Isabelle Nee

Exploring the Factors That Affect Incoming Kindergarten Students’ School Readiness

School readiness among incoming kindergarten students is a prevalent topic within the field of early education. School readiness is the foundational physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development essential to ensuring students’ smooth transitions to kindergarten and lasting academic and behavioral success (ECLKC, 2020). This study focuses on the most influential factors affecting students’ school readiness. The guiding questions for this research are What educational, familial, and personal factors affect incoming kindergarten students’ school readiness? and How does one’s school readiness affect their behavioral and academic success? A review of the literature produced five common themes surrounding school readiness factors, which were then addressed in a phenomenological study. This qualitative study sought to address the phenomenon of school readiness by identifying the main factors affecting students’ readiness (Creswell, 2013). Interviews with four current kindergarten teachers were conducted in order to explore and analyze the teachers’ experiences for clusters of meaning regarding kindergarten readiness (Williams, 2007). The findings of this study suggest that the most notable readiness factors are having diverse and enriching early educational experiences and having a solid social emotional foundation.

Movie on 4-29-21 at 2.39 PM #2.mov

My Epilogue

Here you will find a video of me reading the epilogue to my thesis.

Notable Quotes

"For me, speaking from my experience as a kindergarten teacher, I feel like the social and emotional part of the readiness is truly the most important. The academics tend to come, but the social and emotional, if they’re not ready, like crying and crying for days, it's so hard to teach the academics."

"I think being in preschool and having that structure helps kids be more successful in kindergarten. I also think that executive function skills and independence, their ability to more independently go through the day because they’ve already had that practice and seen what that looks like."

"I feel it is really important to have that [social emotional] foundation because if kiddos can do that, then it frees up their mind for learning. Then they have more brain space to focus on learning and then push forward with the curriculum."

"If a child can hold a pencil, write their own name, count to 100, recognize all the colors & shapes, but doesn't know how to make friends, manage their emotions, and practice conflict resolution . . . none of the other stuff matters." -Unknown

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