Effects of a set of culturally responsive activities on children’s school readiness levels / Efectos de un conjunto de actividades culturalmente receptivas sobre los niveles de preparación escolar de los niños

Abstract

Culturally responsive education strives to make learning activities more effective and relevant to ethnically diverse children by considering their past experiences, cultural knowledge, environments and performance styles. It is expected that implementation of culturally responsive education — which focuses not only on academic achievement but also on children’s cultures, interests, needs and so forth — will increase primary school readiness. This quasi-experimental study with a matching pretest-posttest control-group design examined the effect of a set of culturally responsive activities on 48-to-60-month olds’ school readiness levels. Over the 10-week scope of the research, 23 activities were conducted with the experimental group (n = 15), while no intervention was made in a control group (n = 15). Comparison of the results of a pretest, a posttest and a follow-up test administered five weeks after the intervention ended indicated that the exposure to culturally responsive activities led to significantly higher school readiness scores.