The distinction between teaching and learning creates a secondary issue for teachers, that of educational readiness. Traditionally the concept referred to students' preparedness to cope with or profit from the activities and expectations of school. A kindergarten child was ready to start school, for example, if he or she was in good health, showed moderately good social skills, could take care of personal physical needs (like eating lunch or going to the bathroom unsupervised), could use a pencil to make simple drawings, and so on. Table 2.6 shows a similar set of criteria for determining whether a child is ready to learn to read (Copple & Bredekamp, 2006). At older ages (such as in high school or university), the term readiness is often replaced by a more specific term, prerequisites. To take a course in physics, for example, a student must first have certain prerequisite experiences, such as studying advanced algebra or calculus. To begin work as a public school teacher, a person must first engage in practice teaching for a period of time (not to mention also studying educational psychology!).
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Signs of readiness in the child or student |
Signs of readiness to teach reading |
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Source: Copple & Bredekamp, 2006.
Note that this traditional meaning, of readiness as preparedness, focuses attention on students' adjustment to school and away from the reverse: the possibility that schools and teachers also have a responsibility for adjusting to students. But the latter idea is in fact a legitimate, second meaning for readiness: If 5-year-old children normally need to play a lot and keep active, then it is fair to say that their kindergarten teacher needs to be ready for this behavior by planning for a program that allows a lot of play and physical activity. If she cannot or will not do so (whatever the reason may be), then in a very real sense this failure is not the children's responsibility. Among older students, the second, teacher-oriented meaning of readiness makes sense as well. If a teacher has a student with a disability (for example, the student is visually impaired), then the teacher has to adjust her approach in appropriate ways not simply expect a visually impaired child to “sink or swim”. As you might expect, this sense of readiness is very important for special education, so I discuss it further in Section 5.1 “Students with special educational needs”. But the issue of readiness also figures importantly whenever students are diverse (which is most of the time), so it also comes up in “Student diversity”.
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