Cultural Adaptation Of An Assessment Instrument For School Readiness On Romanian Population

General framework: the transition from preschool to first grade in Romania

Academic adjustment and later success are highly dependent on the trajectory that the children have from the beginning of their schooling (Denham, Bassett, Zinsser, & Wyatt, 2014). In order to facilitate the children’s transition from kindergarten to first grade and their adjustment to the latter one, a preparatory class was introduced in Romania starting with 2012-2013 school year (National Education Law, 1/2011). The preparatory class is destined for children aged 6 years, but some children, based on psychological assessment of their school readiness can start preparatory grade before this age, which was not possible under Romanian legislation before the introduction of the preparatory grade. The transition from preschool to school represents a very important step, both for children and their families and it is essential for the subsequent child adjustment to school.

The law that introduced the preparatory grade determined an important change in the children’s educational path, based on arguments from developmental psychology (the developmental characteristics of children aged 5 to 6 years) as well as the European legislation that emphasizes the need to strengthen early education in order to increase the value of the educational process for children and their families. In most of the European countries, the age for the debut of schooling is 6 years, but in several countries the age is 5 years and, in some countries, even 4 years.

The change led to strong debate. On one hand, there were several arguments that favoured the introduction of the preparatory grade between kindergarten and first grade, as it eased the transition (Ardelean & Ambruș, 2017; National Ministry of Education [Ministerul Educației Naționale, MEN], 2013): (1) the child’s accommodation with the school system, without the stress produced by the grades and homework, (2) the children’s socialization with the colleagues and adjustment with the school location and the teacher, (3) the integrated approach of the learning contents, (4) the facilitation of the learning process by the implementation of several group learning and cooperative methods that increase the children’s self-esteem, (5) the attractive, play-based learning activities, (6) the use of audio and video learning methods, (7) the flexibility of curriculum in terms of content and time, depending on the children’s needs, (8) the emphasis on communication, on the written text and the flexible learning of the letters, using various methods, at the teacher’s choice, (9) the use of active learning, by experiments, by trial and error, by immediate contact with objects and phenomena of the surrounding environment.

However, on the other hand, several arguments against the introduction of the preparatory grade were formulated: (1) the school readiness, as it is understood (a sum of physical, cognitive and social-emotional characteristics), is not reached by all the children at the age of 6 years, (2) the school program that starts at 8 o’clock is tiresome for the children, (3) the school curriculum is still too rich in contents, and even if these will be retaught in the first and second grades, some children cannot acquire these competences, (4) a large number of children have impaired phonological skills at this age, (5) the hand muscles are still underdeveloped at this age, (6) some children are still not independent in their daily living skills, such as: toilet training, dressing and undressing, the use of shoe laces, (7) the number of children in classes is too large in the preparatory grade (Molan, 2013; MEN, 2013).

Though some aspects regarding the transition to first grade are perfectible, the introduction of the preparatory grade within the mandatory educational path for all children is meant to represent a gain for most of the children that start school. The competences acquired during the preparatory grade are very important for the children’s subsequent development. One of the main components of the training in preparatory grade is the development of the communication skills, both the verbal and written forms. Constant encouragement is given to the student to express the opinions that he/she has, to value own opinions, to express thoughts and emotions. The learning process is an active one, based on the child’s involvement, conducted in a playful manner, in an attractive form, using music, movement, social interactions with peers (Ardelean & Ambruș, 2017). Therefore, the transition from preschool to school, during the preparatory grade, is meant to be less stressful and, apparently, easier for all those involved, as well as contributing to adequate school adjustment of all children, including those at risk. As such, the transition can be made from the early identification of children unlikely to thrive, to deciding the appropriate environmental adaptations that ensure universal success. However, the resources available for teachers are too scarce so far, as a small number of guides were published (eg., Ardelean, Moldovan, & Ambruș, 2017; Nica, 2015; Popa, 2014) and the need for more assessment instruments of child adjustment and for educational resources for professionals is therefore strengthened.

School readiness and adjustment in children: the need for a reliable measure

In the context of the change in Romanian legislation, the need to assess school readiness in children is even more important than before. So far, there is no agreed upon formal definition of the concept. While for parents and policy makers school readiness means the achievement of foundation skills in literacy and numeracy, for practitioners and teachers it is usually more connected to the children’s behavioural and socio-emotional development (Hughes, Daly, Foley, White, & Devine, 2015), as well as their attitudes towards learning (Daniels, 2014). School readiness is a complex process, with multiple facets, encompassing various skills and developmental areas, such as: physical well-being, social and emotional competencies, language and cognition, as well as emergent literacy and numeracy skills (Șahin, Sak, &Tuncer, 2013; McWayne, Green, & Fantuzzo, 2009).

Various factors were identified as significant predictors of child adjustment and development during school. Among the child-related factors , gender was sometimes related to adjustment to school. Boys have the tendency to develop poorer literacy skills than girls (Guhn, Milbrath, & Hertzman, 2016) and they are more likely to receive a diagnosis of conduct disorder, which in turn is related to limited adjustment (Hughes et al., 2015; Yoleri, 2013). Birth order is another factor related to school adjustment, but results of various researches are mixed. While some authors found lower adjustment in children who have other siblings, others found no differences in first-born children and children with older siblings. First-born children may receive more support from their families, whereas children raised in numerous families can be confronted with a deficit in parental care (Berglund, Eriksson, & Westerlund, 2015).

Attachment security, an indicator of the quality of parent-child relationship and the degree of care and encouragement that the child receives from the parent, was a strong predictor of cognitive performance and academic achievement (Williford, Carter, & Pianta, 2016), as well as child adjustment after the transition to primary school (Kiuru, Laursen, Aunola, Zhang, Lerkkanen, Tolvanen, & Nurmi, 2016; Seven, 2010).

Some of the family-related factors that contributed to children’s adjustment were family income and support. Children from low-income families are more likely to have difficulties in school (Isaacs & Magnuson, 2011), so many countries implemented various measures to prevent the effects of poverty on school adjustment.

Other factors related to school readiness were: urban versus rural environment, with children from urban areas proving better adjustment than those from rural areas (Gan, Meng, & Xie, 2016; Bailey, 2014), bilingualism, with bilingual children rated higher on school readiness (Guhn, Milbrath, &Hertzman, 2011).

The child assessment represents an important component of the learning process, in all its forms, and the monitoring of the child’s progress is an essential component for the effectiveness of the instruction in the case of each child (Ambruș, 2017). Reliable instruments should be used to determine the children’s initial level, to identify children that need additional services and to make appropriate decisions regarding school placement, to inform curriculum planning and intervention (McWayne, Green, & Fantuzzo, 2009).

Participants

A number of 671 children from regular kindergartens and schools, in transition from kindergarten to school, participated in our investigation. The children were enrolled in 42 classes from Suceava country in the North-Eastern part of Romania, from both urban and rural areas. All the children were assessed by their teachers and parents as clinically healthy and with a typical development.

The median age of the sample was 6 years and the sample was balanced in terms of grade, gender and presence of an older sibling (table 01 ). Of the total number of children, only a small part were identified by their teachers and parents as having special needs, as seen in table 01 , while other children were identified as eligible for premium students, but no special educational assistance was given to any of the two categories in the school or kindergarten. In terms of grade, gender and presence of an older sibling the distribution within our sample was balanced, a similar percentage of children were part of each category.

Instrument and procedure

For the purposes of the current investigation, in order to assess the last year kindergarten and preparatory grade children by both parents and teachers, we used the Brief Early Skills – Support Index (BESSI, Hughes & White, 2015), after requesting and obtaining the authors’ permission to adapt it for the Romanian population. The 30-item instrument was developed by the Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge, with the purpose to briefly assess large numbers of preschool children aged 2.5 to 5.5 years for school readiness, but it can be used in a variety of ways for screening, evaluation and research purposes (Hughes & White, 2015). It is focused on the identification of risk factors in kindergarten and first year school children before the beginning of schooling, risk factors that can lead to school maladjustment. Following the brief assessment of children using the BESSI, those children in need for more in-depth evaluation of school readiness can be identified. The instrument assesses both child and family factors that support school readiness, can be completed by a wide variety of professionals working with young children, and contains four subscales:

• Behavioral Adjustment (BA), with sample item content: “good at waiting patiently”, “has temper tantrums (R)”;

• Language & Cognition (L&C), with sample item content: “speaks clearly”, “enjoys identifying letters”;

• Daily Living Skills (DLS), with sample item content: “careful using scissors”, “fully toilet trained”, and

• Family Support (FS), with sample item content: “receives praise”, “talks about fun at home” (Hughes et al., 2015).

Higher scores on any of the four dimensions indicate more problems on the respective domain.

The instrument development process was described in Hughes et al. (2015). Initially, an 80-item measure was developed and gradually simplified so that it serves the purpose to briefly assess large number of children. The reliability of the final version of the instrument was tested on large samples of children and it proved to be a reliable, consistent and stable measure of the risks in school readiness. In order to compare groups of children, the authors recommend that the items of the instrument and the item anchors should not be changed.

The children in our sample were older than the target population for the assessment, but given its content we found it a useful measure for the screening of Romanian children during the transition from kindergarten to preparatory grade.

The 42 teachers were given a written form of the questionnaires translated and adapted in Romanian language and they motivated the children’s parents to complete the parent form. Only mothers agreed to complete the questionnaires. In order to ensure the gathering of reliable data, an informed consent was given to the teachers, containing information about the instrument, the importance of the assessment process in order to test the children’s school readiness, as well as the emphasis on the importance of appropriate answers for each child.

Translation and linguistic adaptation of the instrument content

A four-step process was followed in order to obtain a Romanian version of the instrument content. First, two accredited translators from Romanian to English independently translated the items of the questionnaire. Second, the authors compared the two versions and decided upon the most accurate phrasing of items, so that their original meaning to be preserved and the conceptual rather than literal translation to be achieved. Third, a back-translation was performed by a blinded translator and during a fourth step the discrepancies were eliminated and a final version of the Romanian translation of the instrument was reached. Our translation process was similar to the one recommended by the WHO (who.int) for the translation and adaptation of instruments.