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Article

Are You Ready for a Story? Kindergarten Children’s Emotional Competencies during a Story-Reading Situation Is Associated with Their Readiness for School

by
Inbar Sofri
*,
Amanda Czik
and
Yair Ziv
Department of Counseling and Human Development, Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Haifa 3103301, Israel
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Educ. Sci. 2023, 13(12), 1169; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13121169
Submission received: 12 September 2023 / Revised: 16 November 2023 / Accepted: 19 November 2023 / Published: 22 November 2023
(This article belongs to the Section Early Childhood Education)
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Abstract

:
The current study aimed to explore the associations between children’s emotional reactions to stories and their school readiness skills. One hundred and fifty kindergarten children (Mage = 66.98 months; 66 boys) were interviewed to examine their emotional reactions to a story, and the children’s kindergarten teachers reported on the children’s school readiness skills: verbal abilities, approaches toward learning, and social skills. Using bibliotherapeutic terms and methods, the children’s identification with the main character in the story, their insight about the story, and their ability to connect the story to their own experiences were coded. Findings revealed associations between the children’s emotional responses to the story, specifically, the children’s identification and echoing with all three school readiness indicators (verbal abilities, behavior, and approaches toward learning). Additionally, the children’s insight into the story mediated the link between verbal abilities and approaches toward learning and between verbal abilities and hyperactivity. Practically, the current study offers a new approachable method that practitioners can use as a possible emotional tool in early education. Children’s responses to a story can provide a unique opportunity to better understand children’s perceptions of different narratives and socio-emotional situations, which can direct educators in their work. Empirically, the current study can guide further research and training on utilizing stories to understand children’s readiness for school.

1. Introduction

Children who exhibit better social and academic skills before school entry tend to show better academic achievement and more adaptive social skills in school [1,2]. Verbal abilities, approaches toward learning, and social skills during these early years are considered major indicators of school success [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10] and are generally unified under the umbrella term of “school readiness” [11]. Monitoring children’s emotional skills in early education settings, in conjunction with the academic assessments already in place, contributes to the understanding of children’s adjustment for school [12]. For example, emotion identification and emotion recognition, are related to the literacy skills required for success in early educational settings [5] but have not been explored as unique antecedents of school readiness.
Consequently, the purpose of the present study is to explore the associations between children’s emotional understanding skills and their readiness for school. We explored children’s emotional understanding skills through their responses to a story. Specifically, we looked at how well children can identify the main characters’ inner motives, feelings, and thoughts; whether children can give an example of an experience in which they felt like the character from the story; and if children can look at the story from multiple points of view. There is strong empirical evidence that the actual practice of storytelling in kindergarten is linked to improved verbal [13,14,15,16] and social [17,18] skills in children, but the mechanisms by which storytelling contribute to children’s social and verbal skills is not well-defined. Thus, a better understanding of children’s emotional skills through their responses to a story could provide valuable insight into clinical and educational efforts to better prepare young children for school.

2. School Readiness

School readiness is defined as “the state of child competencies at the time of school entry that are important for later success” [19] (p. 9) or as a “set of cognitive, social, and behavioral skills involved in school learning” [20] (p. 125). Children’s abilities at school entry predict their later success, especially in literacy and math [11,19], but also their social skills [21]. School readiness is influenced by a diverse array of environmental factors, such as socioeconomic status, parental health [22], maternal sensitivity [23], and parent supportiveness [24]. Children’s relationships with their kindergarten teachers also predict a plethora of skills that contribute to school readiness [20]. However, the most direct and substantial contributors to school readiness are children’s individual social, verbal, and academic skills prior to entering school [1,2,4,9,11,25,26]. Overall, children who enter school with high academic abilities make better use of learning opportunities in their school years. The same is assumed for social and emotional aspects of school readiness; however, these components are difficult to operationalize and measure [2,19], and there is still ongoing debate about the specific social–emotional child factors in the early years that best predict school readiness [11,27].

3. Social Skills and Verbal Abilities

Children’s social skills and social behaviors are related to their verbal abilities and contribute to their overall school readiness [3,5,8,28]. Studies show that children with better verbal abilities code social situations more accurately and choose more competent social responses [29,30]. Conversely, low verbal abilities are related to more problem behaviors at school [21,31]. Moreover, choosing appropriate social behavior is related to higher vocabulary and literacy [32].
The relationship between verbal abilities and social behavior could be understood through the developing ability to verbalize emotions. For example, the development of verbal abilities helps children to better cope with frustrating situations [33], and verbal abilities also mediate the relationship between understanding emotions and children’s social skills [34]. Children’s language skills are linked to a greater understanding of others’ emotional and mental states at preschool and kindergarten ages [35,36,37], which also contribute to their social competency. Finally, both social skills and verbal abilities were found to be strongly related to approaches toward learning [7,38,39,40,41], with children with better social skills and better verbal communication having more advantageous approaches toward learning both before and after school entry.

4. Approaches toward Learning

Approaches toward learning (ATL), or learning styles, are “composed of aggregated variables that affect how children attitudinally address the learning process…” [42] (p. 23) and can be defined as “effortful and goal-oriented mechanisms by which children go about classroom learning processes” [43] (p. 1206). The core cognitive and behavioral manifestations of ATL include initiative, motivation, persistence, attentiveness, invention, and imagination [41,42,43]. Children’s ATL skills are important for social, emotional, and cognitive interactions and affect the ways in which children act and think about learning opportunities [44].
ATL are vital for school readiness across cognitive, behavioral, academic, and social domains [7,45,46,47]. Persistence, for example, was found to relate to language and math skills [48], to mediate the relationship between cognitive flexibility and academic readiness for school [41], and to predict later reading achievements [49]. There are also connections between ATL and social skills, with children who exhibit more advantageous ATL also responding more competently in social situations [10] and showing better social cognitive skills [50]. Additionally, children who demonstrated better ATL skills such as initiative, motivation, attention, and persistence, also showed more positive interactions in peer play [51,52], while poor ATL skills were linked to social and academic difficulties [53]. Overall, research demonstrates the relationship between children’s approaches toward learning and their academic achievement and social behaviors; all of which contribute to children’s school readiness.

5. Children’s Emotional Understanding from a Bibliotherapeutic Perspective

Children’s emotional understanding is defined here using terms borrowed from the field of bibliotherapy—a therapeutic method in which reading and writing processes are mediated by a therapist for therapeutic purposes [54]. This field’s terms are instrumental in understanding the types of mental processes that occur to a reader (or to a child when listening to a story). We use here three cognitive–emotional processes that are viewed as central to the emotional state of the reader: identification, echoing, and insight. Identification is a process in which the reader/listener identifies with the characters in the story. Echoing refers to the reader/listener’s ability to connect the emotional content in the story to his/her life, and insight relates to the reader/listener’s ability to gain insight from the story and examine the story from different perspectives [55,56]. Those three terms are used here as key emotional understanding capabilities of children just before they are about to enter school. While using narratives and the literature as a tool for social–emotional processing is pervasive in education settings [57,58], the influence of bibliotherapeutic methods on early emotional competencies and the connection to other early academic skills is underexplored empirically. In a meta-analysis of the effectiveness of bibliotherapy on mental health and social outcomes for children (aged 5–16), Montgomery and Maunders [59] found that only 8 studies of the over 9000 studies screened met the research standards to be included in their meta-analysis. The authors found moderate evidence of bibliotherapy on children’s mental health outcomes in conjunction with other socio-emotional interventions. Despite the global use of story reading and narratives in classrooms and therapeutic settings alike, the emotional competencies of story reading and its relationship to other early developmental and learning skills need to be explored.

6. Identification, Insight, and Echoing

Usually, the term identification is used in clinical psychology and psychotherapy to describe the process in which individuals identify with meaningful figures in their lives, and sometimes with a therapist [60]. In bibliotherapy as well as in the current study, identification questions are used to explore the participant’s ability to identify with the main character by examining their ability to recognize the main character’s emotions, thoughts, and motives.
Insight is also a broad term in psychotherapy, which sometimes refers to the process of making the unconscious conscious [61] or creating new connections regarding self and regarding others [62]. In the current research, insight is used to refer to children’s ability to think more broadly about a story they are introduced to, by asking them questions about which advice they can give to a character in the story and their ability to view the story from more than one point of view. This process is meant to evaluate children’s ability to disengage momentarily from their identification with the main character and to think about other perspectives.
The term echoing is used in the current research to evaluate children’s ability to connect the events in the story to themselves and use their inner world to think about similar experiences that occurred to them in the past. Overall, the three capacities, including identification, echoing, and insight, are meant to explore children’s reactions to a story and their ability to reflect on the character’s emotional state and their own thoughts and feelings during the story. The use of storytelling as a means of understanding emotional competencies at the kindergarten age has a longstanding precedent. For example, Denham and her colleagues conducted extensive empirical work using storytelling to measure preschool- and kindergarten-aged children’s emotional identification and early emotional competencies [2,63,64].

7. Current Research

The purpose of the current research is to explore the understudied connections between children’s identification, echoing, and insight skills, and their verbal abilities, social skills, and approaches toward learning—all strong markers of school readiness. Examining children’s responses and thought processes when hearing a story and its relation to indicators of school readiness advances the current understanding of the dynamic processes underlying children’s readiness for school. Our main assumption is that children’s identification, echoing, and insight when responding to an emotionally laden story will be connected to all three markers of school readiness examined in this study. To examine the assumption that the relationship between verbal abilities and socio-academic skills might be facilitated through emotional understanding, the current study will also explore the possible mediation effect of emotional understanding on the relationship between verbal abilities and social skills and learning behaviors.
Our specific hypotheses are: (H1) School readiness markers: verbal abilities, ATL, and social skills are positively correlated with each other. (H2) Children’s emotional understanding (identification, echoing, and insight) is associated with all three school readiness markers. (H3) Children’s emotional understanding mediates the relationship between verbal skills (as an earlier developed skill) and ATL and social skills (as later developed skills).

8. Methods

8.1. Participants

One hundred and fifty kindergarten-aged Hebrew-speaking children (66 boys, 84 girls; Mage = 66.98 months (5.6 years, SD = 6.52) participated in this study. Data were collected in a large metropolitan area in the north of Israel between the years 2017 and 2019. A vast majority (94.4%) of the children came from heterosexual married families, and the remaining were from one-parent families (0.7 percent divorced and 4.4 percent never married). Information on maternal education and maternal reports of total family income were also collected, with 76.3 percent of the mothers earning a college degree or higher education and 60.6 percent of the mothers rating their family income as above average, 21.2 percent as average, and 18.2 percent as below average. Thus, in general, the sample could be classified as a normative, low-risk sample.

8.2. Procedures

Upon receiving approval from the University’s Institutional Review Board (approval #464/16) as well as from the Department of Education Chief Scientist Office (all studies conducted in the Israeli Education System require this approval; approval #9312), fliers were distributed by teachers in kindergartens to recruit families. Consent was obtained from interested parents, and a home visit was scheduled. During the visit, the mothers completed questionnaires capturing demographic information and the researcher engaged in a filmed storytelling/story-processing procedure with the child. Next, during a follow-up visit to the children’s kindergarten classroom, the children completed tasks regarding their verbal abilities, and the teachers completed questionnaires reporting on children’s general academic abilities, approaches to learning, and social skills.

8.3. Measures

Children Emotional Understanding

The children’s emotional understanding was examined using Mindful and Alert Story Processing (MASP; Masked for review, 2023). MASP uses a reading situation where a story is read to a child, questions are presented to the child, and his/her answers are documented. Variables were coded from video-recorded segments of the reading situation. The time for administrating the situation was about fifteen minutes. The interview was created to evaluate the child’s ability to respond to different questions regarding the story while going through the process of identification–echoing–insight [56].
The MASP story is read to the child by a trained interviewer to account for the reader’s influence on child responses, for example, not adding explanations to the story plot or noticing the tone of voice while reading the story to the child [56]. Interviewers were trained by the first author before administrating the procedure and were given instructions as to what questions and follow-up questions to ask. During a training period, the few first administrations were reviewed, and feedback on administration was provided. The chosen story for the MASP task, ‘Two wheels for Grover’ by Dan Elliott [65], refers to a situation well-known to most five- and six-year-old children—learning to ride a bike—and also contains different emotional themes. In the story, Grover does not know how to ride a bike and is too ashamed to tell anyone. Grover makes excuses as to why he cannot ride the bike. Eventually, he tells his cousin, and the cousin teaches Grover how to ride. Questions were asked during and after the story at specific time points, and the responses were scored on a 0 to 3 scale, with a higher score indicating greater-quality responses.
Identification questions measure how well the child can recognize the character’s motives, thoughts, and feelings. Identification questions were: (1) Why did Grover not want Rosie to know he does not know how to ride a bike?; (2) Why did Grover tell Rosie his leg hurt so he could not ride the bike?; and (3) How did Grover feel when Rosie asked him every day to ride the bike with her? The echoing questions examine the child’s ability to use personal experience and his/her inner world to understand the story: (1) (after stopping at specific points of the story) “Tell me about a time in which you felt ashamed.” (2) “what do you think would happen next?” The stopping points in the current story were: (a) after Grover gives excuses as to why he could not ride the bike and (b) when he expresses fear of falling off the bike. The insight questions examine the child’s ability to draw insight from the story, understand the larger context, and recognize different points of view: (1) What advice can you give Grover to help him when Rosie asks him to ride the bike with her? (2) Do you think Grover has a good reason not to tell Rosie he could not ride the bike? If so, what is the reason? and, (3) What did Rosie think when Grover told her he could not go with her to ride the bike because his hand hurt?
After the interview, the interviewer read the child’s answers and coded the answers, generating the three different scales of identification, echoing, and insight (for specific administration, coding, and scoring instructions see Masked for review, 2023 and Appendix A and Appendix B).
Data were coded by the first author with 20 percent of cases coded by another coder trained by the first author. Interrater reliability was calculated using the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) and was found to be adequate: identification = 0.65 (p < 0.001); echoing: 0.91 (p < 0.001); insight: 0.70 (p < 0.001). Disagreements were resolved in a consensus meeting between coders.

8.4. Verbal Abilities

The children’s verbal abilities were measured using the definitions task, developed by Snow et al. [66] and translated and adjusted to Hebrew by Aram [67] Children were asked to define fourteen familiar nouns (e.g., bird, flower, etc.) by answering the question “what is a/an X?” Coding was conducted in two stages: first, the definitions were divided into two groups: formal and informal. Next, the different aspects of each definition were coded according to a six-category scale that includes: syntax, superordinate, relative clause, definitional features, functions, and synonyms. Communicative adequacy was also coded. Overall verbal abilities were calculated according to the sum of scores they were given in the six-category scale. Reliability (Alpha Cronbach) for this scale was reported to be high in previous Hebrew studies at α = 0.93 [68]. In the current study, reliability was similarly strong at α = 0.92.

8.5. Approaches toward Learning

To evaluate the children’s ATL, the teachers completed the Preschool Learning Behavior Scale (PLBS) [39]. The PLBS is a 29-item scale with each item rated on a 3-point scale: 2—“most often applies”, 1— “sometimes applies”, 0—“does not apply.” The scale produces three main dimensions of approaches toward learning: motivation (e.g., “Says tasks are too hard without making an effort to complete them”), persistence (e.g., “Adopts a ‘don’t care’ attitude regarding success or failure”), and attitude (e.g., “Not willing to accept help even if the task is extremely difficult”) and a total score of positive learning behaviors. The Cronbach alpha for motivation was α = 0.84, for persistence was α = 0.82, and for attitude was α = 0.73, with α = 0.88 for the total score.

8.6. Social Skills

The Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire—Teacher version (SDQ) [69] was used to rate the children’s social skills and problem behaviors. This teacher-reported rating scale is comprised of 25 items tapping a child’s social behavior in kindergarten across five different scales: emotional problems (e.g., many fears, easily scared; α = 0.63), peer problems (e.g., rather solitary, tends to play alone; α = 0.64), conduct problems (e.g., often has temper tantrums; α = 0.69), hyperactivity (e.g., restless, over-active; α = 0.83), and pro-social behavior (e.g., shares readily with other children; α = 0.80). Each scale includes 5 items rated on a 3-point Likert scale (0—not true, 1—somewhat true, and 2—very true).

8.7. Control Variables

The control variables included child age and gender, parent education, and family income. All variables were collected using a parent self-report demographic questionnaire.

9. Results

9.1. Analytical Plan

Descriptive statistics are presented for each of the research variables, and correlations between research variables and control variables are examined. Internal correlations for MASP scales are also presented. Next, to control for the relevant variables, partial correlations were used to explore the connections between verbal abilities, ATL, social skills, and MASP scales. Finally, mediation analyses were conducted utilizing R software version 4.0.3 to examine MASP scales as mediators between verbal abilities, approaches toward learning, and social skills.

9.2. Descriptive Statistics and Preliminary Analyses

The descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation, range, and skewness) for all the examined variables are presented in Table 1. The variables for ATL were negatively skewed (skewness ranged between −1.23 and −1.33), which means that teachers tended to rate children’s approaches to learning as high. All skewness values fell within the acceptable range of ±2 [70,71]. T-tests and Pearson correlations revealed associations between some control variables and the variables of interest. In terms of gender, girls demonstrated higher echoing scores (M = 1.95, SD = 0.95) than boys (M = 1.62. SD = 0.93; t (147) = −2.15, p = 0.04, d = 0.35), and more prosocial behavior than boys (girls; M = 7.89, SD = 2.27; boys; M = 7.04, SD = 2.25; t (142) = −2.25, p = 0.03, d = 0.38). Age was also positively related to higher scores in identification (r (142) = 0.38, p = 0.00), insight (r (139) = 0.30, p = 0.00), and prosocial behavior (r (138) =.18, p = 0.04). The mother’s education was found to be related to SDQ scores; emotional problems (r (130) = -.29, p = 0.001), conduct problems (r (130) = −0.22, p = 0.01), hyperactivity (r (130) = −0.21, p = 0.02), and PLBS scores (r (130) = 0.39, p = 0.00). Control variables were included in the main analyses when relevant.
Internal correlations between the three MASP scales revealed statistically significant positive correlations: identification was positively correlated with echoing (r (146) = 0.28, p < 0.01) and insight (r (146) = 0.58, p = 0.00). Echoing and insight were also positively correlated (r (146) = 0.23, p < 0.05). Exploratory factor analysis for MASP scales (identification, echoing, insight) extracted one component (factor loadings ranged from 0.57 to 0.86 for each sub-scale); however, the variance explained by the common factor was not moderate (eigenvalues = 1.74, variance explained = KMO = 0.57, Bartlett’s p-value < 0.001). These results suggest that although it is possible to use one general component, each scale stands on its own and provides unique information. Thus, each scale was individually examined to explore each scale’s unique contribution to school readiness.
H1. 
Partial Correlations between Verbal Abilities, Approaches Toward Learning, and Social Skills.
Table 2 shows partial correlations (after controlling for the confounding variables: child age and gender, parent education, and family income) between the three school readiness indicators: verbal abilities, ATL, as measured with the PLBS, and social skills. Verbal abilities were found to positively correlate with PLBS scales (except for attitude) and negatively correlated with hyperactivity. PLBS scores were also negatively correlated with SDQ’s problem behaviors and positively correlated with pro-social behavior.
H2. 
Partial Correlations Between MASP, Verbal Abilities, Social Skills, and Approaches Toward Learning.
Table 3 shows the partial correlations (after controlling for the confounding variables: child age and gender, parent education, and family income) between MASP variables (identification, echoing, and insight) and the school readiness indicators. Identification and insight were positively correlated with verbal abilities. Insight was positively correlated with motivation and persistence (as well as with the PLBS total score). Finally, echoing and insight were negatively associated with hyperactivity.
H3. 
MASP Variables will Mediate the Relationship between Verbal Abilities, Approaches Toward Learning, and Social Skills.
Mediation analyses were conducted utilizing R software version 4.0.3. The results are presented in Table 4 and Figure 1a–c. Three significant mediations were found, all with insight as a mediator: (1) Insight fully mediated the relationship between verbal abilities and PLBS total score, with insight accounting for 32 percent of the total effect (Table 4, Figure 1a). (2) Insight also mediated the relationship between verbal abilities and persistence, with insight accounting for 26 percent of the total effect (Table 4, Figure 1b). Finally, (3) insight partially mediated the relationship between verbal abilities and hyperactivity, with insight accounting for 16 percent of the total effect (Table 4, Figure 1c).

10. Discussion

The current research examined the connection between children’s emotional understanding and different aspects of school readiness. As expected, children’s school readiness markers were interrelated and associated with children’s emotional understanding. However, the magnitudes of these associations were quite different, as discussed below along with the implications of these findings.

10.1. Intercorrelations among the Three School Readiness Constructs

The current study measured various domains (academic and social) of school readiness. Consistent with the literature, school readiness constructs were related to each other, and children who demonstrated well-developed skills in one domain also demonstrated well-developed skills in the other. Children with stronger verbal skills were also reported to have better ATL and less hyperactivity. Consistent with the literature [52,53], children with more advantageous ATL also demonstrated less externalizing and internalizing behaviors in the classroom and were more prosocial with their peers.

10.2. Emotional Understanding and Verbal Abilities

Verbal abilities are at the foundational core of children’s social and academic capabilities [72]. Extensive research connects verbal abilities and emotional understanding at preschool and kindergarten ages [34,35,36,37]. As such, they are expected to be associated with social and academic abilities, as well as with children’s emotional understanding, as reflected in their verbal responses to a story. Indeed, strong verbal skills were positively related to better identification and insight in response to the story. Children with stronger verbal abilities successfully identified the story protagonist’s feelings and recognized differing points of view within the story.
In contrast, and contrary to expectations, no relationship was found between verbal abilities and children’s echoing. One potential reason for this null result is that echoing is an emotionally demanding task. That is, the ability to “echo” and relate to another’s internal experience primarily demands access to our own emotions and experiences and not verbal skills alone. On the other hand, identification requires complex cognitive processes, such as the need to understand underlying character motives, the need to understand conversation content within the story, and the ability to verbalize the emotions that the children ascribe to the character. This presumably requires more advanced verbal skills in conjunction with other cognitive skills. Insight seems to be a higher-order cognitive task, in that children were asked to look at the story from different perspectives, give advice to the character, and, once again, verbalize reasons for the character’s actions. Pons and his colleagues examined the development of emotion comprehension and found that by age 5, children have the cognitive ability to recognize emotional expressions and identify external causes of emotions [73]. It is possible that the complex cognitive and emotional demand of echoing is related to emotional comprehension, which develops over time, and less to a child’s verbal skills.

10.3. Emotional Understanding and Social Skills

The children’s echoing and insight were both negatively correlated with hyperactivity, as reported by the teacher. The hyperactivity scale utilized in this study outlined five hyperactive behaviors: restlessness, fidgeting or squirming, distractibility, impulsivity, and (not) seeing tasks through to the end. Being distracted throughout storytelling can result in missing important words or facts in the plot line, and therefore might interfere with the ability to identify with the character in the story. Echoing requires thinking and finding an example from the child’s personal life; therefore, characteristics of hyperactivity such as acting out and impulsivity may distract hyperactive children from the required task of thinking about their own personal examples. Further, a lack of concentration on the story might also distract children from following the plot, resulting in the inability to identify relevant examples using their understanding of the earlier events in the story. These findings are consistent with previous research indicating that students with diagnosed ADHD (a core component of the diagnosis being hyperactivity, impulsivity, and early executive dysfunction) demonstrate more behavioral problems, difficulties with social skills, and difficulties in school functioning as compared with their non-hyperactive peers [74,75].

10.4. Emotional Understanding and Approaches toward Learning

Insight, a cognitively demanding task, was positively related to children’s reported motivation and persistence. Children who can understand meaningful lessons and contexts in an interactive storytelling situation are also more motivated and persistent in their learning. Interestingly, the uniquely cognitive and emotionally demanding MASP tasks (e.g., identification and echoing, respectively) were not related to the children’s ATL. While this is contrary to original expectations, the results demonstrate the importance of the children’s ability to understand a story in a larger context for more advantageous approaches to learning, while identifying with the main character and finding personal examples are not necessarily related to student’s early attitudes and ATL. These findings are consistent with previous research demonstrating the connection between emotional understanding, early executive functioning skills, and verbal abilities [34].

10.5. Insight Mediates Associations between Verbal Abilities and Other School Readiness Constructs

Insight was found to mediate the association between verbal abilities and both academic and social skills. First, insight mediated the connection between verbal abilities and ATL. Once again, the children’s ability to use specific skills in the context of processing a narrated story to think more broadly, make inferences, and verbalize these conclusions about the situation in the story seemed to explain much of the variance in the link between verbal abilities and approaches toward learning. Insight contains both emotional and cognitive abilities, and this combination can be crucial for children’s approaches toward learning. Insight questions are cognitively demanding, as they refer to a higher-order thinking process. That is, insight questions require the child to think across domains (social cognition and emotional cognition) about the story from a broader perspective in terms of the advice they would give the character in the story and examine the perspectives of different characters. Thus, the multifaceted and cognitively demanding nature of this skill may explain why insight was uniquely related to learning behaviors. Due to the nature of the insight questions, this skill might be related to metacognitive abilities, which are related to school achievement outcomes in the literature, such as executive functioning and literacy achievements [76].
Overall, the findings demonstrate the utility of storytelling situations for auditory processing of emotionally loaded themes and that children may develop processing skills through these means that are above and beyond their current verbal abilities. Second, insight also mediated the link between verbal skills and hyperactivity. This suggests that verbal abilities may not be at the root of the difficulty that hyperactive children had with the MASP task. Instead, it might be that their difficulty relates to underdeveloped abilities to stop and look at the bigger picture, to look at a situation from a different perspective, and to distance themselves from a situation to gain insight. In this instance, distance is understood as perspective from the story and from the character in the story, but it could be applied to different aspects in early education settings and later in the classroom, such as distancing oneself from social situations to think more clearly.

10.6. Study Limitations and Future Directions

Some limitations should be noted and addressed in future studies. First, the data were gathered at one time point; therefore, causal conclusions could not be empirically confirmed. To fully understand the impact of identification, echoing, and insight abilities on later academic and social skills, further longitudinal research is needed to explore social development beyond the kindergarten years. Such a design will also enable measuring alternative models in which, for example, mental processes precede verbal skills.
Second, the sample size was modest and included mainly low-risk, middle-class families. This may limit the generalizability of our findings to other populations. Future studies should examine the current model in larger and more diverse populations, especially in populations where there are differing levels of story reading and literacy in the home environment.
Despite these limitations, the current study adds to and extends existing knowledge about school readiness components, suggesting that MASP can be used as a proxy of school readiness, as well as a method for enhancing the development of verbal, cognitive, and emotional abilities.

10.7. Implications for Practice

The results of the current study suggest that bibliotherapy-informed measures, such as the MASP, could be an effective method to both gauge and enhance students’ motivation and persistence in early education environments. Identification, echoing, and insight skills represent indications that influence young children’s school readiness in a way that is above and beyond their verbal abilities alone. The emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components in such storytelling situations allow for a unique window into children’s understanding of narratives and concepts in a way that is developmentally appropriate, natural, and approachable. Further, teaching with stories allows teachers not only to evaluate students’ current functioning but also to differentiate learning according to levels of students’ understanding and abilities. The results of the current study highlight the importance of the quality of training for teachers working with young children. During training, there should be an emphasis on the behavioral, cognitive, and emotional processes behind reading and understanding stories as a tool for developing school readiness (cognitively, socially, and emotionally).
Stories in kindergarten should be used intentionally, taking into consideration children’s developmental needs in accordance with their emotional and cognitive abilities. This method can address more than linguistic goals, as books can also be used to help with social and emotional development.
Asking questions during a story may be utilized as a way of interactive communication, and the reading situation needs to be constructed in a meaningful way to prevent children from losing focus. To enhance children’s readiness for school, teachers need to be mindful of the possibilities and ways of using storytelling to tap into children’s identification, echoing, and insight skills. Teachers should also construct the reading situation in a manner that takes children’s cognitive and emotional understanding into account while using interactive communication to keep children engaged and to explore children’s reactions and understating of the story.

11. Summary and Conclusions

The current study examined the relationship between children’s responses to a story using bibliotherapeutic means, their verbal abilities, and their approaches toward learning. Empirically, this study contributes to and extends existing knowledge on school readiness by understanding the importance of the cognitive–emotional process of storytelling as an indicator of school readiness, as well as a mediator of verbal skills and social behaviors (both well-established indicators of children’s school readiness). This is the first study that looks at the MASP tool, a story-processing tool that mimics natural storytelling in early education classrooms, as an indicator of school readiness. While bibliotherapeutic and storytelling techniques are ubiquitous in preschool and kindergarten classrooms, the mechanisms and implications of these practices are relatively understudied within the context of school readiness. The current study expands the current knowledge of these naturally occurring techniques by providing a mechanism to empirically measure children’s narrative development in a way that is natural, non-threatening, and developmentally appropriate to them.
This research also has practical implications that emphasize the importance of the emotional understanding aspects of stories (identification, echoing, and insight) to support children’s readiness for school and their social and emotional development. The ability to gain insight from the story, in particular, was related to approaches toward learning and mediated the links between verbal abilities and approaches toward learning and hyperactivity. This knowledge can help guide practitioners to not only attend to the verbal aspects of a story but also pay attention to other components such as children’s ability to understand different perspectives in the story, to think about solutions to problems that occur in the story, and to look at the bigger picture. Story processing provides teachers with an approachable tool to gauge and further the development of children’s social, cognitive, and emotive skills. This study provides a necessary starting point in the under-explored area of utilizing bibliotherapeutic tools to assess and understand school readiness.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization: I.S., Methodology: I.S. and A.C., Investigation: I.S. and Y.Z., Data Curation: Y.Z., Writing—original draft preparation: I.S. and A.C., Writing—Review and editing: A.C. and Y.Z., Project Administration: I.S., Funding acquisition: Y.Z. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This research was funded by the Israel Science Foundation, grant number 492/16.

Institutional Review Board Statement

The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University of Haifa (approval #464/16) as well as from the Department of Education Chief Scientist Office (all studies conducted in the Israeli Education System require this approval; approval #9312).

Informed Consent Statement

Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

Data Availability Statement

Data available on request due to restrictions eg privacy or ethical.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Appendix A

“Two Wheels for Grover” Bibliotherapeutic Methods Administration Protocol
A.1.: So far, we read that Grover arrived at the village, and Rosie asked him to ride the bike together. Grover does not know how to ride a bike. Grover does not want Rosie to find out that he does not know how to ride. He thinks to himself that he does not know how to ride, and he is afraid to fall.
“What doesn’t Grover want Rosie to know? ”
(If the child does not understand, clarify that Grover didn’t want Rosie to know that he can’t ride a bike, and ask again to make sure the child understands).
“Why didn’t Grover want Rosie to know he can’t ride a bike?”
(Clarification question: Why didn’t he want Rosie to know that? What do you think?)		 ____________________________________
____________________________________
____________________________________
____________________________________
____________________________________
A.2. Now we read that Grover, who does not know how to ride a bike, tells Rosie that his mother does not allow him to ride the bike. Rosie tells him they called the mother, and she does allow Grover to ride the bike. After that Grover says to Rosie his leg hurts and he can’t ride the bike today.
“Why does Grover say his leg hurts?”
(A longer answer can be encouraged by asking: “and what else?”)		 ___________________________________
___________________________________
___________________________________
___________________________________
___________________________________
A.3. We read that Grover played with Rosie and Frank every day in all sorts of games, and every day Rosie asked Grover to come ride the bike with her, but Grover tells her every time that his hand hurts or that he ate too much or that he doesn’t feel like riding.
“How did Grover feel when Rosie asked him to ride with her every day?”
(A longer answer can be encouraged by asking: “and what else?”
If the child replies, then it’s possible to ask: “why do you think he felt that way?”)		 __________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
B.1. “Tell me about a time in which you felt ashamed”
Can be added: “Like Grover was ashamed and didn’t want to tell Rosie he doesn’t know how to ride”
Follow up questions: “When did that happen?”
“Did you not want others to know about it?”
“How does it feel to be ashamed?” 		___________________________________
___________________________________
___________________________________
___________________________________
___________________________________
___________________________________
B.2. We now read that Grover tells Frank that he doesn’t know how to ride a bike. Frank tells Grover that he will teach him to ride.
“What will happen next?”		__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
C.1. Do you remember we read that every day Rosie would ask Grover to ride with her, and every day Grover would say he doesn’t want to ride and that his leg hurts?
“Which advise can you give Grover to help him when Rosie asks him if he can come and ride with her?”		_________________________________
_________________________________
_________________________________
_________________________________
_________________________________
C.2. Do you remember that Grover didn’t want to tell Rosie he can’t ride a bike?
“In your opinion, does Grover have a good reason not to tell her he can’t ride with her? What is the reason?”		_________________________________
_________________________________
_________________________________
_________________________________
C.3. Do you remember that time when Grover told Rosie he can’t ride with her because his hand hurts?
“What did Rosie think when Grover told her he can’t ride with her because his hand hurts?”		________________________________
________________________________
________________________________
________________________________
________________________________

Appendix B

Coding Protocol
Identification
0The child does not refer to the emotions, thoughts, or motives of the character.
1The child refers to emotions/thoughts/motives, but they do not match the character’s inner world and feelings.
1.5This score can be given if, in general, the answers do not match the character’s inner world, but there is one example that reflects an understanding of the character’s thoughts or motives.
2The child refers to one or two aspects of the character’s inner world: an emotion, a thought, or a motive.
2.5The answers reflect the character’s inner world in addition to one answer, or all of the answers reflect the character’s inner world; however, the answers are sparse.
3The child refers to more than one aspect of the character’s inner world and shows understanding of the internal motives, thoughts, and feelings of the character.
Echoing
0The child does not give an example from personal experience and does not fill in gaps in the story when asked.
1The child can fill in gaps in the story but does not give a personal example.
1.5The child fills in gaps in the story and gives a personal example, but the example is unrelated to the theme of the story.
2The child fills in gaps in the story when asked and gives a personal example, but the answers are very short and limited.
2.5This score is given considering the richness of the answer.
3The child fills in gaps in the story when asked and connects a personal experience to the story.
Insight
0The child does not know how to answer the insight questions or gives non-insightful answers (answers that do not reflect an ability to look at things from more than one perspective and do not reflect an ability to think about the bigger picture and have new insights).
1The child answers the insight questions, but the answers are not suited to the story and the plot line.
1.5Only one full answer.
2The child answers the insight questions in a short and limited fashion.
2.5Adequate answers except one answer that is not in line with the story.
3The child answers the insight questions and shows an ability to think about the bigger picture and to share insights.

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Education 13 01169 g001aEducation 13 01169 g001b
Figure 1. (a) Insight as a mediator between verbal abilities and PLBS total score; (b) insight as a mediator between verbal abilities and persistence; (c) insight as a mediator between verbal abilities and hyperactivity. Note: * indicates significance at the 0.05 level.
Figure 1. (a) Insight as a mediator between verbal abilities and PLBS total score; (b) insight as a mediator between verbal abilities and persistence; (c) insight as a mediator between verbal abilities and hyperactivity. Note: * indicates significance at the 0.05 level.
Education 13 01169 g001aEducation 13 01169 g001b
Table 1. Descriptive statistics.
Table 1. Descriptive statistics.
NRangeMinMaxMSDSkewness
Verbal abilities1460–130013057.3228.070.21
Mindful and Alert Story Processing (MASP)
Identification1460–3032.360.68−0.72
Echoing1450–3031.750.950.14
Insight1430–3032.110.77−0.51
Approaches toward learning
Motivation1440–2202217.354.34−1.26
Persistence1440–1811814.213.85−1.23
Attitude1440–1411410.922.84−1.32
Total PLBS1440–4864837.658.54−1.33
Social skills
Emotional problems1440–100101.721.731.24
Conduct problems1440–7071.011.591.73
Hyperactivity1440–9092.342.420.87
Peer problems1440–6060.991.401.61
Total problems score1440–240246.054.980.95
Pro-social behavior1440–101107.412.29−0.61
Table 2. Intercorrelations of school readiness indicators.
Table 2. Intercorrelations of school readiness indicators.
School Readiness IndicatorsVerbal AbilitiesPLBS: Total ScorePLBS:
Motivation		PLBS:
Persistence		PLBS: AttitudeSDQ:
Conduct Problems		SDQ:
Hyperactivity		SDQ:
Emotional problems		SDQ: Peer Problems
PLBS: Total score0.21 *-------
PLBS: Motivation0.19 *0.90 ***------
PLBS: Persistence0.18 *0.91 ***0.73 ***-----
PLBS: Attitude0.040.82 ***0.58 ***0.71 ***----
SDQ: Conduct problems0.10−0.29 **−0.090.31 ***0.42 ***---
SDQ: Hyperactivity−0.22−0.47 ***−0.33 ***−0.59 ***−0.32 ***0.49 ***--
SDQ: Emotional problems−0.11−0.49 ***−0.56 ***−0.34 ***−0.32 ***0.19 *0.36 ***-
SDQ: Peer
Problems		0.15−0.30 ***−0.33 ***−0.17 ^−0.26 **0.23 **0.100.25 **
SDQ: Prosocial0.000.42 ***0.23 **0.40 ***0.51 ***−0.49 ***−0.47 ***−0.34 ***−0.22 **
Note: ^ indicates marginal significance (p < 0.10), * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001.
Table 3. Correlations between MASP variables and school readiness indicators.
Table 3. Correlations between MASP variables and school readiness indicators.
IdentificationEchoingInsight
Verbal abilities0.22 *0.070.23 **
PLBS: Total score0.030.080.28 **
PLBS: Motivation 0.090.100.31 **
PLBS: Persistence −0.040.060.26 **
PLBS: Attitude 0.000.010.17 ^
SDQ: Conduct problems0.08−0.02−0.01
SDQ: Hyperactivity0.06−0.18 *−0.26 *
SDQ: Emotional problems−0.01−0.12−0.15
SDQ: Peer problems0.08−0.040.04
SDQ: Prosocial−0.120.130.15
Note: ^ indicates marginal significant (p < 0.10), * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01.
Table 4. Mediation analyses.
Table 4. Mediation analyses.
Verbal abilities; PLBS total score; mediator: insight
Β95% CIP
Average mediated effects (indirect effect)0.050.01, 0.10<0.0001
Average direct effects0.11−0.04, 0.230.14
Total effect0.160.00, 0.280.044
Proportion mediated0.320.04, 1.000.044
Verbal abilities; PLBS persistence; mediator: insight
Average mediated effects (indirect effect)0.050.01, 0.100.004
Average direct effects0.140.00, 0.280.052
Total effect0.200.04, 0.340.020
Proportion mediated0.260.05, 0.730.024
Verbal abilities; SDQ hyperactivity,;mediator: insight
Average mediated effects (indirect effect)−0.04−0.10, 0.000.028
Average direct effects−0.21−0.37, −0.050.008
Total effect−0.25−0.40, −0.100.004
Proportion mediated0.160.01, 0.500.032
N = 144, bootstraps: 500.
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Sofri, I.; Czik, A.; Ziv, Y. Are You Ready for a Story? Kindergarten Children’s Emotional Competencies during a Story-Reading Situation Is Associated with Their Readiness for School. Educ. Sci. 2023, 13, 1169. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13121169

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Sofri I, Czik A, Ziv Y. Are You Ready for a Story? Kindergarten Children’s Emotional Competencies during a Story-Reading Situation Is Associated with Their Readiness for School. Education Sciences. 2023; 13(12):1169. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13121169

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Sofri, Inbar, Amanda Czik, and Yair Ziv. 2023. "Are You Ready for a Story? Kindergarten Children’s Emotional Competencies during a Story-Reading Situation Is Associated with Their Readiness for School" Education Sciences 13, no. 12: 1169. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13121169

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