Are Chinese urban children ready for preschool? Latent profiles and associated predictors

Children enter school with different patterns of strength and weakness. The progressive universal preschool attendance advancement in China has raised a burning and important question: Are these young children ready for preschool? By taking an interpersonal perspective, this study examined Chinese young children's preschool readiness profile and explored its association with family socioeconomic status, home learning environment, parenting, and child care. The class teachers rated preschool readiness on 765 young children (M age = 43.4, SD = 3.63, Boy = 51.8%) one month after they entered preschool, using the Chinese Preschool Readiness Scale (CPRS). Latent profile analysis (LPA) examined preschool readiness profiles across domains of self-care abilities and emotional maturity, cognitive and communications skills, social competence, learning dispositions, and classroom rules. LPA revealed three distinct profiles that described differentiated patterns of strength and weakness: (1) Low Selfcare Ability and Emotional Maturity (17%), (2) Balanced Average (34%), and (3) Overall High (48%). The home learning environment predicted children's likelihood of being in the Low Selfcare Ability and Emotional Maturity group compared to the Balanced Average group, and the children from higher SES families were more likely to be in the Low Selfcare Ability and Emotional Maturity group than in the Overall High group. The findings indicated the need for providing differentiated support to children with distinct patterns of strength and weakness. Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.