Researc Around the World

From Early Childhood Australia (ECA) website, one current research topic is school readiness and children transition. This is very important because most times, starting school can be stressful for children, the school buildings are bigger, there are more children and the incoming pre-schoolers are the smallest, the classrooms are more formal with more rules they are not familiar with. To make a decision about school readiness, we may consider the following:

Language skills: communication is used to engage with and teach the children. Each child needs to be able to follow instructions and understand what teachers are saying, as well as being able to communicate well with teachers and other students.

Physical well-being: a child who has a disability or a chronic illness may have difficulty with some aspects of schooling. This does not automatically mean they are not ready for school but any physical or functional limitations need to be considered.

Motor co-ordination and skills: children need co-ordination skills to allow them to dress and undress, unwrap lunch, use a pencil and scissors, and participate in other activities that require eye, hand and motor co-ordination.

 Concentration and emotional adjustment: each child needs to be able to socialise and play with his or her classmates. They also need to be able to deal with the structured nature of a more formal learning environment, such as being able to focus on tasks, follow directions and instructions from teachers, cope with transitions, and understand the rules.

Independence: children need a range of skills so that they can cope with minimum adult supervision. This includes going to the toilet by themselves, dressing, and being able to follow a structured classroom routine.

Secondly, one new insight I gained from visiting ECA website is that Researchers in the United States have studied 112 children with the aim to evaluate autistic children over time. Their results have been published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. The study found that 34 children who were diagnosed with autism in early childhood, no longer functioned with their autistic symptoms in school-age or early adulthood. Improvements were made in their language, face recognition and social interaction, though repetitive behaviours were still recorded. However, experts have cautioned that results of this study cannot conclude any ‘cure’ for autism and further research is needed.