent-respondents. However, the only person was identified as a significant predictor of receptive language development and social factors to expressive language development. The results of the study demonstrate the need for the development of developmental learning materials to address the learning needs of the learners. Personal and social factors are needed to be considered to make the learning process more engaging and facilitate the learning process easier.