Early childhood educators' knowledge about language and literacy: Associations with practice and children's learning

Piasta, Shayne B.; Park, Somin; Farley, Kristin S.; Justice, Laura M.; O’Connell, Ann A.

doi:10.1002/dys.1612

Cited by 63 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…and three that addressed pedagogical knowledge (e.g., what would you do if a child in your classroom doesn't know a word when reading orally?). 5 The emphasis on phonological awareness in these assessments might explain recent findings by Piasta, Park, Farley, Justice, and O'Connell (2020) and Piasta, Ramirez, Farley, Justice, and Park (2020) that SLK has a statistically significant, linear relation with classroom literacy practices in early childhood classrooms, but the relation to classroom practice and/or student outcomes in the elementary grades, when word-reading/decoding instruction is happening, needs further study.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Examining Teacher Preparation for Code‐Related Reading Instruction: An Integrated Literature Review

Tortorelli¹,

Lupo²,

Wheatley³

2021

Reading Research Quarterly

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Advocates of the science of reading have argued that (a) teacher preparation programs do not provide adequate preparation to teach code-related reading skills; (b) as a result, teachers lack knowledge of this area of literacy development; and (c) without that knowledge, teachers are unable to effectively teach students to read. In this integrative literature review, we assessed the research evidence for the first claim. We identified 27 studies examining preservice general elementary preparation in code-related instruction, including phonological/phonemic awareness, phonics/decoding, spelling/orthography, and morphology, published between 2001 and 2020. We analyzed the studies to determine (a) how preservice knowledge of code-related instruction has been studied, (b) how preservice teachers' literacy knowledge was defined and assessed in these studies, and (c) primary findings across studies and implications for teacher preparation and future research. We found that the research base largely relied on quantitative multiple-choice assessments that privileged linguistic content knowledge over pedagogical and situated knowledge. The body of research was constrained by narrow definitions of science and knowledge, repetition across studies in methods and data sources, limited samples that overlooked diversity in preservice teachers and elementary contexts, and methodological problems. Thus, we caution against considering the issue of teacher preparation settled, and we offer recommendations for teacher preparation programs and directions for future research.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Examining Teacher Preparation for Code‐Related Reading Instruction: An Integrated Literature Review

Tortorelli¹,

Lupo²,

Wheatley³

2021

Reading Research Quarterly

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Meta-analyses of the use of language in early education settings have shown that trends have centered on exploring literacy and verbal skill development practices (Markussen-Brown et al, 2017) and have identified the crucial role played by educators' verbal expertise in teaching and learning processes (Justice et al, 2018). In this vein, for example, emphasis has been placed on the impact of educators' language on child language acquisition (Muhinyi & Rowe, 2019), on the specific development of expressive language through play with infants (Cuellar & Farkas, 2018), and/or on specific cognitive skills such as print concept, letter naming and/or phonological awareness (Piasta et al, 2019). In addition, recent studies have examined more specific properties of language and the impact of educator syntax on infants' learning of new vocabulary (Farrow et al, 2020), vocabulary size, syntactical complexity and lexical diversity both of educators and infants (Pizarro et al, 2019), near and clear or far and unclear educator talk (Degotardi et al, 2018), and/or preferences for storytelling and reading versus writing activities and their differential association with verbal syntactic complexity and the acquisition of new vocabulary (Torr, 2020).…”

Section: Evidence-based Characterizations Of Early Childhood Educatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socio-Affective Word Production by Early Childhood Educators: Lexical Densities, Clusters, and Predictors

Dulcic

Peña

Orellana

2021

REDIE

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This article presents a quantitative characterization of the language of early childhood educators, with the goal of identifying their lexical preferences and typical uses in the socio-affective domain. In this cross-sectional, descriptive study, 20 participants were selected by convenience sampling and provided continuous audio recordings, which were transcribed and categorized using LIWC2015 software. The findings show that the greatest lexical densities are associated with the categories “cognitive processes”, “relativity”, “social processes”, “affective processes”, and “perceptual processes”, and a number of subcategories like “motion” and “positive emotion”. Lower densities were found in “anxiety”, “sadness”, health”, “religion”, and “death”. Furthermore, two commonly used clusters were identified: one centered on words with an emotional connotation, and another centered on words with a social connotation. Lastly, the categories “body”, “health”, “motion”, “ingestion”, “causation”, “exclusion”, and “sexual” are good predictors of socio-affective word production. Our findings suggest a distinctive and prominent use of a number of semantic categories associated with the socio-affective domain. Future research directions and their potential to contribute to formative processes in early childhood education are also discussed.

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“…In a study of 222 early childhood educators, Schachter et al (2016) found that early childhood educators’ disciplinary content knowledge about early language and literacy was associated with the amount of language and literacy support they provided. In a more recent study of 485 PreK teachers, Piasta and colleagues (2019) found that teachers with more disciplinary content knowledge (“knowledge concerning how oral and written language are structured and map to one another”) and knowledge for practice (“knowledge of effective strategies and practices for supporting early language and literacy”) were significantly more likely to engage in more desirable literacy pedagogical practices, and that there were significant positive correlations between teachers’ knowledge and children’s learning of print concepts, letter names, and phonological awareness.…”

Section: Context For the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Examining Certification Requirements in Early Math and Literacy: What Do States Expect Prekindergarten Teachers to Know?

Wright

Parks

Wilinski

et al. 2020

Journal of Teacher Education

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The purpose of this study was to examine preK certification requirements for literacy and mathematics coursework to understand policy trends across the United States. We were interested in examining whether teacher certification requirements in these content areas align with expectations for child outcomes in early literacy and math. We completed a content analysis of 114 documents from 50 states including preK teacher certification requirements and early learning standards from each state. We engaged in a detailed analysis of the sections of these documents related to early literacy and mathematics. Based on this state-by-state analysis, we found that most states had very little specification of preK teacher certification requirements related to literacy or mathematics. Our findings suggest that current certification policies are not well-aligned with expectations for preK children’s learning in early literacy and mathematics.

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Early childhood educators' knowledge about language and literacy: Associations with practice and children's learning

Abstract: Educators' language and literacy knowledge is considered important for informing classroom practices and thereby supporting children's early language and literacy development. This includes both disciplinary content knowledge (knowledge concerning how oral and written language are

Cited by 63 publications

References 55 publications

Examining Teacher Preparation for Code‐Related Reading Instruction: An Integrated Literature Review

Examining Teacher Preparation for Code‐Related Reading Instruction: An Integrated Literature Review

Socio-Affective Word Production by Early Childhood Educators: Lexical Densities, Clusters, and Predictors

Examining Certification Requirements in Early Math and Literacy: What Do States Expect Prekindergarten Teachers to Know?

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