Week 5

This week was quite successful I must say! Searching using the theses option gave me 20 results and a lot of useful information that I have been looking for. I searched using the following:

Leatherby libraries

Databases

Education

Theses

Searched - Transitional kindergarten (last 5 years, English)

The article I found, Beliefs of teachers and administrators regarding developmentally appropriate practices within the transitional kindergarten classroom, strengthened the concerns I already had about transitional kindergarten. To sum it all up there are some major gaps between preschool and kindergarten, mostly due to the lack of training, understanding, and being able to provide a developmentally appropriate learning environment. Teachers are confused between school readiness (more of a kindergarten environment with worksheets and academic based activities) and early childhood, pre-k (play based). Administrators are also found to be unsupportive of the play based (developmentally appropriate) approach to transitional kindergarten education, which I feel, is due to their lack of knowledge of the subject. As an advocate for early childhood education, and play, I surely hope this gap closes somewhat quickly.

Well, another frustrating week finding creditable and useful information about my topic. After searching and researching, I eventually came across an article that had a lot of interesting facts. First and foremost, what stuck with me the most this week is that not all transitional kindergarten teachers have early child development experience, education, or training. This really bothers me. Being a preschool teacher myself, I am fully aware of the different approaches, strategies, environments, and curriculum that are involved in teaching young children.  After looking into this further, I found that transitional kindergarten teachers are required to take 24 units of early child development within 5 years. Though this made me feel somewhat better, this still means that there are 5 years of teaching children without the proper education or tools to do so.

In addition, transitional kindergarten is for children who will turn 5 after September 5 but before December. This gives children who are a little younger the chance to develop in all areas before entering kindergarten. Some school districts decided to have combination classes that included transitional kindergarten and kindergarten classes.

I also reviewed the California Teaching Credential website which is where I found the following information:

TK teachers are required to have:

Teaching Credentials

24 units of Early Child Development or an Early Childhood Teacher permit

“Any current credentialed teacher who is or was assigned to teach TK, or a combination class of kindergarten and TK, on or before July 1, 2015, is “grandfathered in” to teach TK without having to meet additional requirements. Any credentialed teacher assigned to teach TK, or a combination class of kindergarten and TK, after July 1, 2015, will have until August 1, 2020, to meet the above-mentioned education requirements.” - CTC

I would like to find out more about the curriculum used in transitional kindergarten as a way of comparing it to the curriculum I use in my class.

As suggested in Research Strategies, I attempted searching using the EBSCO connection. I actually found a lot of interesting articles that I was hoping to read, but when I tried connecting to them and my local library, it would not let me sign in. I am going to call customer service on Monday to see if they can help me login, for future references as they are only open mon-fri).