Naslov
Differences in phonological awareness of five-year-olds from Montessori and regular program preschool institutions

Autori
Franc, V. ; Subotić, S.

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Radovi u zbornicima skupova, cjeloviti rad (in extenso), znanstveni

Izvornik
Dječji jezik i kultura / Cvikić, Lidija i sur. - Zagreb : Učiteljski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, 2015, 12-21

ISBN
978-953-7210-79-3

Skup
Dječji jezik i kultura

Mjesto i datum
Opatija, Hrvatska, 13.04.2015. - 15.04.2015

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
early literacy, holistic approach to education, language exercises, metalinguistic abilities, structured didactic play

Sažetak
Montessori preschool program (MPP) is a structured program that incorporates metal- inquistic exercises, which are implemented even before children reach four years of age. In con- trast, in regular preschool programs (RPP) in Croatia, activities related to the development of reading and writing skills are provided only to older children. Also, unlike MPP, these activities in RPP are isolated from the context of the general activities and play, which is contrary to the knowledge that child development should be approached holistically. Accordingly, in this study, we wanted to test the assumption that children attending MPP will have a more developed phonological awareness than RPP children. Phonological awareness is a metalinguistic ability related to the acknowledgement of the sound components of speech and it is a significant pre- dictor of later language skills. The sample comprised 60 children of regular language and cog- nitive development from MPP (M=5.21, SD=0.17 years) and RPP (M=5.23, SD=0.18 years). In each group there were 15 girls and boys. Testing was performed using FONT-HR (Cronbach α=.97). The results showed that, as expected, MPP children had a greater phonological aware- ness (M=43.30, SD=7.89) than RPP children (M=31.23, SD=9.99). The difference is statistically significant and of large effect size: t(58)=5.19, p<.001, d=1.34. Also, there were no gender dif- ferences: t(58)=-0.05, p=.96, d=0.01. While it is necessary to conduct additional studies in order to statistically control for the factors such as intelligence, these results suggest a possibility that language exercises approach from MPP is superior compared to RPP. Therefore, adoption of MPP language activities concept could have a positive effect on the (early) reading skills of chil- dren from RPP.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija

POVEZANOST RADA