The impact of attending pre-school on grades - Research Proposal Example

Do Children Who Attend Pre-School Achieve Better Grades (GPAs During K-12) Than Children Who Do Not? Introduction In developed countries such as US,children are observed to take the advantages of the pre-school education so that they can achieve a satisfactory academic life in primary as well as secondary school. The pre-school learning has become a major focus for the government to develop in terms of welfare of children. Pre-school can provide several benefits to the children which certainly causes an impact on their further education i.e. in primary and in high school. In fact, the teachers as well as parents are now concerned with delivering pre-school program to their children not only to improve the education skill but also to develop the socialization abilities among the children (Berlinski, Galiani & Gertler, 2006). Problem and objectives In present days, the pre-school education has gained much importance in the US transforming the education system in the country. There is an on-going debate about the impact of pre-school education on the grade of students. Several researches in this field depicted that pre-school education is undeniably beneficial for children in order to get better ranks in higher education. A quality pre-school education can significantly increase the performance of students. In addition, pre-school education can enlarge the impacts of later improvements by lessening early educational gaps and thereby ensuring that children are completely equipped to learn as well as flourish intellectually, physically and educationally (Pew Center on the States, 2011). While there are considerable evidences that pre-school education can help children to achieve better performance, those evidences were insignificant to an extent in identifying the paybacks of pre-school in students’ grade when compared with those who have not attended the pre-school. There are some significant concerns that pre-school can have harmful impact on the children because of early separation from their parents. Based on these perspectives, this research will attempt to provide some insight about how pre-school education can create an impact on the performance of students. The major objectives of this paper are: To understand the impact of pre-school education on the children To understand if pre-school education can increase the grade of children in further education To recognise the differences existing between children who receives the pre-school education and the children who do not receive pre-school learning To recognise the importance of pre-school education in the US education system Subject for study The subject of this research is to study the impact of pre-school education among students over the grade with respect to “Grade Point Average” (GPA). Several researches in the schools of US have recognised that pre-school education can develop the knowledge and progress of education among young children. As stated by Barnett (2008), children who attend the pre-school education have extensively wavering experiences compared to children who do not attend them. The ‘meta-analyses’ in the year 2004 in US depicted that pre-school education has significant long-lasting impact on reasoning abilities, knowledge development and social behaviour of students. A research on the schools of South Carolina in 1987 also revealed a positive impact of pre-school education and cognitive abilities of children. Study in New York held during 1982 represented that pre-school education preliminary has a positive influence on the general thinking, verbal impressions, and school based knowledge and abilities of children. Additionally, it has also been found that there was less retention of grade among pre-school students (Barnett, 2008). According to the study of Stipek, Feiler, Daniels, and Milburn in the year 1995, there are motivational variations among children who receive pre-school education and those who had not received them (Marcon, 2002). Numerous literature journals have precisely mentioned the long-run consequence of pre-school education. According to the research of “Child Parent Center” (CPC) in the year 1960, the test score of pre-school children with those who had not joined pre-school varied from 0.35 to 0.77 in standard deviation. Furthermore, a quasi-experimental research in the schools of Latin America in 2006 depicted that pre-school education students gain high test ranks during third grade, as well as lesser educational failures, better educational accomplishment and positive influences on attention, class involvement, and discipline (Barnett, 2008). Therefore, this research will intend to identify the numerous benefits of pre-school education and its impact on the students’ grade with respect to GPA. Apart from the GPA, the research will also intend to study the aspects of academic performance such as language skills, reading abilities, and intellectual abilities, manner of socializing, citizenship qualities, and motivational features of students who have attended pre-school education along with those who have not attended such facilities. Ethical consideration The research includes children due to which there are several ethical aspects needed to be considered before conducting the research. In this research the academic performance of children will be analysed in order to understand the importance of pre-school education in their educational life with the intention to generate new knowledge about pre-school education among children. The research will follow all ethical principles when involving children for a research purpose. From an ethical point of view, research can be of two kinds which are therapeutic research and non-therapeutic research. In therapeutic research, it directly benefits the respondents, whereas, in non-therapeutic research; the consequences can be useful for future. The research will be a non-therapeutic research as there will be no direct benefit that the children can attain through this research. However, indirectly the study will help them in gaining valuable insight about pre-school education which can have a substantial impact on their future of education life. Moreover, the research contains no risk for children, as it will only calculate their performance through several measurements (Morton, 2011). In research related to children, it is quite vital to provide the complete information regarding the research subject to get their approval which is freely volunteered. The information to the children as well as their parents is likely to demonstrate what will happen during the study, and the children are free to withdraw from the research at any time. The children will be interacted with simple language according to their understanding level and if possible visual assistances will also be provided to them. As the children having average age of 16 years will be taken for the study, the approval of parents will also be taken by providing them the knowledge about their role to participate in the research and its benefit to them as well as to the education. In order to obtain the GPA of students, the consent of administrative authorities of educational institutions will be taken. The other ethical aspect of research involving children is confidentiality. Confidentiality and secrecy will be maintained during the research. Intimate information about the research will be clarified to the students in such a way so that they can easily recognize the importance of the research. While generating results about the impact of pre-school education among students, the names of respondents and other identifying information will not be revealed so that the children are out of any significant harm (University College London, 2006). Measurement The measurement of academic performance of children will be based on GPA and conception of how effectively they can learn during K-12. Accurate measurement of academic performance is the significant aspect of the research which will provide the consequences of pre-school education on the children. In US, the academic performance is assessed by calculating GPA which is regarded as cumulated rank of academic subjects in each semester which provides an impartial robust amount of educational success (Coutinho, 2007). Thus, the major variable of measuring the impact of pre-school education on grade will be the achievement goal with respect to GPA of students during K-12. The grade of students will also be measured on the basis of encouragement of students to perform better compared to other students (Coutinho, 2007). Apart from GPA, other variables such as grade from the achievement scores will also be considered for the research. Data collection In order to conduct the research, both secondary as well as primary sources will be used. The primary sources are vital for this research as it will intend to measure the performance of students with respect to GPA achieved. The major primary source for collecting the GPA of students of K-12 is from the administrative records of students of K-12 from schools in the US. In order to obtain a sufficient amount of primary data about students’ GPA, a school will be selected randomly from US. Furthermore, additional information about the educational performance of students will also be taken through conducting uniform achievement test among students. It can provide significant insight about the metacognition of students, as well as their motivation towards educational success. The secondary data will also be used in this research to comprehend the broad aspect of pre-school education. The secondary data will provide a perception about the overall impact of pre-school education and its related aspects about students which can help to get higher grade during K-12. The secondary information for this research will be taken from various academic journals, books, online databases and proper governmental, commercial as well as educational websites. Analysis There will be two groups of respondents in this research, where one group has attended the pre-school and the other group has not attended the pre-school. In order to analyze the impact of pre-school education, ten respondents from each group will be chosen from a randomly selected school of US. Their GPA will be analyzed on the basis of Pearson correlation analysis. The Pearson correlation will be used to measure the relation between GPA and pre-school education of the students. On the other hand, the educational performances of students will also be analyzed on the results of achievement test. The higher withdrawing and evading rate among students will demonstrate low performance grade among students (Allen, 2005). The other variable for analyzing the impact of pre-school on grade will be ‘metacognition’ of students. Metacognition in this sense denotes the awareness of students. It will be measured if students having pre-school education has high level of educational awareness compared to students not having pre-school education. Through the achievement test, the metacognition will be measured depending on how well they can use their awareness and skills and their efficiency in attaining good rank in the test. Depending on the results of correlation as well as achievement grade, the conclusion will be developed regarding pre-school education’s impact on the grade of students in K-12 (Womble, n.d.). Conclusion and limitations The research will explore the elements of pre-school education and how effectively it can impact on the grade of students. There are several researches undertaken which depicted that pre-school education has significantly increased the performance of students with respect to intellectual aptitudes, educational achievements, social behaviour, rational and general thinking, and also have encouraging effects on attendance, class involvement, and discipline. Through this research an understanding can be generated as to how pre-school can help children to develop their base of education from the primary stage and thereby enhance their educational ability. The major limitations of this research are availability of data, participation of students and time constraint. The consent of administration of school about providing the grade of students is significant which can in turn cause an impact on the efficiency of the research. Furthermore, the research requires active participation of students in order to analyze their performance. As the research topic is quite broad, it will require enormous time to complete. In order to mitigate those limitations, all ethical principles will be maintained during research and students will be encouraged to participate in the research process. References Allen, J. D. (2005). Grades as valid measures of academic achievement of classroom learning. Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, 78(5), pp. 218-223. Berlinski, S., Galiani, S., & Gertler, P. (2006). The effect of pre-primary education on primary school performance. Retrieved from http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/2695/1/2695.pdf Barnett, W. S. (2008). Preschool education and its lasting effects: research and policy implications. Retrieved from http://nieer.org/resources/research/PreschoolLastingEffects.pdf Coutinho, S. A. (2007). The relationship between goals, metacognition, and academic success. Educate Journal, 7(1), pp. 39-47. Marcon, R. A. (2002). Moving up the grades: relationship between preschool model and later school success. Early Childhood Research and Practice, 4(1). Morton, N. S. (2011). Ethical issues in research with children in the UK. Paediatric and Perinatal Drug Therapy, 4(4), pp. 135-139. Pew Center on the States (2011). Transforming public education: pathway to a pre-k-12 future. Retrieved from http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Pre-k_education/pathway-pre-k-12-future.pdf University College London. (2006). UCL research ethics committee. Retrieved from http://ethics.grad.ucl.ac.uk/forms/guidance1.pdf Womble, L.P. (n.d.). Impact of stress factors on college students academic performance. Retrieved from http://www.psych.uncc.edu/Womble.pdf Read More