The effect of academic and language skills education program on 61-66 month old children's cognitive skills and early academic and language skills

This study aims to investigate the effect of academic and language skills education program on 61-66 month old children?s cognitive skills and early academic and language skills. The population of the study was comprised of 61-66 month old children attending to one of the nurseries affiliated to the Ministry of National Education and located within the neighborhood of Çankaya-Ankara / Turkey during the 2012-2013 academic year. The sample consisted of a total number of 64 children (32 control and 32 experimental group members) randomly selected among the ones who volunteered to participate and the ones who had not given any kind of educational program to support their cognitive skills together with early academic and language skills. During the data collection process, ?Demographical Information Form? with the purpose of gathering data about the children and their parents, ?Cognitive Skills Test-6? which was developed by Lohman and Hagen (2000) and then adapted to Turkish children by İnal (2011) to determine the children?s reasoning skills and ?Kaufman Survey of Early Academic and Language Skills? which was developed by Kaufman and Kaufman (1993) and then adapted to Turkish children by Uyanık (2010) were used in order to evaluate the children?s early academic and language skills. "Cognitive Abilities Test Form-6" and "Kaufman Survey of Early Academic and Language Skills" were administered as pre-test and post-test to control group children at two times whereas these tests were used as pre-test, post-test and retention test after a four week period of time in the experimental group. "Academic and Language Skills Training Program Evaluation Form" was used by the researcher as a participant observer during the implementation of Academic and Language Skills Education Program while it was used by the other assessor by scoring the video recordings. The data collected through Cognitive Skills Test Form ? 6, Kaufman Survey of Early Academic and Language Skills and demographical information form were recorded on individual test record forms; meanwhile the visual analysis and observation records regarding the evaluation of Academic and Language Skills Education Program were recorded on Academic and Language Skills Educational Program Evaluation Form. Then the data were transferred to computer and analyzed by using appropriate statistical methods. In order to maintain the equality of control and experimental groups, the significance level of the difference between the mean scores taken from Cognitive Skills Test Form-6 and Kaufman Survey of Early Academic and Language Skills, ?Independent Samples t-test? was used. Demographical information of the children and their parents was presented as frequency levels and percentages. One factor ANCOVA was used to find out whether the difference between the post-test mean scores which were adjusted according to pre-test results of Cognitive Skills Test Form-6 and Kaufman Survey of Early Academic and Language Skills. Three factors repeated measures ANOVA was preferred to test the difference among the mean scores from pre-test, post-test and retention test administrations of Cognitive Skills Test Form-6 and Kaufman Survey of Early Academic and Language Skills in the experimental group. The results of Academic and Language Skills Education Program Evaluation Form which was rated both by the researcher as a participant observer and the rater by watching the video recordings were given as mode, median and standard deviation values for each of the twenty implementations of both teacher A and teacher B. On the other hand, in order to establish the inter-rater reliability, two sets of scores were tested using Pearson correlation coefficient. Significance level was set at .01 so any value below .01 would refer to a significant difference (p<.01). The findings revealed that there was a significant difference with a large effect size between the control and experimental groups? total mean scores from verbal, logical subtests and Cognitive Skills Test Form-6 which were adjusted according to the total scores of pre-test verbal, logical and Cognitive Skills Test Form-6. Besides, statistically significant difference with a large effect size was observed between the control and experimental groups? adjusted total post-test mean scores from vocabulary, number skills, letter & word skill, early academic and language composite and Kaufman Survey Early Academic and Language Skills. As a result of the analysis carried out among the experimental group?s total scores from Cognitive Skills Test Form-6 and pre-test, post-test and retention test totals of Kaufman Survey of Early Academic and Language Skills, significant difference with a large effect size was discovered. Apart from these, in the case of qualitative data derived from the scores of the researcher and the rater for each of the teacher revealed that mean mode and median values were all close to 1 and the standard deviation values were close to .00. According to the inter-rater reliability testing for Academic and Language Skills Education Program Evaluation Form, the correlation value for teacher A was .932 while this value was found out as .902 for teacher B (p<.01).