School Readiness: Linguistically Diverse Learners’ perspective- A Case study

Abstract

Early child hood education is crucial for children for getting well adjusted in the school. The research in brain development emphasizes that early learning especially from birth to five, directly influences a child's ability to learn and succeed in school. School Readiness is the most researched area in the field of early childhood education.  Research indicates that preschoolers who attend high quality programs enter the school with skills necessary for school success, show greater understanding of verbal and numerical concepts and are more socially competent. But in the case of linguistically diverse learners, all these theory fails and sometimes the preschool education is making their life more problematic. The teachers are not well trained to make the children comfortable in their classroom. The language barrier makes the teachers helpless to make their classroom conducive for developing the skills necessary for success in school. The child is also feeling embarrassed and feel isolated in the classroom and the activities meant for developing and nourishing the skills of children make a contradictory result. In this context, a case study was conducted in the select preschools to find out the school readiness of linguistically diverse learners. Being a qualitative study, the data were collected through informal discussion and semi structured interview. In this paper, author discusses the problems faced by teachers and linguistically diverse students in the classroom and also its effect on the school readiness of these children.