Teachers’ tensions and children’s readiness. Taking a discursive approach to understanding readiness for primary school

Abstract

There has been much debate about the profile of the child who is ready for primary school. Thirty-three teachers from pre-primary and primary schools in Jamaica participated in a series of focus group discussions as part of a discursive approach to understanding children’s readiness. Four themes emerged which were guided by the research questions: how is readiness defined by pre-primary and primary school teachers? And what are teachers’ perspectives of children’s readiness for primary school? The findings suggest that teachers have varying perspectives of readiness though the tendency to privilege academic learning predominantly accounts for these differences. The findings also highlight that different teachers’ perspectives of children’s readiness lead to different understandings of how this should be supported. These findings point to the importance of providing teachers with frequent opportunities to engage in critical discourse, enabling them to work towards commonality in definition and interpretation of what readiness for primary school looks like and how it might be achieved.