Pathway to Emergent Literacy

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This research has three broad aims. First, the work will examine the nature and sources of growth in cognitive, language, and literacy skills during the transition from preschool to the early school years. Utilizing an ecological perspective, the research will investigate specifically the interactive role of child (e.g., IQ, social skills), family (e.g., parental warmth/sensitivity, home learning environment), and schooling (e.g., amount of instruction in alphabet recognition) factors in shaping academic trajectories from three years of age to the end of kindergarten. Second, the project will explore the utility of constructing and charting developmental pathways to literacy, employing a combination of analytic tools, including multiple regression and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The combination of methods will permit creation of frameworks for describing complex, dynamic interactions among child, family, and schooling factors that shape literacy acquisition in young children making the transition to school. Third, the "pathway" framework and analytic strategy will be utilized to investigate the sources of reading success or failure in early elementary school. The conceptualization will combine the child, family, and schooling factors into a broad, comprehensive model of early reading acquisition. Two hundred 3-year-old children (following attrition) who attend center-based daycare or preschool and whose parents intend to enroll them in a local elementary school will participate in this three-year longitudinal study. Children's cognitive, language, and literacy outcomes will be assessed with individually administered standardized instruments and non-standardized measures. Additionally, information will be gathered on children's temperament and social skills. Finally, parenting and schooling factors will be assessed using questionnaires and direct observation. A longitudinal design will be implemented, following children for three years from age three through age five. This research is likely to make substantial theoretical, methodological, and analytic contributions. In particular, the pathway strategy employing SEM permits a rigorous yet broad perspective capable of describing the complex, dynamic interactions among variables shaping early developmental trajectories. In addition, the research may well have important implications for educational policy. The findings will likely confirm the centrality of the early childhood years as one source of meaningful individual differences in important literacy, language, and cognitive skills. Consequently, the results are likely to highlight the crucial role of parents in shaping children's early educational trajectories. Moreover, finding important connections between children's learning-related social skills and academic growth implies that in preparing children to be maximally ready for school, socialization of children's developing independence, responsibility, and self-regulation should go hand in hand with the promotion of early literacy skills. Finally, it is anticipated that different kinds of kindergarten instruction (e.g., teacher-directed versus child-directed) are likely to differentially benefit children with different skill levels. Taken together, the findings should be of interest to parents of preschool children as well as to preschool educators, kindergarten teachers, and school personnel concerned with issues of school readiness, school transition, and risk factors of early school failure.