The Routledge International Handbook of Early Literacy Education

A Contemporary Guide to Literacy Teaching and Interventions in a Global Context

Natalia Kucirkova, Catherine E. Snow, Vibeke Grøver, Catherine McBride

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317659198
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The Routledge International Handbook of Early Literacy Education offers a pioneering overview of early literacy provision in different parts of the world and brings together interdisciplinary research evidence on effective literacy teaching to inform current and future practice and policy of early literacy. From the problem of identification of literacy difficulties in a particular learning context to supporting the provision of early literacy through digital media, the handbook deals with the major concerns and newest areas of interest in literacy research. With an international and future vision, it provides an accessible guide to the main debates and future trends in the global field of early literacy, and informs academics, policy-makers, practitioners, educators and students about innovative early literacy research methods and instruction.

The three sections and 30 ground-breaking chapters reflect a conceptual framework of questions asked by scholars and educators interested in looking beyond traditional definitions of literacy.

Part I provides contemporary insights collected by internationally renowned scholars on what literacy is, and what it can offer to young children in the twenty-first century.

Part II is a collection of detailed portraits of 14 countries, regions or language communities, and focuses on early literacy provision, practice and policy from across the world.

Part III outlines key interventions and research-endorsed practices designed to support home–school connections and children's reading and writing skills, as well as vocabulary, phonological awareness and narrative abilities, with examples drawn from various home, school and community environments.

All chapters promote discussion, critical analysis and questions for reflection and are written in jargon-free language in an easy-to use themed format. This handbook is an indispensable reference guide for practising teachers and student teachers, especially those undertaking postgraduate qualifications, as well as early literacy researchers, policy-makers and school-based literacy leaders.

PART I
Contextualizing early literacy

High-quality early literacy education is essential for children to become active citizens, effective communicators and happy individuals.

Scholars and practitioners have been increasingly preoccupied with the question of how to foster early literacy in times of heightened global interactions, multiculturalism, multilingualism and migration across and within national borders. Early years classrooms in the twenty-first century have become very heterogeneous, with children of varied abilities, socio-cultural backgrounds and parental expectations. Many early years educators struggle with teaching the foundations of reading and writing in multilingual situations. This creates an acutely perceived need for more specific guidance on effective, culturally responsive and individualized early literacy instruction. In addition, today’s children grow up in home and school environments that use a wide range of new, digitally mediated modes of communication, reading and writing. With a lacuna of cross-cultural guidance, future and current educators might be inadequately prepared to support effective multicultural and multi-media literacy provisions.

This handbook is a collection of original, carefully selected and reviewed chapters on early literacy practice and research across the world, representing policies and scholarship of the past two decades. The book aspires to offer new insights into children’s literacy lives through the lens of international instruction models and past interventions and thus to add to current discussions on the topics of global, multicultural and digital literacy in the early years.

The chapters in the book provide key insights from studies of early literacy instruction and interventions, and position these alongside the status quo of early literacy education in different societies around the globe. While many studies of the impact of targeted literacy interventions (e.g. vocabulary interventions) are available in the research literature, these are rarely situated within the context of prevailing educational policies and practices, or related to other approaches for similar populations (e.g. teaching word attack). This handbook fills this gap by providing an overview of the valuable lessons learnt from a variety of approaches and perspectives focused on early literacy instruction and intervention.

Our aim was to contextualize the insights provided by past research, situate them within the broader context of early literacy education and provide a forum for discussion of the everyday issues surrounding literacy practice in classrooms in different parts of the world. We also aimed to address past literacy research, acknowledging the concerns shared by both scholars and aspiring and current teachers worldwide, such as the best methods for literacy instruction, practice and policy for children from special populations, common standards and assessment policies. We hope to offer new insights into children’s literacy lives by juxtaposing instruction models from different societies and designed for different languages. Lastly, our objective was to put together a basis for a shared understanding of the literacy challenges brought about by changes in the twenty-first century, characterized by multiculturalism and multi-literacies.

This book is interdisciplinary, with contributions from colleagues working in the fields of education, psychology, linguistics and sociology. It is intentionally international, with contributions from researchers working in many different countries (New Zealand, Germany, Austria, Nordic countries, Spain, France, Latin America, Poland, Turkey, Balkan countries, African countries, Israel, Arabic-speaking countries, Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and India) and language communities.

The handbook is organized in three parts, each introduced with a brief editorial orientation to the content. Part I outlines the principal theoretical paradigms that underlie past and present literacy research, and areas of dissent that have influenced policies for early literacy instruction, promotion and development across the globe. Although the principles underpinning past and present research are interwoven in the book, they are foregrounded within this section, so that the practices described in subsequent chapters can be situated within an understanding of research findings as well as the broader historical and social context. The section charts the scholars’ changing perceptions of early literacy, and details the current global issues faced by early years practitioners.

Part II outlines provision of literacy in relation to the idiosyncrasies of the language and writing system in the individual countries covered by the authors. The authors describe national early literacy policies in relation to several key factors, including typological features of the language and orthography, the major curriculum models accommodating these, the national assessment and evaluation frameworks, provision of early literacy for children from special populations, availability of literacy resources, and current issues in fostering early reading and writing in the respective countries. As such, Part II presents the reader with various views on effective strategies to support young children’s literacy and identifies gaps for future research. Importantly, the authors in this section establish a solid basis for comparative work in the global context of early literacy education.

Part III provides an overview of some of the key current themes in literacy research. Many of these chapters highlight one important area of literacy learning across cultures. The authors offer overviews of topics including writing, which is becoming more and more central to conceptualizations of literacy acquisition, phonological sensitivity, different approaches to stories and story-telling for children as well as their parents and teachers, vocabulary knowledge and recommended interventions for children at risk of reading difficulties by virtue of their language-learning difficulties. These chapters are useful for surveying a relatively broad gamut of literacy-learning issues, particularly because many of them take care to consider such issues in different countries, languages and scripts.

We now turn to Part I and highlight the excellent chapters in this first section. Chapter 1 lays the foundations for the work reported in subsequent chapters and allows the authors to revisit it as appropriate and connect to the work undertaken. Chapter 1 also pays attention to the enduring dimensions of literacy, such as the role of practitioners, parents and other children’s educators who act as literacy teachers but also as makers and observers of young children’s everyday literacy practices. The chapter addresses questions such as where and why literacy is important and reviews the key skills and qualities needed for early readers and writers (e.g. vocabulary, print skills or phonological awareness).

In Chapter 2 Ying Wang explores how early childhood education relates to literacy outcomes in young children, both concurrently and longitudinally. One issue is the nature of the early childhood education itself. Research on intensity, quality and type of schooling highlights how each of these factors matters for young children’s preparation for literacy learning. Perhaps most fundamentally, those attending early childhood education programmes tend to make greater gains in early literacy skills than those who do not. In addition, Wang highlights how families can promote literacy at home, in cooperation with school-based programmes. Many cross-cultural studies demonstrate the importance of early training for both parents and teachers for facilitating children’s early literacy development. Solid early childhood education in combination with some home-based literacy exposure provide the best overall support for young children for early literacy acquisition for all children, including those learning in multiple languages and those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Chapter 3 by Emily Phillips Galloway and Nonie Lesaux addresses young bilingual learners and offers a developmental perspective focusing on exposure and opportunities to use either language in three periods from birth to the early elementary school years. Though the relationship between oral language skills and reading comprehension is fairly well established in monolingual children, there is still much we do not know regarding language and literacy relationships in young bilinguals, such as under what conditions cross-linguistic transfer may support literacy learning. Likewise, to disentangle the effects of socio-economic issues and instruction on bilingual learning, the chapter calls for research that takes into account the diversities of bilingual learners and instructional practices around the world, thus laying the ground for the presentation of literacy education in individual countries in Part II.

Natalia Kucirkova’s chapter discusses four key features foregrounded by digital books and their role for early literacy: personalization, interactivity, haptic engagement and creativity. Drawing on a project dedicated to the exploration of affordances of digital books for young children, the chapter highlights the need for practitioners to seek synergies in children’s digital and non-digital experiences and their commitment to support both. The chapter considers the possibility of using a community approach and expanding the place of public scholarship in children’s use of new media. Overall, the chapter adds to the current academic inter-disciplinary discussions on the topics of global, multicultural and digital literacy (or ‘twenty-first-century literacies’).

Clare Wood’s chapter brings together different research conceptualizations of what it means to read and write in a multicultural society, notably in light of the changes brought about by digital media in the twenty-first century. The chapter offers a critical perspective on the meaning of ‘literacy’ and ‘texts’ and concludes by redefining literacy. Traditional notions of literacy are revisited from the viewpoint of contemporary culture and technological innovation. The chapter provides an overview as well as a detailed consideration of particular studies that highlight the changes that have occurred to texts and to literacy in the past decade. The chapter calls for a re-examination of the multiple and complex ways in which children read and write in the twenty-first century, and suggests a new definition of literacy that would encompass these aspects.

Each of these chapters should be of particular interest to those seeking information on state-of-the-art theory and practice in relation to early childhood literacy learning.

1
EARLY LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AND INSTRUCTION

An overview

Catherine E. Snow

The goal of this chapter is to give an overview of what we know about literacy development in children up to age eight, as well as to introduce some topics for which more research is needed. We know that good readers have developed familiarity and automaticity with symbols used in their writing system and how those symbols represent sounds, as well as oral language skills strong enough to enable them to make sense of the words they are decoding. This full array of skills develops optimally when children have access to rich language and literacy experiences at home and in early education settings. Controversies persist about how early it is useful to introduce explicit literacy instruction, and the optimal balance in early literacy education between form-based and meaning-based instruction. The variety of approaches to literacy instruction implemented across different national education systems and different languages reveals both that a variety of approaches can work but also that some approaches, in particular those relying on rote memorization, generate a high risk of failure.

The goal of this introductory chapter is to give an overview of literacy development in children up to age eight. Literacy is the key survival skill for the twenty-first century, even more than in previous eras when it was possible to find employment and participate in public discourse with limited reading skills. Success in mastering literacy is greatly enhanced for some children by particular experiences and opportunities during early childhood. Research has generated lots of information about what those experiences and opportunities are: both a set of conditions that determine general good physical and mental health (clean water, appropriate nutrition, preventive medical care, protection from violence and other sources of extreme stress) and conditions that are more specifically supportive of literacy and cognitive development (freedom to play, rich language interactions with adults, access to literacy-infused activities mediated by adults). Many questions and challenges in ensuring these propitious circumstances remain, though, especially when we have to make decisions about actual practices to be implemented; when we consider the wide array of domestic circumstances into which children are born, and the variety of linguistic, social and educational settings in which they learn to read; when we review the disparities across groups within countries and across countries in the degree of success in literacy outcomes; and as we contemplate how even to define literacy in an era when digital forms of text and speech are crowding out traditional modes of distanced communication.

This chapter sets the stage for the chapters that follow, by reviewing some widely accepted claims about literacy development and instruction, previewing some of the variation that arises as a result of both national differences in the organization of early literacy education and language-related differences in the orthographies used to represent speech in print, and considering why we continue to have so much difficulty ensuring universal literacy despite the long history of relevant research and accumulated list of proven practices.

What we know

Fortunately, early literacy has been a target of research for a very long time, with the result that impressive amounts of knowledge about early literacy development and instruction have accumulated. Some widely accepted conclusions can, thus, be highlighted, with the reservation that these research findings have not yet all fully penetrated the worlds of policy and practice, where many myths and unproductive strategies may still hold sway.

Literacy is a human invention, one that has been around for a very long time but that has rarely been universally distributed. Now that literacy has become a prerequisite for successful participation in the modern, digitally mediated world of distanced communication and high information flow, ensuring universal access to it is a matter of social justice.

Literate forms of communication require a mechanism for rendering speech – an aural stream of phonemes – into print. The way that speech is represented in print is referred to as an orthography – a term that incorporates the script (e.g. Chinese characters vs. Japanese syllabaries vs. Semitic abjads or one of the Indo-European alphabets) as well as details of how the script is deployed (e.g. prioritizing one-to-one co...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on editors
• Notes on contributors
• Foreword
• Part I Contextualizing early literacy
• Part II Early literacy around the world
• Part III Research findings and future directions
• Index