The effect of Professional Development on Early Childhood Children’s Literacy Development

The effect of Professional Development on Early Childhood Children’s Literacy Development

Professional Development is critical on early childhood literacy development for all teaching staff.  This keeps the teachers current on the developments and trends in early childhood education.  In combination with these training sessions, teachers should also take advantage of opportunities offered at national conferences, local universities and regional seminars.

Children’s Literacy Development beings from the very early months of life and continues throughout their growth.  From the first month to the second year in life, children’s experiences with the oral language development begins to build a foundation for later reading success.   From 2 to 3 years of age, children begin to produce understandable speech in response to books and written marks they make.  Ages 3 to 4 years is when children show rapid growth in literacy.  They have favorite books and focus mostly on reenacting the story from the pictures.  They then progress from telling about each picture individually to weaving a story from picture to picture using language that sounds like reading or written language.  (Johnson)  Children begin their writing skills around this time as well.  It starts off with forming scribbles, letter-like forms, and random strings of letters.  Mock handwriting and wavy scribbles are made to imitate adult cursive writing.  Letter-like forms (aka Mock handwriting) are early attempts to form alphabetic letters and will eventually develop into standard letters.  Children maintain their intention to create meaning and will ‘read’ their printed messages using language that sounds like reading. 

Age 5 is when children begin their academic instructions and begin receiving their formal literacy instruction.  Children in kindergarten are referred to as emergent readers.  They continue to grow in literacy skills if they are exposed to literacy-rich environments.  Emergent readers are just beginning to control early reading strategies such as directionality, word-by-word matching, and concepts of print.  They use pictures to support reading and rely heavily on their knowledge of language.  Writing skills also develop rapidly during the kindergarten years.  Like reading, writing shows an overlapping development.  Often children will try to recall what has been rewritten or will use a picture created with the text to reread instead of using letter clues.  (Johnson)

Professional development impact have been summarized into three categories: enhancing pedagogy; contributing to children’s learning; and building linkages between early childhood education settings and other settings. Eight characteristics of quality professional development are derived from evidence of the processes and conditions operating in the programmes under review.  (Cubey and Mitchell) 

In their study, Cubey and Mitchell (2003, 15) discovered that there is evidence from New Zealand, Sweden, and the UK of the impact of professional development on teachers/educators’ interactions with children. The professional development described in this section focused on interactions that are associated with children’s learning – scaffolding, extending children’s thinking, focusing on the child’s questions to encourage learning strategies and motivation, and interactions that are sensitive, stimulating, and encourage autonomy to deepen child involvement. In some more general studies, there was a focus on adults’ self review of practice where teachers/educators chose their own goals. Some of these goals related to adult/child interaction.

Further, Cubey and Mitchell (2003,19) discussed  that most highly rated action research tools had benefit in helping practitioners to respond to diversity, because they could be used to evaluate teaching practice in respect to all children across particular strands of Te Whäriki. For example, they demonstrated ways to collect data on every parents’ views, not just those who came to a meeting or who initially responded to a request, ways to examine inclusion and exclusion within a setting, ways to analyze what behaviors would indicate that a child was tackling or persisting with difficulty and ways to examine engagement of teachers with under twos.

Carr noted (1998a, p.37) that professional development will be necessary to support the development of focused and participatory observations required by the Learning Stories Framework and that there needs to be management policies and funding to support reflection and action research over extended periods of time.  (Cubey and Mitchell)

One New Zealand and two Swedish studies provided evidence of professional development or training aimed at influencing teachers’ interactions with children. The focus of these programmes was on interactions to extend children’s thinking, one through scaffolding children’s learning  (Jordan, 1999), a second through the adult role of mediating between the child’s experience and the environment  (Palmerus & Pramling, 1991; Pramling, 1996), and the third through a programme developing ways in which early childhood students in pre-service training deal with children’s life questions (Pramling Samuelsson, Johansson, Davidsson, & Fors, 2000).  (Cubey and Mitchell)

 

References:

Cubey, Pam and Mitchell, Linda.  Professional Development in Early Childhood Settings:  Best Evidence Synthesis Iteration (BES).  October 2003.  Retrieved 24, May, 2011 from http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/series/2515/5955

Johnson, Debra.  Critical Issue:  Addressing the Needs of Emergent and Early Readers.  1999.  Retrieved 24 May, 2011 from http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/content/cntareas/reading/li100.htm

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