Participants
The present study was conducted in Shenzhen, one of the leading cities
in China where early childhood education (ECE) has been well developed.
A convenience sample of three public preschools was selected from the
same community, serving families of the same socioeconomic status. In
the preschools, a stratified sample of two classes each of K1, K2 and
K3, totaling 18 classes, and then a random sample of 15 children from
each class participated in the study, comprising 90 children from K1 (M
= 47.72, SD = 0.36), 90 from K2 (M = 59.72, SD = 0.39), and 90 from K3
(M = 70.87, SD = 0.44). In China, children typically begin preschool at
around the age of 3 and transition to primary school between 6 and 7
(Xie & Li, 2019). The different grades represent different age groups,
with children in K1 aged 3-4 years, K2 aged 4-5 years, and K3 aged 5-6
years. To facilitate multi-group comparisons across ages, we transformed
the continuous numerical variable of age into the categorical variable
of grade level. The sample included 154 (57%) boys and 116 (43%)
girls. All lead teachers from the 18 classes were female, with an
average teaching experience of 8.94 years (SD=6.09), ranging from 4
years to 27 years (see Table 1).
<Insert Table 1 HERE>