Developing Children's Cognitive Functions and Increasing
Learning Effectiveness: An Intervention Using the Bright Start Cognitive Curriculum for Young Children

Abstract

To prepare the young generation for the challenges of a competitive and rapidly changing world, the education systems of Singapore and in many countries in East Asia are focusing on developing children's thinking and learning skills.
This research study examines the effects of a cognitive programme, the Bright Start Cognitive Curriculum for young children, on kindergarten children's cognitive functions and their learning effectiveness. The study adopted an experimental, pretest posttest design with an experimental group of 43 children and a control group of 37 children. The Bright Start Cognitive Curriculum was systematically implemented over a period of six months with the children from the experimental group. The children from the control group had their regular integrated thematic curriculum.
The study used a combination of methods to collect data, involving measurements of children's pre and post tests performances on cognitive tasks, analyses of video recordings of teaching observations and teachers‟ feedback of children‟s performances in class.
The findings of the research study suggest that children from the experimental group showed greater improvement in all the cognitive tasks from pre to post testing than the children in the control group. The children‟s response to mediation scores in the experimental group were positively correlated with their post test scores. The experimental teachers scored higher in all three essential components of Mediated Learning Experience (MLE) than the control teachers; with marked difference between the two groups in the criteria of transcendence. However, the control teachers scored better in affective involvement, which is not one of the essential qualifying components of MLE.