Kindergarten Group Research Articles

The Influence of Size of Kindergarten Group upon Performance1

HE relative merit of and classes and of the various seating positions within the group has been of considerable interest to teachers and workers in the field of education and psychology, but investigations of the problem have been confined to the elementary grades and to classes at high school and college level. The present study aims to determine the effect, at kindergarten level, of the size of the group and of the child's position in that group upon the amount learned and upon the contributions made to group discussion. The earlier studies (as summarized by Hudelson (4)) are not, of course, in complete agreement, but the majority find: that there are no differences between and classes in terms of student accomplishment, that classes do not penalize the student and that, in some instances, students in classes surpass those in smaller ones. Studies of the effect of seating position (1, 2) on student grades agree that students in the front center of the room receive higher grades than those at the sides and rear. The results of such investigations are suggestive but the conclusions derived from them can not be applied directly to the kindergarten situation, for in the first place the criterion as to what constitutes a or a group varies considerably from one study to another, (a small university class is often larger than a large kindergarten group) and furthermore the subjects chosen are pupils in the elementary and upper grades where the learning situation is a more strictly formal one.

Distribution of the Teacher’s Time among Children in the Nursery School and Kindergarten

It is a common saying that two small children in one family are no more work than one, because one child requires twenty-four hours a day of attention from the mother and it is impossible for two children to take more of her time. The same reasoning might be applied to the school situation. It is obvious, of course, that although the teacher is busy all the time, yet the amount of attention that each individual child receives will vary with the number of others with whom he must share that attention. We have at the present time no actual data upon which we can base an opinion as to the number of children which is most desirable in a nursery school or kindergarten group. From experience, we know that sometimes it is a practical advantage if a teacher is too busy to concern herself with some child who plays for attention. We also know that certain nursery school teachers feel that it is easier for two teachers to handle a group of 18 children than it is for one to control a group of 9, while, on the other hand, it is easier for three teachers to handle 27 than it is for four to handle 36. Just where the optimum size group comes, we do not know. Many teachers report that two-year-old children take more time from the teacher than do three-year-olds, but just how many three-year-olds can be handled with the same out-put of energy and the same efficiency as one two-year-old is a bit of information which probably will not be acquired for some time. The present study is an attempt to break the ground of such problems to the extent of discovering how much time children of the different sexes and different ages take in one school. It is impossible, of course, to measure the time that a teacher spends in thinking about any one child, or the time she spends, whether in or out of school, in planning the work of the days to come or reviewing events of the preceding day. Observations were taken in the Nursery School of the University of Minnesota in the spring of 1929. At that time there were 33 children enrolled in the school, 16 boys and 17 girls. Of these, five were two years old; fourteen, three years; and fourteen, four years old. The school 172