Development Of Migrant Children In Shanghai's Suburban Kindergartens And The Roles Of Their Families

The growth of migrant preschoolers from disadvantaged backgrounds has emerged to be a public concern.Currently,there is little research on well-rounded development of migrant preschoolers in China and on evaluating the quality of public interest kindergartens based on children's developmental outcome.Besides,it is noteworthy that migrant children enrolling in Shanghai's public kindergartens and their less financially-deprived families are a subgroup with their special context among migrant population.In this study,327 migrant children and local children in Shanghai's suburban public kindergartens were scored in terms of cognitive development,language and emergent literacy,socio-emotional development,motor development,concept of health and safety,health,hygiene and safety and approaches to learning based on the East Asia Pacific Early Child Development Scales(EAP-ECDS).Well-rounded development of these migrant children is depicted and researcher also quantitatively and qualitatively discusses what factors in their families may affect these children's cognitive and language development.The research finds:(1)These migrant preschoolers poorly develop in cognitive development,language and emergent literacy and approaches to learning and the first two are the most critical domains highly correlated with the others.It is notable that they especially fall behind in number concept,computation,cognitive flexibility,emergent literacy and selfregulation.Migrant boys' developmental level is inferior to their female counterparts.(2)Family environment and family education in migrant families are in a dilemma.The insufficient protective factors and the ubiquitous risk factors may hinder these children's cognitive and language development.Their parents are also enslaved to inappropriate parenting knowledge and creeds as well as parental anxiety.(3)Preschool education of high quality possibly has a compensation effect for the development of migrant children.It may narrow the gap between the development of migrant children and local children in regard to cognitive development,language and emergent literacy and approaches to learning.The effect possibly arises during migrant boys' development too.Moreover,teachers in these kindergartens often provide educational guides to migrant families,improving parental behaviours and child development.On the basis of the conclusions,the researcher proposes several suggestions from the perspective of migrant children's disadvantaged domains,family environment and parenting and educational compensation.