Association Between Children’s Home Play Opportunity and School Readiness: Object and Social Mastery Motivation as Mediators?

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the direct relationship between home play opportunity and prospective school readiness, and the indirect relationships as mediated through object and social mastery motivation among Hong Kong Chinese kindergarten children. Participants were 106 local children (44.4% girls, mean age = 60.0 months) and their parents and teachers. Parents reported the demographic information and children’s home play opportunity at time 1 (beginning of the school year), whereas children’s object mastery motivation, social mastery motivation, and school readiness were reported by their teachers at time 2 (six months later). Research Findings: Results from the path analytic model revealed that children’s home play opportunity significantly predicted their object mastery motivation, but not social mastery motivation or school readiness. Both object and social mastery motivation were positively associated with school readiness. Furthermore, the indirect relationship between home play opportunity, object mastery motivation, and school readiness was significant, but the one via social mastery motivation was non-significant. Practice or Policy: The findings highlight the collective roles of object and social mastery motivation in predicting children’s school readiness. The results also suggest the desirability of providing kindergarten children with a varied and accessible home play environment which may promote their mastery motivation and school readiness.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Compliance with Ethical Standards

This manuscript was prepared in accord with the ethical standards of the American Psychological Association.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in this study were reviewed and approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of the Education University of Hong Kong (approval number 2019–2020–0281).

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all participants included in the study.

Data Availability Statement

Research data are not shared.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Internal Research Grant from the Education University of Hong Kong [grant number RG 66/2019-2020R].