Factors associated with school readiness in Turkey

Abstract

The first aim of the study was to have data about children’s school readiness comprehensively. The second was to have descriptive data about children’s socioeconomic backgrounds. The third aim was to get data about the quality of public early childhood education classrooms. The final aim was to determine the factors associated with children’s school readiness and the relationships between those factors. The results showed that children’s age, gender, length of experience in formal early childhood education and the quality of interactions in early childhood education classrooms were the strongest predictors of children’s readiness for school. Older children, female children, children who had longer experience in formal early childhood education, and children who were in classrooms which had better interactions quality between the class teachers and the children were more likely to show more readiness for school. There were significant positive relations between parents’ socioeconomic factors (educational status and the total monthly income) and the quality of early childhood education classrooms (in terms of physical environment and social-emotional climate of the classroom). The study contributed to the early childhood education literature by identifying the factors related to children, parents, teachers and the quality of early childhood education classrooms in order to understand factors associated with children’s school readiness. There is a need for further research in Turkey that defines and investigates school readiness from a multidimensional perspective and particularly including socioeconomic factors of family and quality of early childhood education.