A Study On Early Childhood Education Of Preschoolers In Grade 1

Mixed preprimary and primary 1 classes is a type of education that preschoolers study together with primary 1 children. Although this kind of classes exist in many areas, especially rural ones, they are forbidden by the policy of education in our country. Moreover, research seldom pays attention to education of this kind of classes.Choosing an impoverished county in Guizhou Province as a research site, the researcher has conducted three phases of study and collected abundant first-hand information by using methods of interviews, observations, surveying and psychological measures. Based on these important materials, the study examines early education quality of mixed pre-primary and primary 1 classes from aspects of educational environment, curriculum, teacher-child interaction in mixed pre-primary and primary 1 classes and cognitive school readiness of preschoolers as well as its influence on children's academic achievement. Furthermore, the study puts forward suggestions toward improving early education quality in impoverished areas.The findings are as follows:First, though educational environment is a prerequisite for early education, problems exist in the internal and external environment. As for the external environment, though mixed classes is forbidden in policy, the government shows acquiescence to its implementation, but has no management of these children. This is the same case with primary school administrators. There are no requirements for preschoolers' age, class size and even educational fees in this kind of classes, neither expectation for early education nor support for teachers in the classes. In the meanwhile, the external environment is also far from satisfied. In specific, teachers are usually disqualified for their age and preschool teaching experience. Moreover, they have very few training opportunities. And because of poor well beings, teachers quit frequently. Furthermore, preschoolers in these classes are always arranged to sit in places that are hard to attract teachers' attention. Meanwhile, there has been a lack of faculties, books and toys in the classes. Notably, preschoolers' health and safety are not secured.Curriculum is an important approach to early education. However, there has been no appropriate curriculum for preschoolers in the mixed classes. In specific, there have been no suitable curriculum objectives for preschoolers and no expectations for their education and development from teachers. Therefore, preschoolers in these classes use primary 1 textbooks. In the implementation of curriculum, teachers pay attention to grade 1 children whereas neglecting the preschoolers. What's more, there is no evaluation for preschoolers in these classes.Teacher-child interaction is radical in the process of preschool education. But interaction is in low quality for mixed pre-primary and primary 1 classes as emotional support, classroom organization and instructional support are in a low level. Relatively speaking, the scores on emotional support are higher than those on the other two dimensions. In specific, teachers make a middle-level positive climate and low-level negative climate while they are rarely sensitive to preschoolers' perspectives. These classes gain low scores on classroom organization. Specifically, behavior management and productivity in these classes are in a low level. Moreover, the instructional learning formats are limited. Special concerns should be shown for instructional support in this kind of classes as teachers attach little importance to preschoolers' concept development, give low quality feedback and limited language models.Due to low quality of educational environment, curriculum and teacher-child interaction, preschoolers in mixed pre-primary and primary 1 classes are poor in their performance in cognitive school readiness. The results demonstrate that compared with children from pre-primary classes, the only kindergarten and control group, preschoolers from the mixed classes are at the lowest level on all the items of Bracken Basic Concept Scales. Meanwhile, the preschoolers gain extremely poor marks on achievement tests of language and math when in primary 1. Furthermore, preschoolers' poor performance on cognitive readiness predicts their low level of academic achievement in language and math from grade 1 to grade 2.The whole study explored early education in mixed pre-primary and primary 1 classes from four aspects. The content of the four sub-studies complement each other and their conclusions support each other. Findings indicate that early education in mixed pre-primary and primary 1 classes is of low quality and measures show be taken to improve early child education in impoverished areas.