Identification of differences in key literacy indicators under the old and the innovated preschool curriculum
Abstract
An innovated preschool curriculum was introduced in Slovakia in 2016. Literacy-rich environments were created in preschools, and priority was given to developing linguistic comprehension skills (i.e., understanding explicit and implicit meaning), listening comprehension skills, narrative production skills, and metacognitive awareness.
This analytical chapter aims to explore differences between preschool children following the old preschool curriculum (N = 278) and those following the innovated one (N = 99). The chapter offers three major conclusions.
The partial correlation network found that comprehension of the implicit meaning of the story plays a central role among all the literacy indicators. This was consistent under both the old and the innovated preschool curriculum.
On the other hand, phonological awareness exhibited only a peripheral role. Second, the structural equation modeling showed that the direct effect of metacognition on narrative production was mediated by text comprehension in both cases: under the old curriculum metacognition explained only 3% of the variance in text comprehension, whereas under the innovated curriculum it explained 49%.
Similarly, metacognition explained 5% of the variance in narrative production under the old curriculum and 30% under the innovated curriculum. Finally, three clusters of preschool children were identified based on narrative production.
Children with different levels of narrative production exhibited large overall differences in most of the measured literacy indicators. This finding suggests that integrating both top-down reading strategies and metacognition-fostering activities into everyday preschool practice has the additional benefit of generating more elaborate, complex narrative production.