A survey of elementary principals, kindergarten teachers, and kindergarten parents focusing on preferences for academic or developmental programming at the kindergarten level

The primary purpose of this study was to determine the preferences regarding instructional practices at the kindergarten level and investigate the relationships of these preferences among elementary principals, kindergarten teachers, and kindergarten parents. A survey of a systematic sample of 217 Iowa public elementary schools provided perceptual data from 148 (68%) of these schools. Elementary principals, kindergarten teachers, and kindergarten parents were asked to complete a questionnaire based on the Hitz 1986 Oregon Department of Education questionnaire which provided insight to their preferences on developmental and academic instructional practices at the kindergarten level. Of the population, 132 principals out of 217 (61%), 137 kindergarten teachers out of 217 (63%), and 524 kindergarten parents out of 1,085 (48%) returned completed survey material. After completion of descriptive statistics, the investigator applied inferential statistical analysis to complete cross group comparisons on the items 1-12 common to all three questionnaires. These items were designed to elicit responses showing a preference for developmental or academic kindergarten programming. Analysis of variance, F value, was used for these 12 items. In addition, the F test was also used on the summative group mean scores to determine whether the three group means were significantly different from each other at the .05 level. The Scheffe\u27 multiple comparison procedure was then used to determine which pairs of groups had statistically different means. The analysis of variance of the summative score for items 1-12 indicated a significant difference among group means, F(2,761) = 170.73, p = .001. The Scheffe\u27 multiple comparison procedure indicated that the following pairs of groups were significantly different at the .05 level: (a) principals and parents, and (b) teachers and parents. On the 1-5 Likert scale utilized with the 12 items (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 strongly agree) elementary principals scored a summative mean of 3.84 (S.D. .46). Kindergarten teachers scored a summative mean of 3.89 (S.D. .49), and kindergarten parents scored a summative mean of 3.19 (S.D. .48). The principal and teacher summative means placed them nearly in the response of agree with developmental instructional practices at the kindergarten level. The parent summative group mean placed them nearly in the response of neutral which does not show strong support for either developmental or academic instructional practices at the kindergarten level