Psychological Particularities of Children at School Entry. Case Study in Romanian Schools

Abstract

Preparing children for school ("school readiness") implies an appropriate level of training, stage of development, and amount of physical, social, emotional and cognitive capabilities (Blair, 2002, Lemelin & Boivin, 2007, Booth, 2008. This state is determined by the interdependence between internal and external factors, in the socio-familial and educational-institutional environment. The research aims to capture the perceptions of 84 pre-school teachers on the children's abilities to meet the required activities. The analysis undertaken offers a profile of the children characteristics as perceived by teachers and suggestions for adapting the curricular offer to the individual features and age of children, in order to ensure a harmonious cognitive, psychomotor and socio-emotional development. The main results show that: • Only 10% of teachers believe that all the children were prepared, at the beginning of the preparatory grade, to face the challenges of the school curriculum, while 50% of teachers believed that not all but most of the children were prepared in this respect.• Teachers appreciated that most of the children have a good level of cognitive and affective -motivational skills but are not able yet to comply with the discipline rules (Sign Test < 0.05); • Overall, teachers appreciate that most children are not prepared in terms of compliance with the classroom rules. Teachers have proposed several solutions: focusing the activity on the socio-emotional development of children, renewing the curriculum by reducing the number of hours and simplifying the content, allocating additional human resources (psychopedagogue, doctor).