Contribution of Gender on Learning Readiness among School Students of Nepal

Readiness is the prerequisite for the effective learning process among school students. Its absence can hinder the learning of the students and schooling as a whole. The purpose of this study is to examine the contributions of gender in learning readiness.  This study is based on the cross-sectional survey design and it employed purposive sampling to gather data from 400 students via questionnaire. Then, the data were analyzed employing both descriptive and parametric statistical measures, particularly independent sample t-test.  In the meantime, the researcher has incorporated the social capital theory for discussing the results. The derived result reveals that all dimensions (student, school, and family) elucidated the high level of learning readiness among students.  Likewise, gender makes significant contributions in learning readiness and its dimensions due to variation in the influences related to the existing social capitals among students.  Finally, it is wrapped up that without gender equality, the enhancement of learning readiness is not possible.


INTRODUCTION
The high academic achievement among students is the prime goal of the education system. However, it is only possible when the students display readiness to learn both in the school and at home. The learning readiness, here, refers to the high amount of eagerness and preparedness to learn amid students (Gandhi, 2010). In the words of Gunawardena and Duphorne (2000), the learning readiness is reflected as the satisfaction from learning experiences. This gratification from learning is one of the factors associating with principals of learning (Horzum et al., 2015). Likewise, Thorndike (1989) mentions learning readiness as the first primary law of learning (as cited in Gandhi, 2010). The illustrations divulge that learning occurs when the students initiate the modification process and form an attitude. Thus, learning readiness forms a crucial part of the teaching-learning process.
Considering the dimensions of learning readiness, the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund ([UNICEF], 2012), and the United States Department of Health and Human Services ([USDHHS], 2014) recognizes the student readiness, family readiness and school readiness as specific components of learning readiness. Among these dimensions, student readiness is related to the person (e.g., physical, mental, and emotional) state of student whereas other dimensions are associated with the student's relatedness. Likewise, the school readiness is related to the teachers, school environment, and class motivation like school factors which is preparedness to students for learning (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO], 2007). In addition, family readiness refers to the overall vigilance of parents to their children. It incorporates the tasks like; providing the sound learning environment, sending to the best school, providing all required facilities to develop the finest learning culture among their children (Alexander et al., 1994). The assurance of these three elements altogether creates a favorable learning environment among students and it eventually prepares them to learn.
The learning readiness becomes an essential task for achieving outstanding results in exams. As it is a precondition for the learning process, its absence can limit the journey of learning. In other words, every effort of students, schools, and parents becomes meaningless in spite of the learning readiness in a student's learning process. Furthermore, the educational achievement of students will decrease without an eagerness to learn. On the contrary, if the learners are physically and mentally ready to learn, their enthusiasm gears up in the study (Prakash, 2012), and they may become able to learn.
Likewise, learning readiness is allied with the gender of students (Voyles, 2011). More specifically, gender plays a crucial role to develop the values, beliefs, preferences, and attitudes towards learning in students. This value system regarding gender crafts the favorable environment via school and family, and prepares student readiness for the learning. Furthermore, the gender role towards learning readiness is influenced by social capital and it is associated with the social capital theory (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). The social capital theory poses the capital, field, and habitus (Waterfield, 2015) respectively. The capital is a social outlook (Bourdieu, 1986) which/that encompasses the knowledge, social bonding, and experiences in relation to facilitating a favorable environment for students learning process. The encouraging environment motivates and creates an eagerness among students to learn. Thus, social capital drives students to attend the school, schools to create a supportive environment for learning, and families to send their child in schools as the field knowing locations of social positions. In the field, they are influenced by a cognitive scheme as preparedness to learn (by the student), teach (by the teacher), and send a child in school (by parents) and replicate their character (Gaventa, 2003) as habitus. Thus, habitus is a disposition or attitude (Waterfield, 2015) of students, teachers, and parents which jointly reflected as the learning readiness.
It is a truism that learning readiness is a crucial factor in teaching and learning arenas. Without learning readiness, the teaching and learning process becomes incomplete. Without students' readiness, no educational goals will achieve success among students. Thus, the lack of learning readiness among students can turn into an immense obstruction to promoting quality school education. Keeping it into consideration, a few studies are made on how learning readiness is contributed by gender among students. The accomplished studies concerning the relationship between gender and learning readiness, however, hardly repres ent the Nepal context. This praxis elevates a number of questions like: What is the level of learning readiness among students of different genders? What are the dimensions of learning readiness in the context of Nepal? and Which factors contribute to learning readiness among girls and boys? Among these concerns, this study has focused to address the issue relating to what extent did the learning readiness exists and is influenced by gender in the school setting.

Aim, Research Questions, and Hypothesis
This research aims to assess the level of learning readiness (student readiness, school readiness, and family readiness) and examine the influences gender makes upon it among students. For achieving these aims, this study raises the following research questions: 1. What is the level of learning readiness among school students? 2. Did gender contribute to learning readiness in an academic setting?
Subsequently, the researcher also constructed the hypothesis as: Gender did not enhance the learning readiness of school students.

Learning Readiness and its Dimensions
Learning readiness has been associated with affirmative social and behavioral competencies in terms of better educational outcomes among students. It refers to the outlook of inspiring learning situations among individuals which is needed to start any learning tasks for getting better benefits within the expected time and invested efforts (Chorrojprasert, 2020). It is a product of the interface between the student and the sort of environmental and cultural experiences that capitalize on the maturity outcomes for students (UNICEF, 2012). Moreover, learning readiness has three aspects; Student readiness, School readiness, and Family readiness.

Student Readiness
Student readiness is the preparation of a child to succeed in a structural learning setting but it is different from readiness to learn (UNICEF, 2012). It is also termed as children's readiness. Children's readiness is the one basic component and it prepares the foundation for learning readiness among students. The children's readiness to learn to develop the basic skills and capacities within student which makes them ready and eager to learn. Kagan et al. state that children's readiness incorporates five dimensions as "physical well-being and motor development, social and emotional development, approaches to learning, language development, and cognition and general knowledge" (1993 as cited in McConachie, 2018, p. 209). In addition, UNICEF (2012) mention that student readiness contains individual attributes like procrastination, time management, persistence, willingness to learn, academic attributes, self-management, learning skills, organization, health status, and commitment towards learning. Concerning to it, student attention, procrastination, time management, persistence, learning skills, health, commitment, emotional regulation, social relationships and social cognition, attitudes towards learning, task persistence, creativity, initiative, curiosity, and problem-solving like attributes play the crucial role for determining student readiness.

School's Readiness
School readiness denotes the efforts of schools for building the capacity of students to actively engaging in the learning process (Chorrojprasert, 2020). It is known as a ready school which means creating a supportive environment for student learning. Education experience before school is varied and disparate across the globe which influences the school's readiness (UNESCO, 2007). School's readiness reveals the instructive program which executed in the classroom, instructional medium, education values, teaching style, the structure of school, sufficient time devoted to learning in the classroom, adequate supply of learning materials and teacher competency, etc. Thus, school readiness is a prominent part of learning readiness among students.

Family Readiness
Family readiness means creating supporting parenting and stimulating the home environment for the child's learning process. It includes caregiving, providing an adequate facility to learn, creating a learning environment, motivating behavior for learning, and regularly send the child for attending their classes in school, etc. More specifically, the student was able to get academic success when their parents involved in the partnership with the school concerning their educational process (Hoffman et al., 2020). Similarly, the parent's attitudes, perceptions, beliefs, thoughts, and assurance towards their children's education are considered to be key elements for the school's educational achievement (Alexander et al., 1994). The educational status of parents, their beliefs, and expectations towards education is also linked with the learning achievement of children. These characteristics of parents help to develop learning readiness among students. Thus, parental role as facilitator (Adyanto, 2020) and their engagements in child learning activities is crucial factors of learning readiness. It is also influenced by parental commitment, economic status, educational status, values, beliefs, attitudes, and behavior towards education.

Social Capital Theory
Social capital theory contributes to revealing the social relationship and positions in society (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). In the line of Bourdieu (1986) the social capital theory advocates the societal positioning and strong networks of connections to facilitate the settings of fields (classroom), agents (students), and habits (behavior) respectively. Considering this triangular setting of social capital theory, the gender role and its socializations contribute to differencing the capital among students. Moreover, social capital across gender makes a variation in their value system, ways of perceptions, and lifestyles. These variations among students regarding their gender socializations replicate different characters, attitudes, personalities, and behavior. Furthermore, the replication of social capital across gender roles is equally applicable in the arena of learning behaviors. One of the learning behaviors is referred to as learning readiness which is remarkably associated with the learning achievement among students regarding their gender. Overall, this theory is used to discuss the data relating to learning readiness via the gender of the students in school settings.

Learning Readiness across Gender
The social values, beliefs, attitudes, and practices (social capital) are the prime factors for creating the learning environment among students which prepares them to learn. However, social capital has not remained similar for all students. It differs according to their personal attributes (e.g. gender). The gender is the social-cultural identification of individual and it determines their social role (Pokharel, 2013-a;Pokharel, 2013-b). These roles are constructed via social capital and it varies in their gender roles like the differences between the social roles of boys and girls. For instance, due to the social capital, the gender role makes a difference in the attitudes and behaviors of students, practices of their school, and family. These distinctions in the attitudes, behaviors, and practices among students, schools, and families make variations in the learning readiness. Thus, gender is associated with the learning readiness regards to the social capital of the students, school, and family.

Conceptual Framework
From the literature reviewed, the researcher conceptualized that learning readiness is composed of three major groups of variables which are student readiness, school readiness, and family readiness (USDHHS, 2014) respectively. In the meantime, learning readiness and its dimensions were defined as dependent variables that were influenced by the independent variables as the gender of school students. In addition, the gender role was determined according to the existing social capital of students (Daza, 2016) and it further played a contributory role in determining learning readiness in school settings (Figure 1).

Research Design
The researcher stances the post-positivist philosophy (Cohen et al., 2007;Creswell, 2009;Creswell, 2012) which beliefs in single reality as determining either or not gender has influenced the learning readiness among students. In the line of post-positivism, this study employed the cross-sectional survey as the research design and its nature is confirmatory.

Population and Sampling
This study identified the 400 number of students as the sample size from 394, 651 school students of Kathmandu district (Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology [MOEST], 2018) by employing Yamane (1967) approaches at 95 % confidence limit. Then, the researcher obtained the required number of samples via the following cluster in this study. More specifically, the researcher demarcated Kathmandu district according to its political divisions done by the Nepal government in 11 municipalities as clusters of this study. After this, the researcher randomly selected one cluster and started to pick school student one by one from the selected cluster until the required numbers of sample size were not fulfilled.

Instrumentation and Pilot Testing
Before developing the questionnaire, this study employed Delphi approaches where the researcher conducted a focus group discussion among experts of learning theories, educationalists, and school teachers to determine the indicators and sub-indicators of learning readiness. From this approach, the researcher explored the three dimensions of learning readiness; student, school, and family readiness respectively. Then, the questionnaire was constructed with encompassing these three sections consisting of student readiness (18 items), school readiness (9 items), and family readiness (22 items) respectively. These all items slotted in 5 responses arranged from "never" to "always" where never denotes minimum and always is

Student Readiness School Readiness Family Readiness Gender
Learning Readiness the maximum extent of the scale. Then, the researcher employed the questionnaire in pilot testing and derived more than 0.7 Cronbach's alpha (α) values of all indicators; student readiness (.833), school readiness (.711), and family readiness (.875) respectively. It means these three indicators of the scale are highly reliable and ensured high internal consistency (e.g., Santos, 1999;Bhattarai, 2015) between the items in the scale.

Data Collection Procedures
The researcher took the oral permission from the school authorities and gathered consent from all respondents to collect the data in this study. After that, the researcher assembled the entire respondent/ students' in one classroom and collected data taking one hour from each of the schools that were selected. In the process of data collection, the researcher distributed questionnaire to all respondents by orienting them about the purpose of this study. After assuring the respondents that their information would be kept confidential, request was made to fill the questionnaire. Accordingly, the students filled the questionnaire and returned it to the researcher within the scheduled period taken by the researcher.

Data Analysis Process
The collected data were finally analyzed with the help of descriptive and inferential statistics. Firstly, the descriptive statistics (percentage, frequency, mean and standard deviation) were adopted for identifying the level of learning readiness. For this purpose, researcher categorized the collected likert responses in three levels and it was obtained through calculating the Best's Consequently, the researcher obtained the three levels of learning readiness and it was categorized as high (<3.67), moderate (2.34-3.66), and low (1.00-2.33) respectively. These categorizations were based on obtained mean scores with regard to the learning readiness and its dimensions. Then, the t-test is employed to examine the influences of gender in learning readiness (student readiness, school readiness, and family readiness). For this purpose, the researcher ensured the assumptions of the parametric test (e.g. normal distribution, scale form of measurement, randomization of selecting a sample, and homogeneity of variances) and its results allowed performing t-test in this study.

Gender of School Students
This study found the boy students (N = 239, % = 59.75) were majority in number than girl students (N = 161, % = 40.25) as respondents of the study. However, these statistics seem conflicting to the census of Nepal. According to the census of Nepal, girl children are more in number than the boys (Central Bureau of Statistics [CBS], 2012) students. But since the number of girls responding to the study was less than that of boys, it signified that many female children are out of the school premises. It means, comparatively more male children get the opportunity to enroll and study in school than female children.

Learning Readiness among School Students
The learning readiness is calculated from the sum of mean score from these three factors; student readiness, school readiness, and family readiness (Tables 1 and 2).  Table 1 refers to the high score (Mean = 4.03, SD = .355) of statistics and it indicated the high level of learning readiness among school students. Among the learning readiness, the entire dimensions; student readiness (Mean = 3.97, SD = .42), school readiness (Mean = 3.95, SD = .44) and family readiness (Mean = 4.19, SD = .50) all consists the high mean scores. These high mean scores expressed that the school students consist of a high level of learning readiness as well as its dimensions. This section also elucidated the number and frequencies of respondents belong to entire learning readiness and its dimensions in three levels (Table 2 and 3).  Table 2 divulges, the majority number of respondents poses the high levels of continuum as student readiness (N = 316, % = 79.1), school readiness (N = 310, % = 77.6), and family readiness (N = 352, % = 88.1) respectively. Likewise, the remaining students were at moderate levels across the dimensions of learning readiness. Overall, the nine tenth number of respondents (% = 91.0) consists the high level of learning readiness and it was followed by moderate level (N = 36, % = 9.0) respectively. However, the researcher did not find any respondents having a low level concerning the learning readiness and its entire dimensions. These all descriptive statistics revealed the high eagerness and degrees of concentration among students, availability of supportive and favorable environment to the students in their learning process.

Testing the Assumptions for t-Test
The researcher ensured four assumptions of the parametric test to employ t-test in this study. For this purpose, the researcher performed Skewness and Kurtosis for ensuring normal distribution, where all the derived values of learning readiness (ZSkew = -.660 and ZKurt = -.284) and its components (ZSkew [-.838 to -.578] and ZKurt [-.430 to .957]) were lie between +1 to -1 range. These derived values of Skewness and Kurtosis satisfy the assumptions of normality tests and allow parametric tests in this study (e.g. Garson, 2012). Similarly, the researcher constructed the five response Likert scale and its entire items to measure the learning readiness and its dimensions as the single construct. So it signified the tool is in scale level (Boone & Boone, 2012) which means it ensured the second assumption of parametric test (Berkman & Reise, 2012). Likewise, the researcher ensured its third assumption by conducting the random sampling process while selecting clusters (e.g. Berkman & Reise, 2012). Finally, the researcher performed Leven's equal variance test of learning readiness and its components across the gender of students. The derived values of learning readiness (.108) and its all components; student readiness (.365), school readiness (.381), and family readiness (.645) is more than p value (= 0.05) respectively. It gives a sense that the obtained values of learning readiness and its constructs ensured the homogeneity of variances (e.g. Bhattarai, 2015;Subedi, 2018) with gender. Thus the ensuring of these four assumptions of the parametric test allowed researchers to employ a t-test to examine the contribution of gender in learning readiness among students.

Learning Readiness across Gender
The researcher examined the influences of gender on learning readiness using the independent sample t test and it derived the mean score and value of standard deviation to analyze the differences between male and female groups. The independent t test is computed by operating Levene's test of variances and it obtains t and p values. These t and p values contribute to declare either or neither there is a significant difference in learning readiness across gender of students (Table 3). Table 3 depicts the gender of students and its impact in bringing significant differences in student readiness (t = -2.59, p = .01) and school readiness (t = -2.29, p = .02) respectively. Among the student readiness, the female students (Mean = 4.12, SD = .38) consist more learning readiness than the boy (Mean = 3.86, SD = .42) students. As well as in school readiness, female students (Mean =4.10, SD =.41) consist more readiness level than male (Mean = 3.85, SD =.44) students respectively. These statistical values expressed that the gender of students makes significant influences in determining student readiness and school readiness among school students. Moreover, the levels of student and school readiness among girls are found more than boys. However, there is no significant difference in family readiness across gender. Overall, the derived statistics show that there are no significant differences (t = -1.69, p = .09) in learning readiness across gender among school students. These statistics refer that the gender of students normally does not significantly influence overall learning readiness but it enhances students as well as school readiness.

DISCUSSION
This study derives the satisfactory level of learning readiness and its dimensions among school students. As the first dimension of learning readiness, the result is derived similarly to Winarso (2016) where the author found a high level of student readiness among school children. This high level of student readiness depicts the students' feeling of pleasure or conduciveness while learning in school. The satisfaction among students is the outcome of their high concentration, involvement, eagerness, aspirations (Khattab, 2015), regularity, positive attitudes, enthusiasm, hard labor, and continuity in their study. Likewise, social values, relationships, networking, and beliefs as a social capital also strongly influence the learning readiness of the students (Koranteng et al., 2018). In addition, social capital poses a strong command of language regarding speaking and writing (Clark, 2006) among students. This language capacity (Kastnerl et al., 2001) and good health status (Shaw et al., 2015) contribute students to obtain higher learning achievement. Thus, the promotion of these factors further enhances cognition, attitude, and habits relating to learning. The developed attitudes and habits among students make them more self-conscious and excited in the learning process. Furthermore, the excitement in learning helps them to achieve a high level of readiness as data revealed.
As the second dimension of learning readiness, school readiness reveals the high motivating and supportive environment for students to learn (UNICEF, 2012) in schools. The supportive classroom environment promotes learning (Hannah, 2013), develops the learning attitudes and habits (Cheng, 1994) among students. The shaping of these affirmative attitudes and habits of students towards learning is measured as school readiness. For example, the high rate of student readiness is predicted by evaluating the existing learning environment, fulfilling the student's expectations, and the relationship of teachers with their co-staffs and students. In addition, school readiness is also the outcome of the social capital carries by the teachers and the school family. The social capital comes through society (Tennent et al., 2005) where school exists. Thus the school and society are inseparable (Dewey, 1900) with each other's and as a result, the school acts as a mirror of the society (Department of Education [DOE], 2016). In this context, Tennent et al. (2005) articulated that every society carries distinct social capital as social values, beliefs, and practices and it further guides the school. Considering it, social capital determines the learning environment of the school. For instance, if the school is guided by the child-friendly values, it facilities the supporting environment induces child-centered learning activities and promotes good relationships in school. These all settings prepare a supportive environment for students to learn in school and it is referred to as the school readiness. That's why, the presence of the rich social capital promotes the school readiness (e.g. Putnam, 2017) in this study which supplementary enhances academic achievement among students.
As the third dimension of learning readiness, family readiness seems high among the school students. This high level of family readiness is associated with the social capital (Bofota, 2013;King, 2017) as the social values, beliefs, and practices of families. These capitals play a crucial role among parents in sending their children to an excellent school, giving sufficient time to their study, playing the supportive and caring role for the children's educational advancement. It reflects that the parents were highly engaged in their children's schooling and learning process. Considering it, Castro et al. (2015) argue that the active family involvement in child learning and schooling shapes the study habits in children. The shaping of study habits enhances learning readiness (Ebele & Olofu, 1994) among students. Thus the social capital promotes family readiness (Bofota, 2013) among parents for their children's excellent learning and educational performance.
Furthermore, the high degree of student readiness, school readiness, and family readiness collaboratively determine the elevated level of learning readiness among school students in this study. The highest level of learning readiness refers to the positive excitement and mindedness to make learning among students (Hayden, 2008) and it arises from the triad efforts of students, school, and parents (UNICEF, 2012;USDHSS, 2014). More specifically, the researcher insights that the learning readiness among school students appear when the school (e.g. UNESCO, 2007) and family (Alexander et al., 1994) create the supportive and favorable environment for their children learning process, and the students are also intrinsically ready to take action of learning (Prakash, 2012;Woofter, 2019). The appearance of learning readiness maximizes the learning achievement in students (Dangol & Shrestha, 2019). And higher learning achievement reflects the presence of high learning readiness (Winarso, 2016) among students.
From a gender perspective, the existing social capital heavily influences the gender socialization (Norris & Inglehart, 2003) among the students. Gender socialization determines the role of the student towards their learning process (Bigler et al., 2013). Likewise, the school and family are also guided by the societal capital (Lindfors et al., 2017) in relation to gender to their children's learning process. Furthermore, this relatedness between social capital and gender is associated with creating a supportive environment and develops the preparedness towards learning among students. Thus the gender of students is associated with the learning readiness (Voyles, 2011), particularly with the student and school readiness in this study.
In the context of Nepal, due to the growing literacy rate (e.g. CBS, 2012) and social awareness (e.g. ADB, 2010) gender discrimination among students and in school can be felt to have decreased. Now, school gives the equal priority to both genders (DOE, 2010) in the teaching-learning process. This change in the school premises is acknowledged to have become gender friendly for the female child (e.g. DOE, 2010;UNESCO, 2018). Despite this, the female children are still can be found confined in the four walls of home (Calder et al., 2019;Peck, 2017) than males. However, the girls who participated in teaching learning at school are assumed to spend their almost time in study and more concentrate in the classroom (Gnaulati, 2014) and achieve good grades in their exams (Smith, 2016). On the contrary, the male children spend the most time playing games at home (Burn, 2017) and do not have sufficient time for their study. Furthermore, many authors (e.g. Burman et al., 2008;Eriksson et al., 2012;Merritt, 2014;Northwestern University, 2008;Payne & Lynn, 2011) claim that the girls have more vocabulary and language ability than boy students. In addition, the girls have more degree of eagerness towards learning than the boys. All these differences in the learning process regarding gender influence the student and school readiness in this paper.
Besides, this study is based on the students of the urban areas where the people are more educated (CBS, 2012), thus the gender disparity is also squatted than the other parts of the country. In relation to it, the parents from urban residents give equal preferences to son and daughter regarding sending them to school (Edewor, 2006), and providing a favorable and supportive environment for them to learn in comparison to the other parts of Nepal. This scenario contributes to derive no significant differences in family readiness across the gender of students. Likewise, this study finds no differences between boys and girls in regards to learning readiness. For instance, in urban areas of Nepal, there is seen the progressive changes in gender roles (K. C. et al., 2017) due to the gender consciousness, equal preferences, and providing equity by law. These changes enhance the social capital of stakeholders like parents and teachers who are associated with the learning readiness of the students. In the meantime, the transformation in social capital contributed to secure the gender-friendly environment and provided equal preferences to both genders in society, school, and family. That's why, due to the equal behavior and favorable environment, the researcher derived the similarity on learning readiness across gender of students. This absence of gender disparity on learning readiness promotes soaring educational performances and better achievement among students.

CONCLUSION
The school students performed a high level of learning readiness with elevated student readiness, school readiness, and family readiness respectively. This soaring intensity of learning readiness is due to enriched social values, beliefs, relationships, attitudes, and networking among the student, school, and family. These social capitals develop the students' more selfconsciousness and excitement towards learning and commence the school and family for creating a supportive environment for learning. Similarly, the changes in social capital e.g. gender equity and variations in language ability, attitudes, and eagerness towards learning make the girls better than the boys in terms of student and school readiness. However, the gender role seems futile on family readiness and entire learning readiness among students. This similarity in boys and girls in relation to learning readiness is the result of the diminishing of gender disparity in urban areas where parents and teachers treat all children equally. That's why ensuring high learning readiness and minimizing gender disparity contribute to achieving high educational performances and achievement among students.