School readiness has been defined by the Gesell Institute of Child Development as a set of skills and behaviors that allow a child to cope and learn in a school environment, physically, socially, and emotionally as well as intellectually, without undue stress. So what does school readiness look like and how is readiness assessed in children who are about to enter school or preschool?

The concept of school readiness was first popularized by the maturationists in the early part of the 20th century. Maturationists proposed that while all children pass through the same stages and sequence of development, each child has his or her own pace and rate of development. This rate or pace of development was influenced by heredity, temperament, culture, health, intelligence, and environment—and ...