The investigation of the relationship between school readiness and emotion knowledge

This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between the school readiness of children who attended early childhood education and their emotion knowledge. The population of this correlational study was children between 60-78 month of age who attended early childhood education in the central districts of Adana and their parents and teachers. The sample of the study occured from 303 children (160 female, 143 male) who received preschool education in the central districts of Adana at 2013-2014 school year and their parents and teachers. The data related to the demographic information of the participant children and their parents gathered via Personal Information Form which prepared by the researcher. Children's school readiness were assessed with Marmara Primary Education Readiness Scale and their emotion knowledge was measured with Denham Affective Knowledge Test. Application Form of Marmara Primary Education Readiness Scale was applied to children individually whereas its Development Form was filled by their teachers. After the parent questionnaire of Denham Affective Knowlegde Test was answered by the parents, depending on the answers of them test was applied with puppets to children. The adaptation study of Denham Affective Knowledge Test was conducted by the researcher. As a result, according to the data obtained from Marmara Primary Education Readiness Scale, participant children were determined as ready for primary school. In addition, there was a significant difference in Marmara Primary Education Readiness scores in terms of age. Six-year-old children have more readiness scores than five and five-and-a-half-year-old children. According to the results of Denham Affective Knowledge Test, it was detected that most of the participant children can discriminate happy, sad, anger and scared when they faced with the situation eliciting these emotions. There is no significant difference in emotion knowledge scores in terms of age. However, when the mean of emotion knowledge scores was taken into consideration, it was observed that emotion knowledge scores were increasing with age of children. It was found that there are positive moderate significant relationships between both children's Marmara Primary Education Readiness Scale Application Form scores and Denham Affective Knowledge Test scores; and Marmara Primary Education Readiness Scale Development Form scores and Denham Affective Knowledge Test scores. Moreover, there is a significant difference between children's Marmara Primary Education Readiness Scale Application and Development Form scores according to the level of Denham Affective Knowledge Test scores. In the result of posthoc analysis, it was found that children who have 'high' level of emotion knowledge scores have more Application and Development Form scores than the children who have 'moderate' and 'low' level of emotion knowledge while children who have 'moderate' level of emotion knowledge have more Application and Development Form scores than the children who have 'low' level of emotion knowledge. Keywords: School readiness, emotion knowledge, early childhood period