Using Instructional Technology to Improve Preservice Teachers’ Knowledge of Phonological Awareness

Abstract

Teacher understanding of phonological awareness (PA) and how to teach PA is related to student outcomes; however, many teachers have an inadequate understanding of PA. The purpose of this study is to describe an intervention intended to improve preservice teachers’ understanding of PA, using an example of instructional technology called Content Acquisition Podcasts (CAPs). In this study, teacher candidates randomly assigned to watch a CAP on PA significantly outperformed matched peers who read a practitioner-friendly article on the same topic. Findings hold important implications for the field of teacher education, support, and development in reading pedagogy.

Content acquisition podcasts’ impact on preservice teachers’ understanding of language and disability

“…For example, still images were used to accompany the audio recording (see Figure 1 for example still images that accompanied the narration). A trained research assistant used a design principle checklist that was specifically designed to ensure a CAPs alignment with the 12 principles within the CTML by Driver, Pullen, Kennedy, Williams, and Ely (2014). The trained research assistant attended a session on how to apply the principles of the CTML and attained a 100% on an investigator-developed CTML test.…”

Using Content Acquisition Podcasts to Increase Student Knowledge and to Reduce Perceived Cognitive Load

“…CAPs are easy to create (see Kennedy, Alves, & Rodgers, 2015 for printed and online instructions) and for students to use during learning depending on user preferences and needs. This manuscript reports results from the 12th empirical replication of CAPs’ capacity to support student learning (Kennedy, Hart, & Kellems, 2011; Kennedy & Thomas, 2012; Kennedy, Ely, Thomas, Pullen, Newton, Ashworth, Cole, & Lovelace, 2012; Kennedy, Driver, Pullen, Ely, & Cole, 2013; Driver, Pullen, Kennedy, Williams, & Ely, 2014; Ely, Pullen, Kennedy, Hirsch, & Williams, 2014; Kennedy, Thomas, Aronin, Newton, & Lloyd, 2014; Sayeski, Kennedy, de Irala, Clinton, Hamel, & Thomas, 2015; Hirsch, Kennedy, Haines, Thomas, & Alves, 2015; Kennedy, Wagner, Stegall, Lembke, Miciak, Alves, Brown, Driver, & Hirsch, 2015; Hart & More, 2013; Sayeski, Kennedy, Clinton, de Irala, & Thomas, 2015). This article is the first to include a measure of user’s perceived cognitive load to help explain why CAP viewers outperform peers who learn using other methods on tests of knowledge and skill application.…”

The Effect of a Suggested Multisensory Phonics Program on Developing Kindergarten Pre-service Teachers' EFL Reading Accuracy and Phonemic Awareness

“…Intervention is paramount in narrowing the literacy gaps included in kindergarten teachers' preparation programs as it becomes increasingly difficult for them to teach EFL to young kids after graduation. Clear evidence has emerged with regard to the necessity of intervention with this population ( Campbell et al, 2014;Driver et al, 2014;Janzen, 2007;Perez, 2010).…”

“…Besides, discrepancies in literacy experiences will have a negative impact on other academic areas (August et al, 2014;Carson et al, 2015;Driver et al, 2014;Etmanskie et al, 2014;Hammond, 2015;Khonamri & Roostaee, 2014;Kruse et al, 2015;Mena & Chapetón, 2014;Tsuji & Doherty, 2014).…”

“…There are many approaches to teaching phonics including explicit, synthetic, analytic and embedded ways. However, all approaches focus on teaching the relationship between phonemes and graphemes (Driver et al, 2014;Phipps, 2011;Weiser, 2013). Systematic explicit instruction is a term commonly associated with phonics (Campbell et al, 2011).…”