Quality early childhood education in Costa Rica? Policy, practice, outcomes and challenges

Abstract

High-quality early childhood education has been shown to improve school outcomes in several developing and developed nations. The history of policy around pre-school education in Costa Rica is described as background to presenting cross-sectional data on the emergent literacy skills of low-income Costa Rican children in kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade from six schools (n5335). These data suggest that Costa Rican children show rather limited emergent literacy knowledge at the end of kindergarten. In addition, instruction in nine kindergarten classrooms is described and evaluated in order to provide vignettes of educational practice. The need for developmentally appropriate practice around emergent literacy skills and articulation with 1st grade is discussed and appropriate professional development is called for.

Predictors of reading skills for kindergartners and first grade students in Spanish: a longitudinal study

“…Although empirical studies that investigated the specific role of letter-name knowledge in Spanish literacy acquisition are sparse, some initial evidence supports this speculation. For instance, there was a strong bivariate correlation between letter-name knowledge and decoding for Spanish-speaking children in Costa Rica (Rolla San Francisco et al, 2005). Furthermore, in a recent study, explicit code instruction that included alphabet activities, phonological awareness, and word segmentation was positively related to word reading skills for first grade students in Chile (Strasser & Lissi, 2009).…”

“…Letter-name knowledge has also been shown to be important for early literacy acquisition in Spanish (Rolla San Francisco, Arias, & Villers, 2005). Accumulating evidence, mostly from English-speaking children, indicates a causal relation between letter-name and-sound knowledge such that children's knowledge of letter names provides critical cues for letter sounds, building the foundation for the alphabetic principle (McBride-Chang, 1999;Share, 2004;Treiman & Kessler, 2003;Treiman, Tincoff, Rodgriguez, Mouzaki, & Francis, 1998).…”

Relationships of Teachers’ Language and Explicit Vocabulary Instruction to Students’ Vocabulary Growth in Kindergarten

“…Yet, such conversations can be rare in early childhood classrooms, in both the United States and South America, and difficult to generate for teachers not used to this practice (Dickinson, Darrow, & Tinubu, 2008;Rolla San Francisco, Arias, & Villers, 2005). In general, it can be argued that changing teachers' language use is hard.…”

Evaluating the impact of different early literacy interventions on low-income Costa Rican kindergarteners

“…In addition, the Costa Rican parents involved in the intervention noted that it was the first time anyone had indicated to them that they were their children's first teachers. The family intervention was first implemented in a US context where parents are more informed about the stimulation they should provide their children and engage in more early literacy activities at home (for a more detailed exploration of this comparison, see Rolla San Francisco et al, 2005). A qualitative study of children's family lives and family interactions around literacy is currently being conducted to examine potential cultural differences which may make the family intervention less effective in the Costa Rican context and how to improve it.…”

“…The results of the item analysis on the assessments indicated appropriate internal consistency (Rolla San Francisco et al, 2005). Cronbach's alpha ranged from .87 to .99.…”