Master of Philosophy in Education / Literacy skills include expressive language, oral and written, and receptive language, comprehension. This study explores both aspects of language in six Kindergarten children differing in early literacy development-three judged by teacher assessment to be 'at risk', and three acquiring Kindergarten literacy skills as expected. Oral retellings of a familiar narrative and an unfamiliar story just heard, and a personal recount were taped and analysed using Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar. Comprehension responses to individually shared narratives were also collected and analysed. The children's use of language and comprehension responses varied significantly. Those 'at risk' were unable to retell narratives, needed high levels of support to comprehend texts and produced less cohesive personal recounts. The linguistic analysis revealed vocabulary and rhetorical organisation affected the reconstruction of oral narratives. These children also seemed to find comprehending difficult when questions or recall involved following reference, negotiating marked Theme or drawing inferences. The study was designed as a series of one to one literacy experiences. A listening comprehension test showed that all children except one benefitted from the experience. The findings underline the importance of oral language development and the value of interactive teaching experiences to the attainment of sophisticated literacy skills.

The aim of the pilot study is to measure changes of attitudes over a period of six months. It is claimed that parents new to a school have only hearsay as a basis for their opinions about the school's functioning and that this is often detrimental to the school. It is hypothesized that these opinions will change and reflect positive attitudes towards the school in relation to the amount of contact experienced. The recording of the survey begins by referring to the paucity of research material on the subject; it continues by describing the method of collecting data on initial opinions by means of interviews, questionnaires and a statements of opinions check sheet; it then analyses changes of opinion by comparing the data of the later August statements of opinions return with the earlier February one; and finally suggests reasons for change by analysing correlations of parental contact and increased positive attitude. The paper concludes with recommendations for further studies and parent education programmes.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1990. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 90-98) Also available in print.

Programs to support early literacy development are implemented regularly in the schools without research on their efficacy. This study examined the efficacy of a commonly used program for struggling readers. Twelve kindergarten children who were at-risk for reading difficulties took part in a 10 week intervention program called Talking Tables. Twelve kindergarten children, also at-risk for reading difficulties were the control group, and received no intervention. The children in the intervention group made significant gains in phonological awareness. The results suggest that the Talking Tables is effective as an early intervention in developing phonological awareness skills in kindergarten children that are at-risk for reading difficulties. / Graduate / 0535

Master of Philosophy in Education / Literacy skills include expressive language, oral and written, and receptive language, comprehension. This study explores both aspects of language in six Kindergarten children differing in early literacy development- three judged by teacher assessment to be 'at risk', and three acquiring Kindergarten skills as expected. Oral retellings of a familiar narrative and an unfamiliar story just heard, and a personal recount were taped and analysed using Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar. Comprehension responses to individually shared narratives were also collected and analysed. The children's use of language and comprehension responses varied significantly. Those 'at risk' were unable to retell narratives, needed high levels of support to comprehend texts and produced less cohesive personal recounts. The linguistic analysis revealed vocabulary and rhetorical organisation affected the reconstruction of oral narratives. These children also seemed to find comprehending difficult when questions or recall involved following reference, negotiating marked Theme or drawing inferences. The study was designed as a series of one to one literacy experiences. A listening comprehension test showed that all children except one benefitted from the experience. The findings underline the importance of oral language development and the value of interactive teaching experiences to the attainment of sophisticated literacy skills.

Master of Philosophy in Education / Literacy skills include expressive language, oral and written, and receptive language, comprehension. This study explores both aspects of language in six Kindergarten children differing in early literacy development-three judged by teacher assessment to be 'at risk', and three acquiring Kindergarten literacy skills as expected. Oral retellings of a familiar narrative and an unfamiliar story just heard, and a personal recount were taped and analysed using Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar. Comprehension responses to individually shared narratives were also collected and analysed. The children's use of language and comprehension responses varied significantly. Those 'at risk' were unable to retell narratives, needed high levels of support to comprehend texts and produced less cohesive personal recounts. The linguistic analysis revealed vocabulary and rhetorical organisation affected the reconstruction of oral narratives. These children also seemed to find comprehending difficult when questions or recall involved following reference, negotiating marked Theme or drawing inferences. The study was designed as a series of one to one literacy experiences. A listening comprehension test showed that all children except one benefitted from the experience. The findings underline the importance of oral language development and the value of interactive teaching experiences to the attainment of sophisticated literacy skills.

Young children begin to draw spontaneously, and their drawings develop in complexity and skill as they become older. Previously, children's drawings have been utilized to assess aspects of emotional and cognitive development. On the other hand, very few studies have used children's drawings as a tool for understanding their language development. The purpose of this study was to examine the potential for using drawing as an assessment tool for language skill. Therefore, this study explored the relationship between pre-kindergarten children's drawing and language development and stability of this relationship over time. This study also examined whether children's English-language status influenced the drawing-language relationship. The study's subjects were 34 children who attended a pre-kindergarten program in a local elementary school located in a Mid-Western university town. These children participated in take-home reading and drawing activities once a week for one school year. Children's drawings that were completed after reading storybooks with their parents served as data documenting their drawing skills. Classroom teachers' observations of the children's language use were recorded on the Work Sampling System's developmental checklists, and this served as data to document their language skills. A hierarchical regression analysis revealed that children's drawing skill was a significant predictor to their language skill and explained 10% of the variance in language scores. This finding was consistent at both the beginning and end of the school year. Children's English-language status did not make a statistically significant difference in the predictive relationship of drawing for their language skills. Therefore, this study concluded that children's drawings can be used as a supplementary assessment tool to provide information about children's language skills, regardless of their primary language. However, more than half of the language variance was not identified from this study; this is an area for further investigation.

The purpose of this non-experimental research study carried out in Shanghai, China, was to examine parents’ perceived parenting styles (authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive) and parental involvement (home-based involvement, school-based involvement, and home-school conferencing) in relationship to children’s overall school readiness among third-year kindergarten children (5-6 years olds). In addition, this study investigated how, if at all, the use of various parenting styles moderated the effects of parental involvement on children’s development of school readiness, while controlling for child gender and household income. Three hundred and twenty ( N =320) parents and 22 teachers of third year kindergarten children from four kindergartens in two districts of Shanghai participated in this study. Each parent participant completed a parenting survey consisting of three parts: demographic information, the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ) and the Family Involvement Questionnaire(FIQ). The teachers completed the Early Development Instrument (EDI), a school readiness assessment for each child which covers five development domains: physical health and well-being, language and cognition, social competence, emotional maturity, and communication and general knowledge. The results of this study indicated that authoritative parenting was positively correlated to children’s school readiness, and authoritarian parenting and permissive parenting were negatively correlated to children’s school readiness. Only authoritative parenting had a significant unique influence on children’s overall school readiness skills while controlling for child’s gender and monthly household income. In addition, although all three types of parental involvement were positively related to children’s school readiness score, only home-based involvement had a significant unique influence on children’s school readiness while controlling for child’s gender and monthly household income. Controlling for child’s gender, and family income, authoritative parenting moderated the effects of school-based involvement and home-school conferencing on children’s school readiness skills. Specifically, the effects of school-based involvement and home-school conferencing were enhanced in the context of high authoritative parenting style. In contrast, the effects of school-based involvement and home-school conferencing were decreased in the context of low authoritative parenting style.

A subject didactic analysis of the development of the spatial knowledge of young children through a problem-centred approach to mathematics teaching and learning Researchers and educators are in agreement that it is very important that the spatial knowledge of the young child should be developed from the first years of school. In order to develop these skills the appropriate materials and activities need to be designed. This can only be realised through proper research methods that not only acknowledge the cognitive abilities of the young child, but also the social and cultural backgrounds of the children. This implies that due attention should be given to language, beliefs, cognitive skills, socio-economic background, schooling and teaching systems. The immediate worlds of the children should be used in developing the spatial skills of these children. The work that is described in this document is an effort to describe the complexity of such a research endeavour. The development of the spatial skills of young children were investigated through three different instructional/executional media namely language, drawing/writing and physical constructions. The three major variables that were described as influencing the spatial development in the different media were the task that was given to the children, the objects that the children worked with and the dimension and viewpoints of the objects and situations. It was clear from the research that in the development of the spatial skills of children, attention should. be given to: the real-world of the children, hands-on-experiences of the children, the cultural background, the language of instruction, the socio-economic background the classroom culture, the media of instruction and the cognitive skills of the children. / Proefskrif (PhD (Didaktiese Opvoedkunde))--PU vir CHO, 1997

A subject didactic analysis of the development of the spatial knowledge of young children through a problem-centred approach to mathematics teaching and learning Researchers and educators are in agreement that it is very important that the spatial knowledge of the young child should be developed from the first years of school. In order to develop these skills the appropriate materials and activities need to be designed. This can only be realised through proper research methods that not only acknowledge the cognitive abilities of the young child, but also the social and cultural backgrounds of the children. This implies that due attention should be given to language, beliefs, cognitive skills, socio-economic background, schooling and teaching systems. The immediate worlds of the children should be used in developing the spatial skills of these children. The work that is described in this document is an effort to describe the complexity of such a research endeavour. The development of the spatial skills of young children were investigated through three different instructional/executional media namely language, drawing/writing and physical constructions. The three major variables that were described as influencing the spatial development in the different media were the task that was given to the children, the objects that the children worked with and the dimension and viewpoints of the objects and situations. It was clear from the research that in the development of the spatial skills of children, attention should. be given to: the real-world of the children, hands-on-experiences of the children, the cultural background, the language of instruction, the socio-economic background the classroom culture, the media of instruction and the cognitive skills of the children. / Proefskrif (PhD (Didaktiese Opvoedkunde))--PU vir CHO, 1997