The Cognitive School Readiness Development Of Preschool Left-behind Children In Rural China

Left-behind children are being paid much attention by our nation and the society. In the global view, left-behind children belong to the disadvantaged group. Up till now, school readiness of the disadvantaged has been a focus of various studies. School readiness lays good foundation of children's development, of which, cognitive school readiness is more important for its greater prediction on children's academic development. Studies have indicated that the disadvantaged children have a poor performance in their readiness. Similarly, as disadvantaged children, the left-behind children are faced with difficulties. However, the preschool left-behind children are far from being attached importance to. And the related studies are also limited.Based on the results of the studies toward school readiness of disadvantaged children, this research explored the cognitive school readiness of preschool left-behind children in use of a modified version of Bracken Basic Concept Scale-R. Moreover, in order to make clear this research topic, the study used the nearly equivalent number of non left-behind children as a compared group. Furthermore, by analyzing the Family Parenting Inventory and observing the family life of some cases, the study discussed the influence of home environment and parenting of left-behind children's temporary families. This section is both quantitative and qualitative.The results revealed that preschool left-behind children's development of cognitive school readiness and the impact temporary families have on their development. First, the study showed that preschool left-behind children are poor in their cognitive readiness, but do not have a significant difference with their non left-behind peers. The further regression analysis demonstrated a great predictive value of preschool cognitive readiness to the academic achievements for left-behind children. The next section of the research made detailed analysis of family factors and their influence on children's cognitive readiness development.As for the analyses on the home environment, the findings manifested that most left-behind children live with their paternal grandparents. Although family structure doesn't have a significant impact on children's development, the children cared by maternal grandparents or other relatives are poorest in their cognitive school readiness development. The overall low level educational background of caregivers also resulted in children's poor performance. Compared with non left-behind children's parents, left-behind children's caregivers are at a lower level of educational background. Among whom, left-behind children's maternal caregivers are lowest in their educational background although this factor are significantly related to children's cognitive readiness development. In addition, a lack of educational resources may also impede children's development. Nevertheless, although left-behind children's temporary families provide them with a bit more resources than their non left-behind peers, the quantity of these resources was not significantly related to left-behind children's cognitive school readiness.As for the analyses on the parenting, the results brought to light that all the caregivers have a limited view of children's cognitive readiness. They lay much emphasis on children's skills of counting, calculating and writing or knowing some characters while running the risk of overlooking the overall development of children's cognitive school readiness. The parenting activities are greatly affected by caregiver's views, thus resulting in the limited interaction between children and caregivers. But, contrasted with the non left-behind families, caregivers provide left-behind children with interaction of lower frequency and poorer quality.In the end, the study developed its discussion of the results from four aspects, that is, the poor performance of left-behind children's cognitive school readiness, the difference between left and non left-behind children toward their readiness, the temporary family education and the compensatory functioning of preschool programs for left-behind children's development. In the meanwhile, some educational implications were put forward.