Original Research
Ready for kindergarten: Are intelligence skills enough?
South African Journal of Childhood Education | Vol 7, No 1 | a512 |
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/sajce.v7i1.512
| © 2017 Caroline Fitzpatrick
| This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 27 November 2016 | Published: 11 December 2017
Submitted: 27 November 2016 | Published: 11 December 2017
About the author(s)
Caroline Fitzpatrick, Department of Social Sciences, Université Sainte-Anne, CanadaAbstract
This study investigated how different profiles of kindergarten readiness in terms of student intellectual ability, academic skills and classroom engagement relate to future academic performance. Participants are French-Canadian children followed in the context of the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development (N = 670). Trained examiners measured number knowledge, receptive vocabulary and fluid intelligence when children were in kindergarten. Teachers rated kindergarten classroom engagement. Outcomes included fourth-grade teacherrated achievement and directly assessed mathematical skills. Latent class analyses revealed three kindergarten readiness profiles: high (57%), moderate (34%) and low (9.3%) readiness. Using multiple regression, we found that a more favourable kindergarten profile predicted better fourth-grade academic performance. Identifying children at risk of academic difficulty is an important step for preventing underachievement and dropout. These results suggest the importance of promoting a variety of cognitive, academic and behavioural skills to enhance later achievement in at-risk learners.
Keywords
School readiness; academic achievement; person-centered; classroom engagement
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