Multiple perspectives on early literacy: Staff and parents speak out.

Makin, Laurie ; McNaught, Margaret

Introduction

A number of studies demonstrate the existence of a discrepancy between what many parents want in terms of support for early literacy and what many early childhood educators believe is appropriate. This discrepancy often relates to the value placed on school-related skills such as being able to count and recite the alphabet (Dunn & Kontos 1997, Powell 1996). A lack of shared understandings has been found to exist in families with a range of different ethnic backgrounds, with different literacy levels, and across different socioeconomic backgrounds.

Gregory (1994), in a study of Bangladeshi immigrants in the UK, found major discrepancies between the ways parents believed that children should become literate, as demonstrated by the methods used in the home language community schools and the way in which the children were taught in the first year of school. Some parents did not understand how children can learn to read by `pretending to read' and did not accept the value of a play-based approach to early literacy.

Fitzgerald et al. (1991) report that low literacy parents are more likely to see literacy as a set of skills than as cultural practice, and it has been noted that low income mothers are less likely to see play as a learning process. Their home teaching of beginning reading and writing is less likely to be embedded in everyday literacy events and is generally less playful in nature. Many middle to high income Asian parents expect children to learn to read and write at preschool. This is common in countries such as Hong Kong and Singapore, although it must be remembered that children begin formal schooling later in these countries.

Key literacy practices in the years prior to school entry

Diverse researchers such as Snow, Burns & Griffin (1998) and Clay (1991) agree there is no single literacy learning approach or set of strategies which is most effective for all children all of the time. However, there are certain areas of knowledge and skills that appear to be important. Snow et al. (1998) noted that among those children who begin school less prepared to learn to read are those who have `less prior knowledge and skill in certain domains, most notably letter knowledge, phonological sensitivity, familiarity with the basic purposes and mechanisms of reading, and language ability' (p.137).

The point at issue is how these skills and knowledge are appropriately developed in the years prior to school entry. There are activities and practices that are important for building understandings about literacy, which are in keeping with the interests and capabilities of young children and preschoolers, and which can be incorporated into a prior-to-school program on a daily basis. Makin et al. (1999, pp. 39-40) summarises these as follows:

* The provision of opportunity for social interaction around literacy and for adult conversations with individual children about topics that are meaningful and significant to them. This provides opportunity for development of the verbal and narrative skills that are important for later learning and literacy (Snow 1983). The ability of significant adults (teachers and parents) to provide quality interaction and feedback to children around literacy and about children's concepts of print is seen as very supportive of children's learning to read `naturally' in a similar manner to how they learn to speak (Teale & Sulzby 1986). However, an increasing number of researchers (e.g. Heath 1983, Freebody & Ludwig 1995, Gee 1990) point out that different social practices are differentially valued by teachers, with the effect that some children's literacy skills, experiences and knowledge may be marginalised by educational institutions. For example, oral story-telling, bilingualism and knowledge of popular culture may not be valued.

* Opportunities to develop decontextualised language. In a large-scale study of high quality early childhood programs generally (i.e., without a specific focus on literacy), Epstein (1999, p. 117) found that `opportunities for children to plan and recall their activities, as well as children's access to diverse materials, were the two dimensions of program quality most important for promoting children's development'. This finding, relating to the opportunity for talk about the day's activities, could be seen to link with the views of researchers such as Snow (1983) and Michaels (1981). They stress the significance of children's use of `literate' or decontextualised language, which enables them to talk about objects that are not immediately present. Such talk is related to ongoing engagement with literacy learning and later successful literacy development. Children who come to school with different patterns of oral narrative, for example, those linked implicitly rather than in a linear and explicit fashion to the particular topic or event, may have difficulty in a classroom where a mainstream teacher is unaware of this particular linguistic variation.

* Opportunity to learn more about the sound sequences in words. This skill is considered to be a necessary, but not sufficient, precursor of learning to read in an alphabetic orthography. It can be enhanced through exposure to linguistic awareness games, word plays, poetry, rhymes and rhythmic word plays from children's own and other cultures (Jue11991). Adams (1990) suggests that alphabetic knowledge in the first year of school is an important predictor of later literacy success.

* Parents and early childhood staff reading aloud to children. This provides optimal support for development when the children feel secure (Bus & Van Ijzendoom 1995) and are encouraged to be active participants making text-to-life and life-to-text connections. Frequency of story reading is important (Wells 1985). More recent writers suggest that it may be the talk and interaction that surrounds the reading that gives this activity its particular significance (Dickinson & Smith 1994). A variety of text types may be important for certain kinds of language learning.

* Exposure to print. This helps children understand the purposes and functions of print and the acquisition of a vocabulary with which to talk about it (meta-literacy skills). This typically occurs when children hear and see others reading aloud or when someone demonstrates or talks about what they are doing with print (Raban & Ure 1999).

* Access to an attractive, comfortable and well-stocked book area in early childhood services. A broad range of text types should be available, for example, authentic community texts, books in the home languages of the children in the setting, books catering to the interests of the children, rhymes, poetry, maps, street directories, alphabet books and children's and teachers' own created books (Schickedanz 1999). The intermittent presence of the teacher in the book corner to read or interact with the children has been shown to increase children's usage of the corner (Morrow & Weinstein 1982).

* Sociodramatic play. Early childhood services should include many areas which contain literacy materials such as magazines and an appointment book at a hairdresser, recipe books for a home comer, telephone books, notepads and a calendar in a play office, a workshop manual for car repairer. Teachers may need to mention and model ways in which these materials may be used at first (Vukelich 1994).

* A writing/drawing table or corner. Here children may experiment with a variety of writing and drawing implements and perhaps read, play with and draw logos and signs, and develop familiarity with writing both independently and in interaction with his/her peers and with adults. A great deal of informal tutoring is typically embedded in these interactions (Schickedanz 1999).

* Congruence between families' and teachers' views. Establishing shared goals for young children's language and literacy development and shared understanding of ways to achieve those goals seems important (Cairney 1994) because it offers teachers and parents multiple pathways towards the goal of effective literacy development for all children. A growing emphasis in the literature (for example, Macleod 1996) is on the need for educational institutions to be more flexible in using what young children bring to the setting and in changing towards greater acceptance and valuing of differing home literacy practices. These practices may be used as a bridge to support children's access to the `schooled' or mainstream literacies necessary for later educational and occupational success.

* Provision of on-going opportunities for staff development. This enables teachers of early literacy to reflect on their practices, in order to help support a more responsive and critically aware `pedagogy' in the before-school years (Comber & Cormack 1995).

The project: Mapping literacy practices in early childhood services in NSW, Australia

A study was recently conducted in New South Wales (Makin et al. 1999) to investigate literacy practices in early childhood services immediately prior to school entry, to explore staff and parental understandings of early literacy development, and to determine how congruent these understandings were. The aim of this investigation was to establish what needed to be provided to better support young children's literacy development.

The project was funded by the government departments(1) responsible for supporting and monitoring children's development within early childhood services. The funding bodies were responsible for identifying the research sites and for soliciting participation of staff according to their criteria for inclusion in this research study, i.e., services that were in areas of educational or socioeconomic disadvantage, classrooms in which most of the children would be entering school in the next year, and services that represented a wide range of service types (long day care, preschool, private providers, community-run services).

Participation was voluntary. Eighty early childhood classrooms(2) expressed interest in taking part. All were included. One subsequently withdrew. Interviews were conducted with 158 staff with a range of qualifications (degree, diploma, untrained). Nine parent focus groups, with a total of 60 parents, were conducted. Service staff were asked to invite parent participation, with the main criterion being that the parents represent the diversity of the service (languages/cultures, educational level, socioeconomic level).

Three data collection measures were used in the Mapping Project:

* The Early Childhood Language and Literacy Scale (ECLLS), developed by the research team, based on the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale -- Revised (ECER-R, Harms et al. 1998). ECERS is an internationally recognised observation scale designed to broadly describe the daily activities, organisation, and quality of the learning environment in early childhood services. It is considered to have good predictive validity. The new ECERS-R scale consists of seven sub-scales: Space and Furnishings, Personal Care Routines, Language-Reasoning, Activities, Interaction, Program Structure and Parents and Staff. The researchers added an eighth sub-scale relating to literacy and modified some of the other sub-scale items to reflect literacy practices. This included a focus on the use of information technology. Each classroom was observed for a period of four hours at the same time of day.

* Staff interviews. Following the classroom observations, teachers and their assistants or aides were interviewed and audio-taped using a 20-item standardised questionnaire designed to obtain information about their beliefs and practices relating to young children's literacy development. This measure was designed by the research team to incorporate research relating to good early literacy practices.

* Focus group discussions. A total of nine focus group interviews were conducted involving approximately 60 parents. Two of the groups comprised parents from specific cultural backgrounds. One was held within an Aboriginal community and was moderated by a community member who was also the Aboriginal aide in the preschool. The other brought together families from a specific language other than English (LOTE) background. The group discussion was conducted in their language, facilitated by a university lecturer who had considerable experience in working within the community. A third group was multicultural in composition and conducted in English. The other groups were primarily English-speaking Australian in nature. Focus questions were designed to identify parents' existing knowledge about their children's early literacy development and their understanding and perceptions of their children's literacy experiences in early childhood services.

ECLLS data were subjected to spreadsheet analysis. Interview data was tape-recorded, transcribed and analysed using appropriate software (NUD*IST) designed to help identify themes in non-numerical data. Information was compared and contrasted and related to demographic details of family and staff backgrounds.

Findings relating to the multiple perspectives of staff and parents

One of the major findings revealed through analysis of the interview data was that staff and parents held differing perceptions of what constitutes appropriate, high quality support for early literacy. While both parents and staff recognised the importance of support for early literacy, there were differences in terms of what the groups saw as appropriate practices in early childhood services. A number of areas were identified in which the views of parents and staff differed.

First, many parents expected a skills-based focus as necessary preparation for school entry, whereas staff often resisted this. Many parents wanted to see more writing and learning of the alphabet in services.

These statements reflect the differing perspectives:

 ... no matter how much we talk to parents about how it is not appropriate
 to teach a three-year-old sounds and writing, they still feel we are not
 doing our job. (Staff)

 Parental expectations is (sic) that the child should be taught to read and
 write. I think it is important that we let them know that our philosophy is
 not to do that. We want to give them lots of opportunities for reading,
 lots of opportunities for story telling, singing, dramatic play which is
 going to promote language in a much more informal way. (Staff)

 I am paying for her to learn more so that she will be ready for school.'
 (Parent)

 I would like them to learn the alphabet and counting, a few more structured
 things. (Parent)

 I think they should have the alphabet and copy the letters. (Parent)

A second area of difference in the perspectives of staff and parents related to the role of home and community in supporting children's early literacy. Two areas in which this was evident were:

1. the impact of technology and popular culture on children's early literacy, and

2. the potential of literacy in languages other than English.

Impact of technology

Technology, including television, and popular culture were seen by the majority of parents as important to their children's literacy development:

 Watching Sesame Street and Playschool [is] the best advantage a child can
 have. (Parent)

Many staff, on the other hand, were concerned that children were spending too much time watching television and that parents were not reading books to children:

 Some parents just stick their child in front of the TV. (Staff)

Data from ECLLS indicate that while television and videos were available in many early childhood services they were not generally used to support language and literacy development. Field notes included as part of the ECLLS suggest that computers were not often available for children's use. When they were, staff did not often interact with children engaged in these experiences.

Literacy in languages other than English

In terms of bilingual/biliteracy development, parents appeared to be in a difficult position. For parents from language backgrounds other than English, learning to speak English was seen as a particularly important part of preparing for later school literacy in English. On the other hand, children learning English as a second language in the early childhood program were reported by many parents to want to speak only English at home:

 My son now speaks everything in English ... I didn't imagine him learning
 like that, I mean that fast! (Parent)

Parents were concerned about language loss, as children's home languages were not perceived as being supported in the service. Staff interviews indicated that staff were not negative towards bilingual development but saw the issue as problematic:

 If we have afternoons when we may have a guest speaker, [parents] tend to
 want, ... the few that are there, to listen, but often they don't have the
 language to listen and it is very hard if we have translators there with
 that group translating what the speaker has said. Because you can have
 three or four different groups. Yeah, so that's quite difficult and we are
 also trying to do it whilst running the program at the same time. (Staff)

Discussion

The multiple perspectives on literacy revealed in this project have the potential to enrich early childhood programs and to improve support of young children's early literacy. However, this potential was often not realised. The rather restricted literacy practices reflected in many of the early childhood programs that were observed appeared to mean that valuable skills, resources and knowledge gained by children in home and community experiences were ignored. Children's experiences of information technology, popular culture and literacy experiences in languages other than English were not generally recognised by staff or included in programs.

A key literacy practice identified earlier is opportunity for conversations about topics meaningful to children. Such topics could include computer games, television programs, and popular culture figures such as Barbie or characters in Star Wars. However, the data showed that these areas were largely ignored by staff or dismissed as inappropriate:

 Not much is going on in the home, usually just watching TV--this is the
 place for literacy development. It's here or nowhere. (Staff)

It may be that the impact of technology and popular culture is relatively new. Technology may be a powerful tool for early literacy, but there has been little research carried out in preschools apart from the study of word processing using computers and inconclusive studies of the effects of television viewing on children's socialisation. Early childhood educators also appear to be somewhat reluctant to engage with the area (Dockett et al. 1999). Only a small minority of services rated highly on the ECLLS item `Use of TV, video, and/or computers'. Yet all children are experiencing an explosion of technology and popular culture that requires different literacy skills than those required for paper-based literacy.

Another of the key literacy practices outlined previously was opportunity to learn about sound sequences in words, seen as a precursor of reading in an alphabetic orthography. Data from the project showed that parents wanted to ensure that their children developed the skills they need for successful later literacy learning. Teachers were inclined to be critical of those parents who placed a clear emphasis on teaching letters and sounds to their preschoolers because this was perceived to be developmentally inappropriate. The role of early childhood staff should be to develop shared understandings with parents about how phonological/ alphabetic skills are appropriately supported in early childhood services without introducing a push-down curriculum. Dunn & Kontos (1997, p. 9) suggest that 'It]he emotional costs of academically-oriented classrooms, particularly for minority children from low-socioeconomic families and especially boys, are real. Many children from all backgrounds exhibit more stress in didactic settings than in child-initiated environments'.

Adams (1990) cautions that children who come to school with a good knowledge of the alphabet have also typically spent many hundreds of hours in a variety of interactive literacy experiences. It may not be the knowledge of the alphabet per se that is significant here but what has underpinned such knowledge acquisition.

The funds of knowledge that children may bring to school (knowledge, experiences, beliefs) are considered to be key factors in successful later literacy learning according to a significant Australian language and literacy policy document (ALLC 1995). Reports from different countries (for example, Snow et al. 1998, Gregory 1994, Comber & Cormack 1995) agree that children at risk of low literacy are usually in one or more of the following categories: they come from low income, low literacy homes; they come from bilingual homes; and/or they have cognitive, hearing or learning disabilities. There were few children in the last category in this study. However, there was a high level of socioeconomic and educational disadvantage. Risk may well be compounded when there is a low level of congruence between home and early childhood services about how children's early literacy should be supported.

There is a tension between educational discourses of difference and deficit. Educators need to be mindful of the danger of disadvantaging children through being so aware of difference that children do not gain access to the dominant discourses of educational institutions. Too great an emphasis, for example, on popular culture as a foundation for literacy development can limit children's access to the more traditional range that is needed for school success. On the other hand, a narrow, traditional definition of literacy omits the experiences, interests and skills of many students. Children in today's society need to become competent in many literacies. Educational institutions from preschool to tertiary education must facilitate this.

Implications for early childhood educators

The experiences, skills and domains of knowledge that support successful literacy would all appear to be achievable in quality prior-to-school programs. Intervention studies in preschools and homes have shown a positive relationship between high quality preschoolschool-based experiences and later success in literacy learning. Even relatively modest fine-tuning of lower quality prior-to-school environments has been shown to correlate positively with children's later language and literacy development (Dickinson & Smith 1994).

The years before school are where wide variation in the quantity of verbal input and interaction with young children seems to begin to make its mark on children's vocabulary growth, which is itself a significant predictor of later literacy success (Hart & Risley 1995).

With regard to bilingual development, Australia's monolingual mind-set has proven resistant to change. Children who begin to learn a new language in a successive situation (i.e., after the age of three) in the preschool years are at risk of losing their home language (Makin et al. 1995) and with it all the cognitive and linguistic benefits of bilingualism, such as enhanced metalinguistic awareness. Development of the home language supports the learning of a new language. However, in Australia, bilingual early childhood programs are, by and large, conspicuous by their absence.

The old pedagogical principles apply to early literacy as they do to other areas: start where the child is and move from there; work from what is known to what is unknown. This implies accepting children's home languages and incorporating them into early childhood programs (Mills & Mills 1993). It also implies accepting information technology and popular culture as important forces in many children's lives and incorporating them into early childhood programs (Pahl 1999).

Children need opportunities to become interested in letters and words. Many young children become interested very early in the first letter of their own name. Early childhood staff need to be ready to respond directly, discussing the letter and its sound(s) if the child is showing interest in this.

Inclusion by staff of aspects of children's literacy experiences in information technology and popular culture may offer bridges into literacy for a wider range of children than those who respond readily to traditional, paper-based literacy.

Conclusion

Over the last few years, there has been an increasing recognition of the importance of social interaction in learning, and the importance of partnerships between early childhood staff and parents. Staff and parents both want children to experience successful literacy learning. The question is how to do this in a way appropriate to young children's development, without encouraging a 'push down' curriculum, while at the same time recognising that what children know when they reach school entry is a key factor in their successful literacy (ALLC 1995). The project researchers, on the basis of their own work in mapping literacy practices in 79 early childhood classrooms and an analysis of the work of other researchers in early literacy, have enunciated five principles that should underlie high quality support for early literacy:

Principle 1: Established systems facilitate and maintain two-way communication between educators and families about children's languages and literacies.

Principle 2: Educators build on children's literacy experiences from home and community, including experiences with information technology and popular culture.

Principle 3: Planning systems support children's individual literacies, including both dialects and languages other than English.

Principle 4: Literacy experiences are integrated across the curriculum and throughout the day.

Principle 5: Educators extend children's constructions of literacy by mediating their literacy play and by explicitly teaching literacy concepts, processes and skills relevant to children's experiences.

It is important not to overstate differences in parent and staff perspectives. However, often it appears that the differences are most acute in populations that are identified as vulnerable. If the cycle of disadvantage and low literacy is to be broken, parents and staff must both speak out and listen to each other as a necessary precursor to developing shared understanding in supporting young children's literacy learning.

(1.) NSW Department of Community Services (DOCS) and NSW Department of Education & Training (DET)

(2.) In the majority of services, one room only was observed. There were six services in which observation took place in two rooms.

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Laurie Makin is Director of the Research Centre for Young Children's Education at the University of Newcastle, Ourimbah, NSW and Associate Professor, Early Childhood. Laurie coordinates the early childhood program and has a particular interest in early language and literacy in both monolingual and bilingual children. She is currently editing a book on early literacy with a colleague from the University of Western Sydney.

Address: University of Newcastle, Ourimbah, NSW 2258

Email: lmakin@mail.newcastle.edu.au.

Margaret McNaught is a lecturer at the Institute of Early Childhood, Macquarie University. She has a longstanding interest in the literacy development of young children, arising from her previous work as an educational psychologist. She has also worked in family-centred early intervention, and researched systemic approaches to literacy learning difficulties.

Address: Institute of Early Childhood, Macquarie University, NSW 2109

Email: margaret.mcnaught@mq.edu.au