Competencia Narrativa: Evidencias de Validez para la Estandarización de su Evaluación en Niños Chilenos

Narrative competence has been defined as a bridge between oral and written language, given that it is acquired before children formally learn to read. This competence has shown to be a relevant factor in reading comprehension and school learning. This study examines the narrative comprehension task proposed by Paris and Paris (2003) and adapted in Chile by Silva et al. (2014) to detect changes in the development of this skill in a purposive sample of 172 Chilean preschoolers aged 2-4 years (121) and 4-6 years (51), 52% of whom were girls. The children, who resided in areas with an average vulnerability index of 86%, attended 9 subsidized private schools in the Metropolitan Region (72% of the sample) and 6 municipal schools in the BioBío Region (29% of the sample). Results show the tool’s structural validity, differential functioning by sex, and adequate internal consistency. Furthermore, the tool exhibits developmental sensitivity, yielding different results according to student age or educational level. The availability of instruments of this type makes it possible to identify children’s progress in this domain and organize pedagogical work to enhance their learning in early childhood education.