This review examines the effectiveness of digital media on emergent literacy skills, specifically alphabet knowledge, print awareness, and phonological awareness, on children birth to four. A systematic search of the literature identified 13 studies that met the pre-determined inclusion criteria. Two independent raters evaluated each study for methodological quality and assigned appropriate levels of evidence based on ASHA levels of evidence. Results found that specific features of digital media can lead to positive effects on emergent literacy skills. A checklist with the highlighted features was created to guide clinicians, parents, and others in making decisions about the true educational quality of various screen media.

The purpose of this study is to identify factors in the home literacy environment using the Stony Brook Family Reading Survey (SBFRS) in order to understand the extent to which these factors predict phonemic awareness and other basic reading skills, as assessed by selected subtests from the Woodcock-Johnson III (WJ III). The present study used archival data to examine the home literacy habits of a sample of parents and preschool children ages 3-5 years (range in months= 36-67) from a private and a public preschool with a combination of high- and low-income backgrounds and various ethnicities. Using exploratory factor analyses with 165 participants, three dimensions of family reading behavior were identified from the SBFRS including Home Reading Emphasis, Adult Responsibility, and Parental Academic Expectations. Each of the SBFRS rotated factors considered together in a stepwise multiple regression analysis contributed significantly over and above age to the prediction of phonological awareness as measured by the Phonemic Awareness 3 (PA3) Cluster from the WJ III. The best order of predictors for PA3 of the WJ III, with stepwise entry, included Factor 1: Home Reading Emphasis, Factor 3: Parental Academic Expectations, and Factor 2: Adult Responsibility. One of the SBFRS rotated factors, Factor 1: Home Reading Emphasis, considered in a stepwise multiple regression analysis using age as a covariate contributed significantly to the prediction of basic reading as measured by the Basic Reading Skills (BRS) Cluster of the WJ III [WJ III BRS=.38+.26(Factor1)]. Results demonstrate the importance of the aforementioned factors in relation to the prediction of emergent literacy. Future studies are needed to investigate parental expectations, adult responsibility for child outcomes, the impact of fathers, and the importance of dominant home language on the emergence of literacy. Revision of the SBFRS, in addition to studies that include a wider range of SES, racial/ethnic, and linguistic groups, would help to standardize the measure for future use.

Title: Preschool – a social language environment and an arena for emergent literacy processes. Author: Martina Norling By focusing on preschool, as an arena for emergent literacy and language learning processes, this thesis put the lens on preschool staff´s approaches and strategies in the social language environment in Swedish preschools. Taking its point of departure in real preschool settings, the overall purpose of this thesis is to develop a greater understanding of this social language environment, with particular emphasis on the quality dimensions of strategies, such as the preschool staff´s sensitivity and approaches in the preschool environment. Two didactic issues are of special importance to the thesis: preschool staff´s descriptions of what kind of strategies and approaches they use in the social language environment as well as how preschool staff support children’s language learning processes in literacy-related activities. The thesis consists of four articles aimed at capturing, variations of dimensions of preschool staff strategies as well as approaches that contribute to highlighting essential strategies for supporting children in the social language environment. The theoretical framework in this thesis consists of social constructivism (Vygotsky, 1997) and bioecological theory (Bronfenbrenner, 2005). The four empirical studies in this thesis have made possible a mixed method design. The data production consists of questionnaires with questions regarding background information of the participants, observation instruments (scoring the quality of the social language environment), focus group interviews, video observations as well as a systematic literature review. In this thesis, three dimensions of preschool staff strategies in social language environment emerged: play strategies, emotional strategies and communicative strategies. The social language environment in Swedish preschool can be described in terms of those three strategy dimensions and continuous interplay processes among children, peers and preschool staff, over time. The quality dimensions of strategies focus, on preschool staff efforts and children’s prerequisites of learning processes, rather than focusing on children’s individual performance. Keywords: Preschool, social constructivism, bioecological theory, preschool staff, emergent literacy, social language environment, language learning processes

The acquisition of emergent literacy skills has become a prominent focus of early childhood education programs in recent years as research has demonstrated the significance of emergent literacy ability in the process of learning to read. The effectiveness of use of varied instructional techniques targeting the emergent literacy domains of phonological awareness, written language awareness, emergent writing, and oral language is well described in the literature. Consequently, educational service providers like speech-language pathologists are being called upon to assume roles in emergent literacy service provision. However, research has not fully explored the perceptions and knowledge speech-language pathologists possess of emergent literacy instructional practices. This concurrent triangulation mixed methods study examined speech-language pathologists’ perceptions and knowledge of emergent literacy instructional practices. Three quantitative and two qualitative forms of data were collected and analyzed from a criterion and purposive sample of five educational speech-language pathologists. Findings revealed speech-language pathologists possessed positive perceptions of emergent literacy instruction and endorsed use of numerous instructional techniques and intervention formats to target multiple emergent literacy skills. Results also indicated the presence of a narrow view of emergent literacy instruction as participants maintained a primary focus on oral language and phonological awareness in intervention sessions. Additionally, varied perspectives of speech-language pathologists’ role in emergent literacy instruction and numerous constraints to implementation of best practice in emergent literacy were identified. Findings demonstrated strength in participants’ pedagogical knowledge of emergent literacy instructional techniques in oral language and phonological awareness and strength in content knowledge of phonological awareness. However, findings also revealed limitations in understanding as speech-language pathologists’ did not demonstrate thorough knowledge of instructional practices across all domains of emergent literacy. Additionally, varying degrees of emergent literacy knowledge among speech-language pathologists were noted. Finally, comparison of quantitative and qualitative results of speech-language pathologists’ emergent literacy perceptions and knowledge revealed convergence of numerous findings.

To meet the guidelines generated by the No Child Left Behind law (NCLB) pressures to raise student achievement have filtered down to and emerged in prekindergarten classrooms. The leadership of state, federal, and local policymakers is critical to the movement for high quality prek for all. The purpose of this study was to examine the scores of prekindergarten students when presented 3 different methods of literacy instruction and to compare the scores according to gender and among 3 age groups. This study found a significant difference in the scores of students when analyzed according to age. The youngest students scored significantly higher than the older students. The results support the literature that young children's brains are more active. There is evidence to support the move to provide high quality prekindergarten for all, which includes Tennessee Governor Phil Bredeson's preK Initiative.

Book Summary: This seminal text provides a scholarly overview of current evidence-based approaches to emergent literacy intervention as a component of clinical practice in speech-language pathology. The book's focus is primarily the emergent literacy period of development, transcending toddlerhood to the kindergarten year and corresponding to the years preceding formal literacy and reading instruction. By providing an accessible and usable integration of theory and research, it encourages readers to think about building early foundations in literacy to promote healthy early development and to ease children's transitions to later academic contexts. The book answers the question, "what can speech-language pathologists do today to include literacy as a target in childhood intervention?"

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The purpose of this qualitative research study was to describe and explain the characteristics of an effective professional development model in an early intervention training program. The focus of the study was on particular aspects of literacy instruction that were emphasized during training sessions and trainer and teacher perceptions of the Accelerated Literacy Learning (ALL) program. This study examined the elements of training that two teachers chose to transfer to their classrooms, as well as modifications they chose to make, in the year following training in an effort to gain further insight into successful teacher training practices. The following research questions guided this study: 1. How do teachers who have received early intervention training for two semesters apply this knowledge in their classrooms during the following school year? 2. What do teachers choose to use and not use from the training program and why? 3. What modifications of the program do teachers make, if any, and why? 4. What are the perceptions of trainers about an early intervention training program? To obtain answers to these research questions, I conducted individual and focus group interviews with teachers and trainers, made observations of training sessions, analyzed course documents, and observed two teachers in their classrooms in the year following training. These data were analyzed using qualitative analysis procedures. I followed a phenomenological theoretical approach and reported my findings through descriptive case studies. The study findings indicated that teachers chose to use many elements of training in their classrooms in the year following training. It was discovered that the elements that the teachers chose to use in training were the elements that the trainers emphasized in training sessions. The findings also indicated that teachers made modifications to the lesson format that they were taught in training. The segment of the lesson that the teachers chose to modify was one that was not as prescriptive in training as other lesson segments. The trainers did not spend as much time discussing the writing segment of the lesson format as they did the other segments and consequently the teachers made modifications.

The purpose of this study was to examine the following: (a) What is the nature of Kindergarten and First grade teachers’ beliefs and self-reported practices regarding early literacy learning and teaching?; (b) What is the relationship between Kindergarten and First grade teachers’ beliefs and self-reported early literacy teaching practices?; and (c) How do teachers’ educational backgrounds and professional development experiences explain the relationship between their beliefs and practices in early literacy learning and teaching? Three instruments were administered to the participants in this study. The Theoretical Orientation to Reading Profile (Deford, 1979), hereafter known as the TORP, was used to measure teachers’ pedagogical beliefs about the teaching and learning of reading. The Preschool Literacy Practices Checklist (Burgess, Lundgren, Lloyd, & Pianta, 2001), hereafter known as the PLPC, was used to measure teachers’ self-reported literacy instructional practices. A survey questionnaire I designed was used to obtain descriptive information about the participants in this study. Data were collected from forty-seven in-service Kindergarten and First grade teachers. The results of the TORP data from this study indicated that 6% of the participants represented the decoding perspective, 92% represented the skills perspective and 2% represented the wholistic perspective. Correlation scores from the PLPC regarding teachers’ beliefs and practices show there was no significant correlation between teachers’ beliefs and self-reported practices in the classroom. Additionally, the findings showed there is a relationship between teachers’ educational backgrounds and the reading literacy practices teachers view as important or essential in the early grades such as understanding the meaning of words, recognizing basic sight words, understanding concepts of print, and identifying the elements of a story.