Abstracts - Earli

showed that all the ten scales were unidimensional and with Chronbach’s Alpha acceptableconsidering the number of items for each scale (min Alpha .64 for Motivation; max Alpha .81 forTime Management and Anxiety).Fostering literacy in young children: peer interaction during pretend playEsther Vardi-Rath, Kaye College of Education, IsraelTamar Eylon, Kaye College of Education, IsraelTeresa Lewin, Kaye College of Education, IsraelZehava Cohen, Kaye College of Education, IsraelHadassah Aillenberg, Kaye College of Education, IsraelThis research deals with the discourse of young children during peer interaction in pretend play inthe wake of reading stories and examining the relation between the characteristics of that discourseand the children’s literacy skills. The purpose of this study is to describe children’s negotiations indeveloping their play and the way children perform the transformation in order to construct theirimaginary activity. The data were collected in Kindergartens and first and second grades. The preserviceteacher read a story to a group of four or five children and thereafter encouraged them toplay it. Discourse analysis was carried out on the basis of a coding scheme designed to categorizethirty transcripts. The findings show that children are capable of collaborative negotiation in peerinteraction concerning the play frame while improvising and proposing innovative ideas. In doingso, they often need to make symbolic representation according to the requirement of the particularplot (role, artifacts, scenario, and so on). A quantitative analysis shows that most of the children’snegotiations takes place in a "meta-play" domain and are about artifacts and role-taking. Theperformance of symbolic representation (transformation) appears in two phases: the planning andthe acting out of the transformation. A considerable portion of the representational content of thetransformations is devoted to characters in the story. Looking at the representational medium oftransformation, various means of symbolic representation can be seen: verbal statement,expression by gesture, use of artifacts and the use of the characters’ language in the story. To sumup, children’s peer interaction during pretend play is an activity with great potential for social andcognitive learning, and can be an opportunity to foster literacy skills, such as negotiations andsymbolic representation.The importance of preschool quality for early predictors of future school successSusanne Ebert, Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg; BiKS Projekt, GermanyMinja Dubowy, Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg; BiKS Projekt, GermanyJutta von Maurice, Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg; BiKS Projekt, GermanyHans-Günter Rossbach, Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg; BiKS Projekt, GermanySabine Weinert, Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg; BiKS Projekt, GermanyAgainst the background that advancements in preschool support children’s later success in school,the presentation focuses on the importance of different aspects of preschool quality forpreschoolers’ performance on tasks that are known to measure specific predictors for futuresuccess in school. The research is part of a more comprehensive German longitudinal projectstudying educational processes, competence development and selection decisions in preschool andprimary school age children (BiKS, Bildungsprozesse, Kompetenzentwicklung undSelektionsentscheidungen im Vor- und Grundschulalter). In our presentation a subgroup of 126children of the BiKS-3-8 study is selected to explore the interrelation between more generalcompared to more specific measures of preschool quality and skill acquisition. Account is given tomeasurement point 3 when children are between 4;6 and 5;2 years of age.– 659 –