The acquisition of preschool competencies

The reseach cluster "The acquisition of preschool competencies" consists of the following research projects:

For further information, please click here.

This cluster presents comprehensive research into children’s pre-academic competencies that pursue 3 different perspectives: One perspective traces both the development of overarching or general and of domain-specific pre-academic skills from 3 to 7-8 years of age (Project on Differential Trajectories of Cognitive Competencies in Kindergarten Age). A second perspective focuses on early mathematical skills and examines possible interventions in this domain (Project on Spatial Cognition and Mathematics in Kindergarten). A third perspective delves into children’s social-emotional competencies and studies their development, also in relation to children’s pre-academic skills (Project A Training Study on Social and Emotional Learning in Kindergarten). Because the three studies share a set of key variables and because every study includes an intervention component, it will also be possible to include thematically unrelated trainings as control groups for treatment effects, which is attractive from a methodological point of view.