Poster #68 - “Not Even Ready to Sit at A Desk” – How Head Start Professionals Perceive/Practice School Readiness

• In Event: Poster Session 20

Abstract

Early childhood is a critical developmental period because the most vigorous and intensive neural development occurs in the first eight years of life. During this time, children are also vulnerable to deprived environments, of which poverty is a controllable societal contributor. Evidence supports that effective early childhood education (ECE) and early intervention helps improve young children’s learning and functioning in the context of poverty. As the nation’s federally-funded interventional program, the anti-poverty Head Start preschool system strives to prepare marginalized children for formal schooling by giving support to build up children’s school readiness competencies in multiple domains. In contrast to existing research on Head Start’s links with children’s learning outcomes, studies are scarce on how workforce in the program understand school readiness and practice it in the organization and classroom settings. Grounded in developmental systems theory (DST), especially Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory (EST), and through the lens of strength-based and whole child approaches, this empirical study examines data from 15 semi-structured interviews with Head Start teachers and principals and explores the degree of alignment of these professionals’ self-reported perception of school readiness and related practices with prominent developmental theories and approaches. By reviewing school readiness and Head Start in a broad literature including contexts and evolution across chronological histories, this qualitative study pursued five research questions on school readiness: one within five developmental domains; two from the developmental approaches; and two from perspectives where Head Start serves as an independent microsystem (or interactive context) to support children’s development and preparedness. Designed with a dual mapping system and a theme screening strategy, followed by descriptive, thematic and in vivo coding, and enhanced with quantitized analysis, this study presents findings of Head Start professionals’ perceptions of school readiness both in consistency and heterogeneity with the literature under four themes, including 1) one difference between these two groups’ views: child-centered and learning-based understanding for teachers; versus family-based and context-driven perception for principals; 2) one contradiction between children’s SEL-based readiness needs versus Head Start’s cognition-based “supplies” of support for readiness; 3) one startling contrast between the interviewees’ scarce mentions of children’s strength and overwhelming usage of deficit language when defining readiness, specifically social-emotional readiness; 4) one shift of the readiness degree in the participants’ understanding, from an “already attained” finishing line by which children have already been ready meeting and even exceeding academic expectations and requirements before they start kindergarten to a “going to obtain” starting line by which children learn to be socio-emotionally open to learn when they finish preschool. Reasons for both consistency and heterogeneity are discussed. The interviewees’ self-reported conceptualizations inform the equity debate on school readiness in the literature, signal complexity of this complicated concept in the complicated program of Head Start, generate limitations, implications and conclusions, and provide direction for future research.

Authors

• Qinghua Chen, Oregon State University - Corvallis
  Presenting Author

• Claire E. Cameron