The Pre-Kindergarten Learning Enterprise (PKLE)

Abstract

To meet the challenges that todays pre-Kindergarten children will face as adults, they need effective development and learning organizations. Together, those organizations form the pre-Kindergarten (pre-K) learning enterprise, whose characteristics and behaviors greatly influence what pre-K children learn and how well they learn it. In this paper, the pre-K learning enterprise is explicitly defined and modeled for the first time and then analyzed through a systems thinking lens using systemigrams and related causal loop diagrams. Defining and modeling the pre-K learning enterprise is itself valuable as a means to understand the various relationships that exist among the identified constituent systems (e.g., home environment, preschool, financial, health care, state, and government) and the stakeholders identified within the enterprise (e.g., parents, educators, health care providers, and policy makers). That value is enhanced through an analysis which reveals the predominant reliance of several key pre-K learning enterprise component systems on the financial system while exposing weak interactions among the three main participating systems (preschools, home environment, and government). Heavy reliance on the financial system in todays economy reduces the effectiveness of the pre-K learning enterprise. To ease such reliance on the financial system while enhancing key interrelationships, three improvements to the existing enterprise are postulated: (1) enhance the role of parents through better education on child development, learning, health and nutrition and their increased voluntary involvement with preschools, (2) reduce the dependency on the financial system and promote partnerships among preschools, sports facilities, libraries and other learning systems to share resources, and (3) enhance government role through implementation of curriculum standardization, assessment and evaluation, and an effective policy towards mandatory education of low-income children.