Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore parents' perceptions of children entering kindergarten and their understanding of school readiness. In this collective case study, drawing on parent interviews and artifact sampling and guided by discourse analysis (Gee, 2015), I employed Saldaña's (2021) cycle coding methods to explore the themes of what parents perceive and co-construct as 'school readiness'. Data collected for this study includes video recorded interviews of four participants as well as artifacts of their child(ren)'s classroom assessments, parent-teacher conference forms and packets, and a checklist shared by the parents. The findings of the study showed parents' perception of school readiness is a limited list of basic skills, emotional skills, social skills, and "doing school behaviors". Furthermore, parents can co-construct with their child's teacher a better understanding of school readiness and believe that assessments do not adequately measure their child's school readiness. This study is useful to professionals in the early childhood field by showing ways to close the discrepancy between what parents believe school readiness is and what schools expect of incoming kindergarten students.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2023

Semester

Spring

Advisor

Michael Luna, Sara

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

College

College of Community Innovation and Education

Department

School of Teacher Education

Degree Program

Education; Early Childhood

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0009603; DP0027628

URL

https://purls.library.ucf.edu/go/DP0027628

Language

English

Release Date

May 2024

Length of Campus-only Access

1 year

Access Status

Doctoral Dissertation (Open Access)

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