Effects of preschool education in mixed and targeted classrooms

Abstract

One of the remaining questions in the field of early childhood education is whether efforts aiming to promote the school readiness skills of young learners should be targeted specifically at children at risk for delays in these basic skills or whether efforts should be aimed at all young children (e.g. Barnett, 2011). In the city of Utrecht, The Netherlands, an experiment was conducted in which preschool education was deliberately aimed at all children, regardless of background. The present dissertation concerns an evaluation of this experiment and reports the effects of two characteristics of early childhood education on participating children’s development in emergent academic skills. First, the implementation of an education program, which yielded equivocal results in earlier studies in The Netherlands. Second, the classroom composition with respect to disadvantaged children (targeted vs. mixed classrooms). In contrast to the studies of education programs that are carried out in The Netherlands so far, focusing on the mere fact of using an education program, this dissertation takes actual child experiences (obtained through classroom observations and in-depth interaction analyses) into account in examining the effects of an education program and the classroom composition on children’s development. The first main finding is that we did not find an effect of an education program on disadvantaged children’s development. Another important finding, and at the same time an explanation for the null effect, is that the education program was not carried out as intended. This lack of implementation fidelity is indicated by the low average level of teacher-managed activities in small groups and the overall low occurrence of teacher-managed activities. Furthermore, the use of an education program was not decisive in the time spent on teacher-managed activities; teachers working without a program succeeded as well, or even better, in spending a considerable amount of classroom time on these activities. Importantly, these teacher-managed academic activities were related to child development. In short, the use of an education program was not crucial for the time spent on teacher-managed activities, but the time spent on these activities was important for child development. This dissertation thereby lends further support for the claim that it is not about the mere fact of using an education program, rather it is about how effectively the teacher uses the program in the context of children’s needs and the overall climate in the classroom (Phillips et al., 2009). The second main finding, with regard to classroom composition, is that especially children in mixed kindergarten classrooms showed accelerated development compared to children in targeted classrooms. The positive effects of mixed classrooms seem to be moderated through interaction with native Dutch peers and not through teacher behavior, two of the supposed pathways through which peer effects exert their influence. Ongoing coaching, the exchange of best practices between teachers and organizations, in short embedding teachers in learning communities, are considered as critical in ensuring high quality education and care.