Cognitive Skills Inclluded in the kindergarten Curriculum According to Marzanos Model

Abstract

    The research aims to determine the extent to which the mental skills included in the kindergarten curriculum are included according to Marzano's model. This required the researchers to adopt Marzano's mental skills classification tool, which is a list of (8) main mental skill categories and (21) sub-skills. Based on this, the questions and activities of the kindergarten curriculum for the initial and introductory stages for the 2024-2025 academic year were analyzed. The researchers used the descriptive approach (content analysis) and relied on the explicit idea alone for recording. Among the results reached by the research was that the questions and activities of the kindergarten teaching curriculum, the first stage, the first year, had the highest repetitions of mental skills, with (183) repetitions and a percentage of (36.09%), while the reasoning skill in all activities had the highest repetition, with (167) repetitions and a percentage of (32.94%) in all the questions and activities of the kindergarten teaching curriculum. The most prominent conclusions were summarized in that the questions and activities of the kindergarten teaching curriculum largely address sensory information and the mental skills related to that. In light of that, the researchers recommended the necessity of balancing the percentages of including mental skills in the kindergarten teaching curriculum. The research came out with proposals, including analyzing and evaluating the kindergarten curriculum according to Marzano’s model.