The early skills of Emergent Literacy include the knowledge and abilities related to the alphabet, phonological awareness, symbolic representation, and communication. However, existing models of emergent literacy focus on discrete skills and miss the perspective of the surrounding environment. Early literacy skills, including their relationship to one another, and the substantial impact of the setting and context, are critical in ensuring that children gain all of the preliminary skills and awareness they will need to become successful readers and writers. Research findings over the last few decades have led to a fuller understanding of all that emergent literacy includes, resulting in a need for a new, more comprehensive model. A new model, described in this article, strives to explain how emergent literacy can be viewed as an interactive process of skills and context rather than a linear series of individual components. Early literacy learning opportunities are more likely to happen when teachers have a solid knowledge base of emergent literacy and child development. Research has shown that preschool teachers with limited knowledge about literacy development are significantly less able to provide such experiences for children. Teachers will be better able to facilitate all of the components of emergent literacy if they have access to, and understanding of, a model that describes the components, their interactions, and the importance of environmental factors in supporting children.
This article describes the quantitative findings from an evaluation of program-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) in three rural preschool programs. Each rural preschool program included children 3 through 5 years of age with and without disabilities. Following 3 years of on-site training, technical assistance, and coaching support in universal tier PBIS, participating preschool programs increased their use of strategies and supports to prevent young children's challenging behavior. Specific improvements in universal PBIS practices are presented across each year of the initiative. The successes and challenges involved in implementing program-wide PBIS in rural preschools are discussed.
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