Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Early Literacy Education
Early Literacy Education
Ehmig |
Carolin Seelmann (eds.)
Contents
Preface
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132
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178
100
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6. Long-Term Perspectives
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Copyright Page
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272
Appendix
5. Good Practices
Bookstart in England: A Worldwide Early Reading Programme 229
Viv Bird
Bookstart: Bringing Books to Babies
Bettina Kmmerling-Meibauer
232
236
Contents
Contents
PREFACE
Contents
PREFACE
Note
1
Carolin Seelmann
Carolin Seelmann holds a master of arts from Johannes GutenbergUniversity in Mainz, Germany, where she studied communication
research, business administration and the history of publishing.
Following her studies she worked as a project manager at a market
research institute in the area of media and social research. Since
2010 she has been a research associate at the Institute for Research
on Reading and Media at Stiftung Lesen in Mainz, specializing in
the area of early childhood programs on the national and international level. She is responsible for the website www.readingworldwide.com and played a leading role in planning and organizing the
international conference Prepare for Life Raising Awareness for Early Literacy Education held in Leipzig, Germany, in March 2013.
Contents
Contents
Wolf Singer
Contents
WOLF SINGER
18
Experience-dependent Development
Despite the substantial determination of
brain architecture by genetic factors, human
babies are born with extremely immature
brains that continue to develop structurally
until the end of puberty. At the time of
birth, all neurons are in place and the basic
connections, especially those bridging long
distances, are formed. However, the majority of neurons in the cerebral cortex are not
yet fully connected. It is only after birth and
during the following years that the functional architecture of the brain attains its final
complexity. This developmental process is
characterized by a continuous turnover of
connections. Nerve cells extend the processes which receive contacts from other nerve
cells (dendrites) and the processes with
which they distribute their activity to other
nerve cells (axons) and establish contacts.
Once formed, these connections are subject to a functional test and are then either
consolidated for the rest of the individuals
life or are removed irreversibly. This validation process is controlled by neuronal activity.
Connections among neurons that have a
high probability of displaying temporally
correlated activity tend to become consolidated, while connections among neurons
that have a lower probability of being
activated in a correlated manner tend to be
removed.
Neurons wire together if they fire together.
After birth, the activity of neuronal networks is of course influenced to a large
extent by the sensory signals now available.
Contents
WOLF SINGER
to epigenetic influences allows the realization of functions that could not have
been attained through genetic instructions
alone and that this gain of function more
than compensates for the possible hazards
of deprivation. The development of visual
functions provides support for this notion
(see Singer 1995).
One example is the experience-dependent
selection of connections among neurons in
the visual cortex. Through the selective stabilization of connections that link neurons
exhibiting correlated activity, frequently occurring correlations in the outer world can
be translated into the architecture of connections. Thus, the system can learn about
statistical contingencies in its environment
and can store this knowledge in its processing architectures. This knowledge can then
be used to formulate educated hypotheses
about the specific properties of the world
in which the organism is evolving. Through
epigenetic shaping of the brains functional
architecture, the organisms can adapt their
neuronal architectures to the environment
in which they happen to be born, greatly
economizing the computational resources
that have to be invested to cope with the
specific challenges of the respective environment.
Another impressive illustration of such
experience-dependent adaptation of cognitive processes is provided by language acquisition. Exposure to the mother language
induces irreversible changes in the processing architectures required for the decoding
and reproduction of this language. Thus,
children develop specific schemata for the
prosody of their mother language and for
characteristic phonemes. This allows them
to rapidly and automatically segment the
Contents
WOLF SINGER
for the epigenetic shaping of brain architectures. The developing brain knows about
the nature of the signals that can be used
for the optimization of its circuitry. Thus,
the developing brain engages in an active
search for signals that it needs for its own
development. The nature of required signals
changes depending on the time course of
the various developmental windows. Accordingly, only those inputs are considered for
circuit changes that match the needs of the
current developmental process. It follows
from this that the developing brain has
the initiative in all processes of experiencedependent development. It poses specific
questions at specific developmental stages,
directs its attention selectively to the special
input patterns and accepts only those signals
for circuit optimization that match prewired
expectancies (for a review of the pertinent
literature see Singer 1995).
This has far-reaching consequences for the
design of educational curricula. It is obvious
that deprivation will have a disastrous impact at all stages of development. However,
it is also obvious that there is no point in
offering as many stimuli as possible over
as long a time as possible. The developing
brain will utilize only those signals that it
actually needs, and there is the risk that
offering stimuli which are too numerous or
too diverse will have a distractive effect and
make it difficult for the brain to concentrate
on those signals that it really needs. This has
a number of implications for educational
strategies. First, it is imperative to avoid deprivation of any kind, be it sensory or social.
However, under normal conditions one can
assume that the environment is sufficiently
rich to provide the necessary information.
Second, one should carefully observe the
spontaneous behavior of children, to find
Contents
WOLF SINGER
Mechanisms of Learning
As mentioned above, it is generally assumed
that learning relies on changes in the efficacy of excitatory and/or inhibitory connections. The mechanisms that mediate these
learning-induced changes in the coupling
strength of neurons closely resemble those
that mediate the activity-dependent circuit
changes during experience-dependent
development. Excitatory connections among
neurons strengthen if these neurons discharge in a correlated way, while they weaken if
the activity of the cells is temporally unrelated. The molecular processes that evaluate
the temporal correlations among neuronal
firing patterns and translate these into lasting modifications of coupling strength are
by and large the same as those promoting
activity-dependent circuit selection during
development. The only major difference is
that, in the adult, a weakening of connections is no longer followed by their removal
and that new connections are formed. However, there are a few exceptions. In recent
years evidence has become available showing that in a few distinct brain regions, parts
of the hippocampus and the olfactory bulb
neurons continue to be generated throughout life, and that these neurons form new
connections and become integrated into
existing circuitry. Thus, in these distinct
areas of the brain, developmental processes
persist throughout life, and it is presently
unclear why this is only the case in these
particular regions and not in the cerebral
cortex, where most of the learning-related
modifications are supposed to take place.
Contents
WOLF SINGER
References
Ahissar, M. and Hochstein, S. 1997. Task
difficulty and the specificity of perceptual
learning. Nature 387:401-406.
Hoffman, K. L. and McNaughton, B. L. 2002.
Coordinated reactivation of distributed
memory traces in primate neocortex. Science
297:2070-2073.
Louie, K. and Wilson, M. A. 2001. Temporally
structured replay of awake hippocampal ensemble activity during rapid eye movement
sleep. Neuron 29:145-156.
Renate Zimmer
Contents
RENATE ZIMMER
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Moving Language
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1st observation 2nd observation
Experimental group
Moving Stories
The project is called Geschichten bewegen (Moving Stories), and the name can be
understood in two ways. On the one hand,
children can use their creative potential to
actively introduce movement into stories
and to process content through corporeal
expression. On the other, they can allow
themselves to be moved by the stories
both emotionally and physically. The impressive and expressive functions stories offer
have been refined to a high degree in the
projects individual modules. The projects
goal is to promote movement as a fun, aesthetic, speech-enhancing medium that can
be used in reading-aloud and storytelling
situations with children in preschools and
schools.
The interdisciplinary effort involving library,
movement and music specialists as well as
educators has given rise to the idea of a
moving library, which serves as an educational partner for preschools and schools as
well as a traditional setting for stories. This
new model makes it possible to increase
the role of libraries as a quality learning
environment within a regional educational
landscape.
Control group
Contents
RENATE ZIMMER
Konrad and Rita are the stories main characters. They each have their own distinct
behaviors and movements; they are wild and
rambunctious or quiet and reserved. Each
story is an invitation to get involved in the
plot and to identify with one of the figures
and his or her characteristics: either Konrad,
the slow, considerate kangaroo, who tends
to be somewhat scared, sluggish and plodding and who doesnt really like to move, or
Rita, the crafty racing mouse, who is always
trying to keep her friend Konrad on his toes.
Rita is extremely fast and courageous; she
cant sit still, is jumpy and sometimes a bit
imprudent. And since she often cant stop in
time, she occasionally gets a bump or two.
Konrad and Rita start off on an adventure
together, pass the brake test for racing
mice and participate in a long-jump contest
for kangaroos.
Once the reading-aloud and listening activities are over, the stories also provide the
possibility of returning to the subject matter
to reenact, change and refine it. The children can take on specific roles, replay various
scenes, actively execute the described movements, reconsider the subject matter and
invent new movements. In doing so, not only
do the stories stimulate motor activities, they
also provide children with myriad opportunities for discovering language. Rita not only
runs, she can also hop, jump and tiptoe. The
illustrations inspire the children to use their
imaginations to develop the stories further
and come up with additional ideas. Konrad,
for example, is a somewhat heavy, cumbersome kangaroo, which means Rita has to call
several friends to her aid to get the seesaw
he is sitting on to move.
Contents
RENATE ZIMMER
References
Christopher J. Lonigan
Contents
CHRISTOPHER J. LONIGAN
Home Environments
Young childrens home environments are
associated with the development of early
literacy skills. Research indicates that development of different early literacy skills are the
product of different environmental experiences. Code-related skills require some degree
of environmental support, such as exposure
to alphabet knowledge, which many children
experience through interactions with parents
surround books and print. Meaning-related
skills (i.e., oral language) seem to require
exposure to language in some form of contingent and interactive exchanges with parents
or others in the home. The landmark study of
Hart and Risley (1995) reported that in homes
where parents spent more time talking with
their children, children had substantially larger vocabularies.
The prototypical and iconic aspect of early
literacy exposure, shared book reading, provides a potentially rich set of opportunities for
children to learn early literacy skills. Evidence
suggests that shared reading does foster
vocabulary development with preschool children (e.g., Snchal et al. 1996; Whitehurst
and Lonigan 1998). Snchal et al. (1996)
also reported that other aspects of the home
literacy environment (e.g., number of books
in the home, library visits, parents own print
exposure) were related to childrens vocabulary skills, but Payne et al. (1994) reported
that adult literacy activities in low-income
households (e.g., the amount of time a parent spends reading for pleasure) were not
significantly related to childrens oral language, which was best predicted by activities that
directly involved the child (i.e., frequency of
shared reading, number of childrens books
in the home, frequency of library visits with
child).
Shared reading experiences in the preschool
period do not appear to have direct effects
Direct Teaching
For children with lower levels of early literacy
skills than expected, there is growing evidence that their skills can be improved with
developmentally sensitive instruction. As
noted above, different experiences in the
home appear to have influences on different
aspects of childrens early literacy skills, and
data from intervention studies also indicate
that different interventions are necessary to
increase skills in different early literacy skill
areas. Instructional activities that focus on
childrens code-related skills (i.e., teaching
phonological awareness or letter knowledge)
can have large positive impacts on these skills,
including effects on decoding skills (Lonigan
et al. 2013; Lonigan et al. 2008b).
Most studies examining interventions for oral
language skills have focused on shared-reading interventions. There is limited evidence
that simply reading books to children as an
intervention has a substantial influence on
childrens language skills; however, a particular type of shared reading dialogic reading
has been shown to be an effective intervention for childrens language skills when
Contents
CHRISTOPHER J. LONIGAN
Self-regulation
A relatively recent research focus has been
on the linkages between childrens self-regulation skills and their academic achievement.
Self-regulation includes behaviors associated
with executive functioning (EF) and attention.
There are three dimensions of EF: inhibitory
control, working memory and shifting (Lehto
et al. 2003; Miyake et al. 2000). EF is most
commonly measured by direct assessments
of childrens abilities to inhibit a prepotent
response (e.g., Stroop-like tasks, which measure inhibitory control), to immediately recall
information after engaging in some manipulation of the information (e.g., reciting a list
of numbers in the reverse order of presentation, which measures working memory) and to
adapt successfully to changing rules in a task
(e.g., switching responses to a stimulus based
on a superordinate stimulus, which measures
shifting). Attention is typically measured by
parent or teacher reports of childrens behavioral manifestation of attention and on-task
behaviors.
Measures of EF typically inhibitory control,
working memory or both are significantly
related both concurrently and longitudinally
with childrens literacy-related skills both in
early childhood (e.g., Blair and Razza 2007;
Summary
Literacy skills provide children with a fundamental tool to succeed throughout life.
There is strong continuity in literacy skills that
emerges prior to childrens entry into formal
educational environments. Consequently,
efforts to identify the developmental trajectories of children prior to school entry and to
understand environmental factors that influence the development of early literacy skills
hold the promise of helping children develop
a strong foundation for reading and avoid
the negative consequences of struggling with
the acquisition of reading. Skilled reading involves both code-related skills and meaningrelated skills. Although these skills emerge at
different points in the acquisition of reading,
the developmental precursors of these skills
are present early in childrens lives. Results
from longitudinal studies highlight the
Summary of Results from Meta-Analysis of National Early Literacy Panel: Average ZeroOrder Correlations Between Predictor Variables and Conventional Literacy Skill Outcomes
Predicted Outcome
Predictor Domain
Specific Skill Used as Predictor
Word Decoding
Reading Comprehension
.52
.41
Decoding Nonwords
.72
.40
Spelling
.60
---a
Alphabet Knowledge
.50
.48
.34
.54
Writing/Name Writing
.49
.33
Print Awareness
.29
.48
Environmental Print
.28
---a
Reading Readinessb
.50
.59
Phonological Awareness
.40
.44
RAN Letters/Digits
.40
.43
RAN Objects/Colors
.32
.42
.26
.39
.33
.33
Print-Related Skills
.45
---a
Arithmetic
.45
.35
Performance IQ
.30
.34
Visual-Motor Skills
.25
.22
Visual-Memory Skills
.22
.17
Visual-Perceptual Skills
.22
.26
Visual Skills
Note: RAN = Rapid Automatized Naming.a No or insufficient studies with predictor variable. b These measures were typically a combination of alphabet knowledge, phonological processing and oral language skills.
References
Blair, C. and Razza, R. P. 2007. Relating effortful control, executive function and false belief
understanding to emerging math and literacy
ability in kindergarten. Child Development
78:647-663.
Byrne, B., Olson, R. K., Samuelsson, S., Wadsworth, S., Corley, R. et al. 2006. Genetic and environmental influences on early literacy. Journal
of Research in Reading 29:33-49.
Duncan, G. J., Dowsett, C. J., Claessens, A.,
Magnuson, K., Huston, A. C. et al. 2007. School
Contents
CHRISTOPHER J. LONIGAN
Contents
Eve V. Clark
Since the 1960s, there has been renewed interest in and extensive research on childrens
language, and on the stages children go
through in the course of learning a first
language and learning how to use it. From
this research, we can identify several general stages that all children acquiring a first
language will go through:
(a) Babbling, emerging between
6 and 10 months
(b) Production of first words, emerging
between 10 months (early) and
20/24 months (late), e.g., /mama/,
/papa/, /ba/ bottle, /do/ dog, etc.
(c) Production of two-word combinations,
emerging between 14 months (early)
and 24/26 months (late), e.g., ball there,
want outside, where baby?, mitten no
(d) Production of longer utterances, up to
five or six words long, with a growing
range of syntactic constructions,
including coordinate, relative, temporal,
causal, conditional, and complement
clauses, between the ages of two and
four years, e.g.,
coordinate clauses
Ch (3;2, in classroom) I want to look
at them [= visitors] and come back in.
Ch (3;6, playing on some boxes) I jump
and I fall.
relative clauses
Ch (2;0) here a doll Shelli give Damon.
Ch (2;5, hearing a truck outside) I go
outside see a truck may have dirt in it.
temporal clauses
Ch (2;1) I get bigger, I drink tea.
Ch (2;5, being put down for a nap)
When you close the door, then I can
kick my blankets off.
causal clauses
Ch (2;4, of toy dog) Danny cant say
woof-woof because he got his mouth
shut.
Ch (3;6, in play house) They cant come
here cos were sweeping up.
conditional clauses
Ch (2;9, asking for specific T-shirt)
If its not got writing on it, its not
my Levis shirt.
Ch (2;11) If I talk too much, I be tired
from doing that.
Ch (3;7, of staircases) If we had one step
instead of two steps, our house would
have been small.
complement clauses
Ch (2;0) I want go out.
Ch (3;2) I know he sit right there.
From child utterances like those in the examples just listed, we know that children can
produce a range of syntactic forms by 3;6
polite and making that work for you in negotiations of all kinds, from simple requests
to elaborate business deals how to justify
and explain things, how to give instructions
and directions, how to tell jokes or make
puns and how to tell stories.
When we simply look at vocabulary, we can
see that it poses an immense challenge in
terms of learning. Children must learn the
form(s) of each new word, link the word to
others in the relevant semantic domain and
learn how to use it appropriately. Childrens
vocabulary increases steadily in size with
age and, it turns out, with the amount of
exposure children get early on, in interaction
in conversational exchanges with more
expert speakers, usually adults, as well as
with adults reading to their children, from
an early age onwards. Interactive exchanges
require taking account of what others know
and tracking what is in common ground.
In the course of any interaction, one accumulates common ground, and participants
observe Grices 1989 Co-operative Principle:
Make your conversational contribution such
as is required, at the stage at which it occurs,
by the accepted purpose or direction of the
talk exchange in which you are engaged.
Reading a book requires joint attention,
talk about the pictures, and responses to
childrens gestures and questions about what
can be seen in picture books.
By 12 months, a few children can produce
one or two recognizable words, often some
early variant of mama or papa (Jakobson,
1962, attributed adult recognition here to
parental vanity: Your child should recognize
you, the parent, first). By age two, children
produce anywhere from 200 to 600 words,
and their comprehension is typically far
in advance of any ability to say the words
Contents
EVE V. CLARK
themselves. By age six, children may understand as many as 14,000 words. To get
to this level between age one and six, they
have to have added some nine words a day,
but, of course, that rate of acquisition does
not imply acquisition of the full conventional
meaning in each case; this can take years
of gradually adding to and adjusting the
meaning of a word. From then, children are
estimated to add some 3,000 new words a
year while in school, and from age 12 to age
17, they are exposed to some 10,000 new
root-and-affix combinations in school textbooks. The outcome, for adults who have
acquired English, is an estimated vocabulary
range of 50,000 to 100,000 words. Such estimates, of course, will differ with language,
culture and social class.
Contents
EVE V. CLARK
References
Chouinard, Michelle M. and Clark, Eve V.
2003. Adult reformulations of child errors as
negative evidence. Journal of Child Language
30:637-669.
Clark, Eve V. 2007. Young childrens uptake
of new words in conversation. Language in
Society 36:157-182.
Clark, Eve V. 2009. First language acquisition.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Fernald, Anne and Marchman, Virginia A.
2012. Individual differences in lexical processing at 18 months predict vocabulary growth
in typically developing and late-talking toddlers. Child Development 83:203-222.
Hart, Betty and Risley, Todd R. 1995. Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children. Baltimore:
Brookes.
Jakobson, Roman. 1962. Why mama and
papa? In vol. 1 of Selected Writings 538-545.
The Hague: Mouton.
Margarete Imhof
Auditory reception of speech is the first language skill of every infant. This makes listening the base of language learning: Perceptual abilities form the gateway to spoken
language (Mueller, Friederici and Mnnel
2012, 15 953) and impairment of low-level
auditory processes during early development
is correlated with language learning difficulties through childhood, adolescence and
adult life.
Listening development occurs across the
stages of auditory awareness, auditory
discrimination and auditory recognition and
listening comprehension (Jalongo 2010, 3f.),
i.e., the process of intentionally selecting,
organizing and integrating information
from verbal and nonverbal signals of an
oral message (Imhof 2010). Based on their
listening experience, children learn to speak
and, what is more, to conceptualize and
understand the social and material world
around them.
Contents
MARGARETE IMHOF
Level 1
Receptive and
Expressive
Language Skills
Language
and cognition
Language
and emotion
Level 2
Intra- and
Interpersonal
Skills
Self-regulation
Social skills
Auditory discrimination
Phonological knowledge
Understanding of prosody, word
and phrase segmentation
Vocabulary, semantic
and syntax knowledge
Memory (long-term, working memory)
Monitoring and critical thinking
Perceive and distinguish emotional
states of self and others
Emotion regulation while listening
Integrate verbal and nonverbal
expression of emotions
Focus and switch attention
Emotion regulation
Building interest and motivation, persistence
Empathy and perspective taking
Understanding intentions and persuasion
Understanding and observing
conversation rules
Contents
MARGARETE IMHOF
References
Adrin, J. E., Clemente, R. A. and Villanueva, L. 2007. Mothers use of cognitive
state verbs in picture-book reading and the
development of childrens understanding of
mind: A longitudinal study. Child Development 78:1052-1067.
Bergelson, E. and Swingley, D. 2012. At 6-9
months, human infants know the meanings
of many common nouns. Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences 109:32533258.
Dhamani, I., Leung, J., Carlile, S. and Sharma, M. 2013. Switch attention to listen.
Scientific Reports 3:1297.
Florit, E., Roch, M., Alto, G. and Levorato,
M. C. 2009. Listening comprehension in
preschoolers: The role of memory. British
Journal of Developmental Psychology
27:935-951.
Goswami, U. 2010. Phonology and reading.
In Brennpunkte der Gedchtnisforschung,
edited by H.-P. Trolldenier, W. Lenhard and P.
Marx, 263-275. Gttingen: Hogrefe.
Grammer, J., Coffman, J. L. and Ornstein,
P. 2013. The effect of teachers memoryrelevant language on childrens strategy
use and knowledge. Child Development.
doi:10.1111/cdev.12100.
Grela, B., Collison, B. and Arthur, D. 2011.
Language processing in children with
language impairment. In The handbook of
psycholinguistic and cognitive processes,
edited by J. Guendouzi, F. Loncke and M.
J. Williams, 373-399. New York: Psychology
Press.
Vandewalle, E., Boets, B., Boons, T., Ghesquire, P. and Zink, I. 2012. Oral language
and narrative skills in children with specific
language impairment with and without
literacy delay: A three-year longitudinal study. Research in Developmental Disabilities
33:1857-1870.
Vandewalle, E., Boets, B., Ghesquire, P.
and Zink, I. 2012. Auditory processing and
speech perception in children with specific
language impairment: Relations with oral
language and literacy skills. Research in Developmental Disabilities 33:635-644.
Contents
Contents
Susan B. Neuman
Contents
SUSAN B. NEUMAN
Letter Knowledge
Phonological Awareness
Based on a massive body of research (Lonigan 2006), phonological awareness is a
Background Knowledge
For children to become skilled readers, they
will also need to develop a rich conceptual knowledge base and verbal reasoning
abilities to understand messages conveyed
through print. Successful reading ultimately
consists of knowing a relatively small tool kit
of unconscious procedural skills, accompanied by a massive and slowly built-up store
of conscious content knowledge. It is the
higher-order thinking skills, knowledge and
Print Conventions
Recognizing that concepts about print in the
English language are not intuitive, Marie
Clay (1979), in her pioneering work with
Maori children in New Zealand, identified
a set of conventions that children could
understand without being able to read. These
Contents
SUSAN B. NEUMAN
Interactional Supports
for Literacy Learning
Environments include not only physical settings, but psychological settings for literacy
learning as well. Children are influenced by
the participants present in a setting, their
background experiences and their values,
and it is the integration of place, people
and occasion that support opportunities
for learning. These individuals act as social
Contents
SUSAN B. NEUMAN
Conclusion
Explaining and understanding early literacy
development is critical if we are to improve
childrens opportunities for success (Neuman
and Celano 2012). The following features
highlight what we can do to make a difference in childrens early education:
U ii>}ii
which children have access to a wide
variety of reading and writing resources
U iii>>>iVV
References
Adams, M. 1990. Beginning to read.
Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.
Beck, I. and McKeown, M. 2007. Increasing
young low-income childrens oral vocabulary
repertoires through rich and focused instruction. Elementary School Journal 107:251271.
Clay, M. 1979. The early detection of reading
difficulties. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Hart, B. and Risley, T. 1995. Meaningful differences. Baltimore, MD: Brookes.
Lonigan, C. 2006. Conceptualizing phonological processing skills in pre-readers. In volume 2 of Handbook of early literacy research,
edited by D. Dickinson and S. B. Neuman,
77-89. New York: Guilford.
Metsala, J. 1999. Young childrens phonological awareness and nonword repetition
as a function of vocabulary development.
Journal of Educational Psychology 91:3-19.
National Reading Panel Report. 2000.
Teaching children to read. Washington,
DC: National Institute of Child Health
and Development.
Neuman, S. B. 1999. Books make a difference: A study of access to literacy. Reading
Research Quarterly 34:286-312.
Neuman, S. B. 2006. The knowledge gap: Implications for early literacy development. In
Handbook of early literacy research, edited
by D. Dickinson and S. B. Neuman, 29-40.
New York: Guilford.
Contents
SUSAN B. NEUMAN
Karin Pltz
Contents
KARIN PLTZ
Motivation
Football is what motivates children to join
the project. In addition, the football coach
serves as a role model for the participants.
He or she motivates them to learn and to
improve their skills.
Movement
Most of the children did not play football
before joining the project, and most did not
exercise or do any other sports. In sum, they
did not move. In starting the training for
the project, the trainer first had to exercise the childrens coordination and motor
activity. After approximately three months,
they then began football instruction. After
a year, the children took part in the football
tournament.
Motivation to Read
Many of the children participating in the
project had never had a book before; some
had never even read a book before. Over
time we identified a number of things that
can help motivate them to read, including:
ULive-readings. Children participating in
Football Meets Culture in Hamburg could
visit the Harbor Literature Festival and
were invited to a reading by a childrens
book author. After the reading most of
the children wanted to read the book.
UFootball books. If the children have to
read, they like to read about football
players such as Messi and Ronaldo. They
Contents
KARIN PLTZ
Karin Pltz
Karin Pltz is director of LitCam GmbH in Frankfurt/M., Germany,
a non-profit-organization that was founded in 2010. Previously she
was director of Focus Education at the Frankfurt Book-Fair (AuM
GmbH). In this role she created, in 2006, the Frankfurt Book Fair
Literacy Campaign, a project designed to promote literacy worldwide. In 2007 she started the LitCam project Football Meets Culture
to support underprivileged children through a combination of football training, additional inschool learning and cultural events. Before joining the Frankfurt Book-Fair, she worked for the Handelsblatt
publishing group, in Duesseldorf, Germany, where she headed the marketing department
for special products and, in 2000, became product manager for Wirtschaftswoche heute,
the online version of the German business magazine Wirtschaftswoche. Prior to her
positions in the publishing industry, she worked for several advertising and PR agencies.
She has a degree in history and sociology from Heinrich Heine University Dsseldorf.
ECEC field consists of, among others, daycare centers, after-school free-time centers
and the first years of school. I draw on the
World Organization for Early Childhood
Education (Organisation Mondiale pour
lEducation Prescolaire, OMEP 2006), the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization (UNESCO n.d.), the
Organization for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD 2001) and on the
literature of the field for the ages spanning
birth to eight years.
Thus, literacy curriculum in ECEC can be understood as both theory and practice, with
a view to various aspects, including language stimulation in crche and kindergarten,
teaching language, phonemic awareness,
elementary reading and the study of the
Danish language in the first years of school.
School-based free-time centers also contribute to literacy curriculum.
Research Context
The points in this paper are connected to my
PhD dissertation concerned with the same
subject. As one component of my research
I have completed fieldwork among a group
of committed pedagogues and teachers in a
Copenhagen suburb. Also included is inspiration from the Early Years Transition Programme (EASE) project, which focused on literacy
Contents
This broad approach should inspire pedagogues and teachers to continue to think of
language learning orally as well as written,
in kindergartens, school-based free-time
centers and during the first years of school
as more than just a technical matter oriented
towards the individual childs acquisition of
basic communication skills that correspond
to the childs development and/or the
requirements and expectations presented
in curricula and text books. This approach
would not only be to the delight of the
children, but also to the adults who strive to
give them a safe, meaningful and educational everyday life.
References
Brostrm, S. (2009). Tilpasning, frigjring og
demokrati. Frste Steg, (2).
Brostrm, S. (2011). Pdagogen som didaktiker. Vera, (54), 2227.
Brostrm, S. (2012). Curriculum in preschool:
Adjustment or a possible liberation? Nordisk Barnehageforskning, 5. Retrieved from
http://journals.hioa.no/index.php/nbf/article/
view/419
Dahlberg, G, Moss, P., & Pence, A. (2007).
Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Education
and Care: Languages of Evaluation (2nd ed.).
New York: Routledge.
Dahlberg, Gunilla, & Moss, P. (2005). Ethics
and politics in early childhood education.
New York: RoutledgeFalmer.
Conclusion
I have argued in favor of a broad view on
criteria for the content of pedagogical
activities with a view to supporting literacy
learning.
Contents
Gee, J. P. (2008). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in Discourses (3rd ed.). London:
Taylor & Francis.
Hetmar, V. (2010). Teaching Communicative
Competences in School - A Lifelong Learning
Perspective. In M. Weifang & L. Qvortrup
(Eds.), Frameworks for Supporting Lifelong
Learning (pp. 315330). Beijing: Tongxin
Publishing House.
Hopmann, S., & Riquarts, K. (2000). Starting a Dialogue: A Beginning Conversation Between Didaktik and the Curriculum
Traditions. In S. Hopmann, K. Riquarts, &
I. Westbury (Eds.), Teaching as a Reflexive
Practice (Kindle edition.). Amazon.com.
Klafki, W. (1996). Core problems of the
modern world and the tasks of Education. A
vision of International Education. Education,
53, 718.
Klafki, W. (2005). Dannelsesteori og didaktik
- nye studier (2nd ed.). rhus: Klim.
1. Introduction
OECD. (2001). Starting Strong: Early childhood education and care. Paris: OECD.
This paper is about the research project that This library works with two concepts:
is being conducted by Instituto Brasil Leitor
U1}ii>VLiiii>`}
(IBL). This is a non-profit and non-governand playing to improve early literacy
mental institution committed to developing
development
projects supporting mass institutions and
U /iVi>iV`iVi
helping people use and become more famiof the world precedes the written word
liar with books, newspapers, magazines and
(Freire 1993)
computers. One of the projects developed
by the institute is the Reading Is Knowing
Reading the world deals with the childs
Project, which is based on the conceptuexperience of everyday life and the social
alization and implementation of three
relations that are established in the childs
model libraries: Early Childhood (childcare,
cultural context. This is an important factor
preschool, hospitals and other institutions),
for the development of the social practices
Youth (elementary schools and institutions)
of reading. Thus, there are different ways of
and Community (train, subway, bus stations, reading beyond the written word, and the
factory floor).
childs daily life is filled with many reading
The Early Childhood library project aims
situations.
to support reading-related activities for
children between birth and six years, using
Childhood is a social and historical construction, rich in possibilities, which commence
books, toys and games.
at birth. In this perspective, this project is
based on the idea that children are active
The purpose of the library is to provide a
agents, researchers, who build their own
space in which children from the earliest
culture. This assumption is important to the
months of life can learn to listen, interact,
way the child acts and its entire being. In
think, investigate, communicate and exploaddition, the project considers the childs
re the world around them from the
participation in this context as a right.
experiences they gain through reading and
playing.
Contents
3. Research Project
Setting
Two institutions:
1. A private day-care facility receiving
public assistance combined with public
administration for children from
one to four years.
2. A public preschool for children from
four to six years.
U
>}ii>VLiii
reading and playing at the Early Childhood
Library contributes to the childrens
learning process in terms of socialcognitive aspects
U ii}iVi`>v>V
that should be taken by public policy
makers and other researchers
Research Questions
U iii>VLiiii>`}
and playing in the Early Childhood Library
environment contribute to the learning
process of children?
U iii`V>VLii
literacy and learning process of the
children?
U iv>iiVLi
to the learning process and literacy
development of children?
Research Methodology
The research methodology was designed to
collect a range of qualitative data on the
Early Childhood Library, combined with a
case study.
The qualitative data was derived from a number of perspectives, including interviews with
the director, coordinator, educator, families
(including traditions, beliefs, values, cultural and ethnic background and other social
dimensions) to find out more about the participants history, characterization and profile.
Participants
U /ii`iv>`>V>iVii
aged two to three years and twelve
Procedures
Two sets of data are being collected.
Contents
First Phase
The aims of this phase were to:
U i}>i]Vi>iivi]
daily activities
U
`Vii`iV]
coordinator, educator and families using
questionnaires to provide background
information on schools, families and
students
U
`VV`iii>`i
ment in a playful way to get a glimpse of
them in the school context and social life
U
iV>iV`>`>>Vi>ii>`
observe childrens interaction with peers,
educators, professionals and families
U "Liiii>V>}i`V>
child and child/peers, and daily activities
U
`Vii>`iiVi
sations with educators to collect
suggestions, criticisms, opinions, etc.
Families
1. Interviews with families using wheel
conversations and questionnaires to
collect data on readings, narratives,
jokes made at home with children and
comments about the project
2. Participation in school meetings
with families
The range of anecdotal data will be analyzed according to the instruments below
which attempt to provide systematic assessment of young childrens knowledge and
abilities in all areas of development.
In this section we present some of preliminary findings that were collected without
a library.
Instruments
Second Phase
The aim of this phase will be:
U >L>iV>V>}
in the study
U *`i>>}i}
what is reading, the importance of
reading and playing in early childhood,
technical information on books and
storytelling, and planning activities
in the library
U *`iV}>}ii
two months
U i}>i]Vi>iivi]
activities in the library
U
`Vv>i>i
U
`VV`iii]}i}
involved in a playful way to get glimpse
of learning in the school context and
social life
U
iV>iV`>`>>Vi>ii
and observe childrens interaction with
their peers, educators, professionals
and families
U "Liiii>V>}i`V>
child and child/peers, and daily activities
U *iV
`"Li>,iV`
",
Categories of child development based
on a list of observation items: initiative,
social relations, creative representations,
movement and music, language and
literacy, and mathematics and science.
U v>/``i"Li>,iV`
",
Categories of child development based
on a list of observation items: self
notion, language and communication,
explorations and logic. There are five
developmental levels for each item
describing behavior ranging from
simple (1) to more complex (5)
U
/
,\>V]i`V>i>V]
materials and environment
U iV>v
>
``
Education in Brazil
Figure 5 shows that children are at Level 2, but according to COR children are supposed to be at level 4 or 5
at around the age of 3.
Theoretical Perspectives
The theoretical approach used in this study
references the following approaches:
U i>iiivi>V``
Contents
Figure 8 shows the emphasis on the areas playground, painting and box of toys.
Figure 6 shows that families like going to the park and watching movies
and cartoons with their children.
Preliminary Findings
U >Vvii
vocabulary
U ivii`i`i
to expand childrens answers
U >Vv>i>i>V>i>>
children see outside of the early childhood
U >Vv]L]>>`V>v
environment (e.g., cookbooks, writing
materials
tools, telephone books, newspapers) to
U >Vvi`i`Li>Vi
increase literacy events
to explore and work with materials in
U vwVi>>`>v>
a variety of ways in order to develop
and crafts supplies to develop extensive
concepts
activities
U >Vvii>`V>Vi
The Further Steps to Be Taken Are:
U >Vvi}]ii
U >>viL>
U >VvV`iV>L>
U
`V>>>`V}>}
U >Vv>Vi>i>iii
U -}i>Vi>`v>i
in books to activities and events in the
U }i>V>`>}>Vi
childs life
in early childhood education
U >VvLViLi>Vi
portraying the cultural and language
backgrounds of the children
U >VvVViii>`
childrens vocabulary
The preliminary findings indicate some factors that compromise the promotion of the
Early Childhood Library reading and playing
project.
Contents
Conclusion
In this paper, we showed how the study is
being conducted and discussed preliminary
findings and some data-collecting aspects.
We also discussed the findings gained
without a library, highlighting the importance of a reading project in early childhood
education.
Based on the findings, the importance of a
number of factors becomes clear: teacher
training; letting children develop their
potential by discovering the world on their
own; helping children know more about
their world, so it is easier for them to read
and learn when they get to school; providing opportunities to explore and work with
materials in a variety of ways in order to
develop concepts, e.g., cooking, taking care
of plants, dramatic play and sharing information in books.
References
Almeida, D. 2011. Revisiting childrens
studies through the lens of the sociology of childhood. Revista do programa de
Ps-Graduao e Educao. UFSC, UNISUL
4(2):473-484.
Brougre, Gilles. 1995. Brinquedo e cultura.
In volume 43 of Coleo Questes da Nossa
poca. Sao Paulo: Cortez.
Bruner, J. 1983. Childs talk: learning to use
language. New York: Norton.
Dodge, D. T., Colker, L. J. and Heroman,
C. 2010. The Creative Curriculum for
preschool. Florida Department of Education
Office of Early Learning (2010 Curriculum
Approval Process for Low Performing Providers).
Failla, Z. Retratos da Leitura no Brasil 3. So
Paulo: Imprensa Oficial do estado de So
Paulo: Instituto Pr-Livro, 2012.
Freire, P. 1993. Professora sim, tia no.
Cartas a quem ousa ensina. So Paulo: Olho
DAgua.
Freire, P. 2011. Pedagogia do Oprimido. So
Paulo: Paz e Terra.
Lankshear, C. and Knobel, M. 2008. Pesquisa pedaggica: do projeto implementao. Porto Alegre: Artmed.
Leite, S. Alfabetizar para ler. Ler para
conquistar a plena cidadania. In: Retratos
da Leitura no Brasil 3. So Paulo: Imprensa
Oficial do estado de So Paulo: Instituto
Pr-Livro, 2012.
MEC/secretaria de Educao Bsica. 2009.
Indicadores de Qualidade de Educao
Infantil, Braslia.
MEC/secretaria de Educao Bsica. 1998.
Referencial Curricular Na Educao Infantil.
Formao pessoal e Social. 1(2).
Oliveira-Formosinho, J., ed. 2008. A escola
vista pelas crianas. Porto: Porto Editora.
Piaget, J. 1971. A formao do smbolo na
criana. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar.
Vygotsky, L. S. 1989. A formao social da
mente: desenvolvimento dos processos
psicolgicos superiores. Sao Paulo: Martins
Fontes.
Yin, R. K. 2010. Estudo de caso: planejamento e mtodos. Porto Alegre: Bookman.
Contents
Contents
Fig. 2: The children find and discuss objects for Number Eight. Numerous number aspects are displayed in the Number
Garden where Number Eight lives.
Fig. 1: The abstract numbers become a tangible, emotional happening on the floor and trigger a lot of activity
and communication. Lets visit Numberland builds the
structuring frame for multifaceted experiences.
Contents
15
10
Legend
P
C
Red
Green
C
All
P
C
Boys
P
C
Girls
P
C
< 4 yrs.
P
C
4 to 5 yrs.
Participating children
Control group
Correct answers pretest
Correct answers post-test
P
C
> 5 yrs.
Fig. 4: In terms of perception-bound thinking, Numberland children of all age groups achieved at least the
starting level of the one year older children within the
ten weeks of the project.
Conclusion
At the heart of Lets visit Numberland are
the ideas and principles that provide playful
and comprehensive access to mathematical coherences and language. The focus is
always on the children, noting their individual level of development, interest, needs
and ideas. The framework, with its flexible
options, serves as a guide to children and
teachers, allowing individual, daily experiences to be systematically organized and
related activities to be applied. This flexibility enables adaptation to other countries
as proven by projects in the UK, Texas (USA),
Estonia, Romania, Poland, Russia, Thailand,
Turkey and the Middle East.
25
20
15
Legend
10
P
C
Red
Green
C
All
P
C
Boys
P
C
Girls
P
C
< 4 yrs.
P
C
4 to 5 yrs.
Participating children
Control group
Correct answers pretest
Correct answers post-test
P C
> 5 yrs.
School teachers endorse the concept as excellent preparation for school. In areas with
many underprivileged children, after using
Contents
References
Friedrich, G. 2011. Komm mit ins Zahlenland Ursprnge, Grundideen, theoretische
Hintergrnde. Praxis der Psychomotorik
36(2):98-103.
(Also: http://www.kindergartenpaedagogik.
de/2207.pdf)
Friedrich, G., Galgczy, V. de and Schindelhauer, B. 2010. Lets visit Numberland:
Playfully discover the world of numbers.
Waldkirch, Germany: ifvl.
Friedrich, G., Galgczy, V. de and Schindelhauer, B. 2011, revised 2004 edition. Komm
mit ins Zahlenland Eine Entdeckungsreise
in die Welt der Mathematik. Freiburg,
Germany: Herder.
Friedrich, G., Galgczy, V. de and Schindelhauer, B. 2011b. Odwied my W Kraini
Liczb. Poland: Jednosc.
Links
Barbara Schindelhauer
www.numberland.net
www.ifvl.de
Contents
Contents
Lynn Stefano
Contents
LYNN STEFANO
References
community-Integrated Management
of Childhood Illness. http://www.who.
int/maternal_child_adolescent/documents/9241591951/en/, accessed 2013.
Khulisa Management Services. 2000. National Early Childhood Development Pilot
Project: Phase Three Research Report. Johannesburg: Khulisa Management Services.
Progress in International Reading
Literacy Study.
http://web.up.ac.za/sitefiles/File/publications/2013/PIRLS_2011_Report_12_Dec.PDF,
accessed 2013.
SA Reflect Network. http://www.sareflect.
org, accessed 2013.
Statistics South Africa. 2010. General
household survey 2010. http://www.statssa.
gov.za/publications/P0318/P0318June2010.
pdf, accessed 2013.
Lynn Stefano
Lynn Stefano has a master's degree in agriculture (food security)
and a post-graduate diploma in agriculture (rural resource management). She has been working in rural development NGOs
since 1997 in South Africa. Her work and research interests have
centred on rural peoples knowledge and information systems, and
how people with limited literacy skills access and use information
from printed materials. She joined the Family Literacy Project in
2006 as project development manager, responsible for starting new
family literacy groups, and was appointed director in January 2008.
Contents
Rammohan Khanapurkar
encouraged in our society. Education is perceived as attaining higher grades and getting
mastery over a particular skill, which does
not require reading as an extra-curricular
activity.
The Vyogotskian perspective says that inherent within an act of reading are issues of power and social identity. Apparently innocuous
questions like what to read, whom to read,
why to read assume unwarranted proportions due to control exercised by authorities.
In India we often find that people park cars
when it is written No Parking; people spit
when it is written Do Not Spit; people stick
posters when it is written Stick No Bills.
This mainly happens because of neo-literacy,
i.e., many Indians are entering the literacy
horizon as first generation learners. Text or
print literacy is a relatively new phenomenon
and will probably take some time to deepen
its roots in order to transform the masses.
One can also blame the school tradition of
rote learning without meaning and parroting
text material without comprehension.
Constitutional Obligation
While most of the world is mono-lingual, India is a remarkable exception with 22 official
Language of Reading
Contents
RAMMOHAN KHANAPURKAR
De-contextualised Ambience
of Social Setup in Textbooks
Textbooks do not mirror the contextual reality of the rural setup. The textbook is the
same for children in remote as well as urban
areas. Words like building form different
images for children from each social setup.
Rigid and almost authoritarian textbooks
are detrimental to early literacy processes,
where there is more emphasis on standard
written text and less flexibility for contextual individual creativity.
Parents as Bystanders
Generally schools become the ultimate authority, assuming the role of guardians in every
aspect of education. As a result, parents play
a lesser role in early reading. Many times, low
literacy of parents turns them away from active participation in childrens learning process.
This leaves little scope for social life to play its
vibrant role.
There is hardly any research happening on the
early literacy acquisition in the Indian context.
The field is highly under-researched. Experts
in higher education or universities dealing
with advanced linguistics or language policies
are hardly concerned about the EL challenges.
As a result, universities are hardly doing any
research on these issues.
Prof. Krishna Kumar, Educationist and Ex-Director of the National Council of Educational
Research and Training (NCERT), says, Within
any culture, it is the purpose of education
Contents
RAMMOHAN KHANAPURKAR
Proactively Promoting
Early Literacy in India
1. Invest in Teachers
Although the interaction of linguistic theory
and applied linguistics has produced a variety
of teaching methods and materials, the
language-teaching classroom has remained
one of the most boring and unchallenging
sites of education, dominated largely by the
behaviourist paradigms7.
Scant attention has been paid to the quality
aspects of the teachers training curriculum,
which is not linked with the modern research
in early literacy. These courses pay lip service
in teaching early literacy as an important
building block in the educational development of children. Once qualified, the ill-trained pre-service teachers from these colleges
perform the complex task of early literacy
in schools. Their classroom interaction lacks
the correct instructional methods required
in teaching beginning reading and writing.
Therefore, it is essential to strengthen the
component of early literacy in the D.Ed.
education system after consultations with institutions or NGOs working in the field.
2. Anganwadi and Early Literacy
Emergent literacy8 , a term first used by
Contents
RAMMOHAN KHANAPURKAR
10
11
Ibid., http://wcd.nic.in/icdsimg/
WomenAW&AWH2009.htm.
12
13
Rammohan Khanapurkar
Rammohan Khanapurkar has a master's degree in communication
and journalism from the University of Mumbai, India. He has considerable experience as a lecturer at various media colleges in Mumbai. The turning point came when he realized that school systems
with an overt focus on marks and rote learning have a debilitating
impact at the higher education level. Following this realization
he started exploring early literacy, a much talked about but less
researched field in India. He joined Observer Research Foundation
Mumbai, a public policy think tank in June 2011 and has been working since then on the issues, ideas and challenges in elementary education. He published
a primer, Why Cant Children Read or Write, highlighting issues of early literacy in the
Indian context.
He is currently exploring the potential of cinema/short films as a visual communication
tool for educational training of rural teachers.
Contents
associating reading with playing, and acknowledging that the childs perception of
the world precedes the written word (Freire
1993).
The deployment of these library spaces required extensive study of the best ways to ensure
both the family and educators understand
the relevance of the process. They introduce
a number of ideas including the importance
of reading, how a child develops and learns
from birth, the importance of play, and how
all this can all be incorporated in a library.
They also allow our professionals to encourage everyone in the school community to participate in the process of language acquisition
and literacy for children by understanding
their own contribution to the process.
This is a challenging task but one that is of
fundamental importance to the process; it requires that we build a bridge on which everyone can meet, intertwining their know-ledge,
challenging pre-conceptions and enhancing
their own learning. This shared understanding begins to grow with these new discoveries, allowing the momentum of the group to
foster even greater potential for the future,
as a community and for the children.
The following steps form the strategy for
implementing the Early Childhood Library
concept:
1. The site is studied where the library will
be installed, including social and cultural
aspects.
Ongoing Research
We continue to provide training and maintain a dialogue via telephone and electronic
media. Then 6 to 12 months later we return
to the institution. As a result of this conti-
Contents
nued dialogue, we obtain evidence that demonstrates the valuable contribution being
made by the Library Project for Early Childhood, especially in relation to social-cognitive
learning processes and social reading actions.
Our experience is based on eight years of
study and the deployment of over 73 libraries in five different states. It has led to our
initiating a research project examining how
the interaction of reading and playing contributes to the social-cognitive aspects of the
childs learning process.
The research is based on the assumption that
children are active agents, researchers of
their own life-learning context through interactions with people and with the environment, and the fact that the Library Project
for Early Childhood promotes and intensifies
these interactions. The IBL research focuses
both on the actions and the ways in which
those actions happen. The research currently
in progress will be finalized in early 2014 and
published later that year in three languages
(Portuguese, English, Spanish) so it can be
shared with an international audience.
References
Freire, P. 1993. Professora sim, tia no.
Cartas a quem ousa ensinar. So Paulo:
Olho DAgua.
Freire, P. 2011. Pedagogia do Oprimido.
So Paulo: Paz e Terra.
Karin Taube
Contents
KARIN TAUBE
Why are Fathers and Other Male Caregivers Input So Important for Childrens
(Especially Boys) Reading?
In general there are more female than male
caretakers and teachers around small children. This means that small boys will not have
the same access to role models of the same
sex as girls have. Small boys will seldom meet
male caretakers and teachers who read and
show the joy of reading. Thus, boys might be
at risk of developing the notion of reading
as a female activity. This, in turn, might in
the long run lead to less interest in reading
among boys.
Thus, all parents and caretakers have to be
aware of the importance of talking a lot to
even very small children, reading aloud to
them from the very beginning and continuing to do it even after school starts. They
must also be aware of the importance of
fathers and other male caretakers as role
models for reading and writing activities.
certain language or there are too few students with a certain mother tongue. A common problem is also that the
demands on those who are employed as mother tongue
teachers are too low.
Thus, in spite of Swedens desire to support immigrant
students as much as possible in their reading acquisition,
there are problems fulfilling this goal in practice.
Contents
Miriam Westheimer
Contents
MIRIAM WESTHEIMER
In these ways, the home visitor plays a critical role in the ensuring that the program is
culturally appropriate and a good fit within
each of the diverse community contexts
within which the program operates. While
absolutely critical, this task is not simple. The
paraprofessional home visitor has to balance
carefully between representing the professional culture and expectations of the organization that is sponsoring the program (and
paying her salary) with the local culture of
the families she serves. For example, conflicts
related to time management often arise.
Many organizations require careful documentation of time sheets and do not pay for
work conducted after hours or on weekends.
In some cultures, however, the concept of
time is more fluid and so, in order to keep
up with her work, the home visitor may
need to visit in the evenings or on weekends
and sometimes has to visit several times
before she can actually find quiet time to
work with a parent. Experience with HIPPY
has shown that the women hired from the
community to serve as cultural brokers are
key to the success of the program.
Community-based Paraprofessionals
As a member of the community who knows
the language and lives the culture of the
families with whom she works, the paraprofessional home visitor is able to build trust
and ensure HIPPYs cultural relevance for the
families with whom she works. This relationship of trust is further reinforced by empathy
on the part of the home visitor, born of her
familiarity and often direct experience of
isolated families together with the community and marginalized communities with the
larger social environment. The home visitor
encourages the families participation not
only in HIPPY group activities and events,
which involve community personalities and
institutions, but also in community activities
beyond the program; they are also encouraged to benefit from services offered to the
community: the local health clinic, well-baby
clinic, library, community center and so forth.
Curricular Adaptations
Based on the themes and characters presented in a series of simple childrens stories,
HIPPY introduces skills and concepts in a
Contents
MIRIAM WESTHEIMER
Language
Partnerships
Contents
MIRIAM WESTHEIMER
Catrin Anderer
Contents
CATRIN ANDERER
References
Catrin Anderer
Catrin Anderer has been a qualified teacher for primary and secondary schools in Hamburg, Germany, since 1998. During her teaching
year at various elementary schools she gained first-hand experience
as a teacher in classrooms focusing on integrating socially disadvantaged and mentally challenged children.
In 2003 she became a lecturer at the Hamburg Institute for Teacher
Training and School Development (Landesinstitut Hamburg) in the
area of teaching German at elementary schools. She also serves there as a trainer for student teachers at primary and secondary schools.
She is one of the co-authors of the current German curriculum for elementary schools in
Hamburg. She coordinated the Hamburg school initiative Alles-knner which developed
various approaches to promoting specific competencies. She has also served as the school
expert for PLUS Project Lesen und Schreiben (PLUS Project for Reading and Writing).
Her special interests are family literacy, parental involvement, inclusion, literary learning
and individualized learning.
Contents
Ira Gawlitzek
Contents
IRA GAWLITZEK
References
Bialystok, E. 2001. Bilingualism in development: Language, literacy & cognition.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Biedinger, N. 2010. Early ethnic inequality:
The influence of social background and parental involvement on preschool childrens
cognitive ability in Germany. Child Indicators Research 3(1):11-28.
Cummins, J. 2008. BICS and CALP: Empirical
and theoretical status of the distinction. In
Encyclopedia of language and education,
edited by B. V. Street, 71-83. New York:
Springer.
Dickinson, D. K., McCabe, A. and ClarkChiarelli, N. 2006. Preschool-based prevention of reading disability. In Handbook of
language and literacy. Development and
disorders, edited by C. A. Stone, E. R. Silliman, B. J. Ehren and K. Apel, 209-227. New
York, London: Guilford Press.
Fritzsche, J. 2004. Formelle Sozialisationinstanz Schule. In Lesesozialisation in der
Mediengesellschaft, edited by N. Groeben
and B. Hurrelmann. Weinheim, Munich:
Juventa.
Gawlitzek, I., Lwe, M. and Vogelbacher, M.
2013. Jahresbericht zur wissenschaftlichen
Begleitung des Projekts Migration Integration Begabung frdern Drittes Projektjahr (2011/2012). University of Mannheim:
unpublished project report.
Gawlitzek, I. 2013. Linguistische Herausforderungen in Kinderliteratur (nicht nur) fr
mehrsprachige Kinder. In Mehrsprachigkeit
und Kinderliteratur, edited by I. Gawlitzek
Contents
IRA GAWLITZEK
Charles L. Mifsud
by B. Ahrenholz, 58-79. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herbert Jrgen Welke Fillibach Verlag.
Digital Technologies
in the Home and at School
In the first instance, young children engage with digital technologies at home. The
family context makes a difference to young
childrens engagement with these technologies. There seems to be the same repertoire
of direct pedagogical actions across families
when they support their childrens use of
Contents
CHARLES L. MIFSUD
meanings from words, sounds and interrelated images. Others have more limited
access to computers and use of the internet.
Children need to become proficient in the
uses of the new media in order to become
full members of a society in which knowledge and communication are highly prized.
It is essential for early childhood educators
to be provided with the curriculum guidance
and training they need to help them understand how this might be achieved most
effectively. The observation of childrens uses
of computers at home might help to convince some early childhood educators of the
pedagogical benefits for the development
of young childrens literacy in diverse modes
and media.
Young children should engage with digital
literacies in ways that encourage playfulness, agency and creativity (Burnett 2010).
Digital technologies should build on the creativity of children and provide opportunities
for engagement and response. They should
encourage children to become authors and
allow activities which involve the generation and construction of a story or message.
Some applications allow children to create
stories and comics and to share these with an
audience outside the classroom walls. Such
technologies should provide robust supports
to meet the diverse needs of pupils in the
classroom and through embedded supports
they should reduce the barriers to text.
A close analysis of literacy practices and
events allows us to explore the potential
differences between the modalities of interaction and the affordances of traditional and
new media. This should allow us to identify
what early childhood educators need to
know and do in order to support the developing literacy practices of all children across a
Contents
CHARLES L. MIFSUD
Conclusion
It is essential that those who work with
young children have the required digital
literacy skills as digital technologies become increasingly pervasive throughout the
lives of young children. They need to make
informed decisions about how to make best
use of technology to promote early learning.
Digital literacy for early childhood educators
involves thinking critically about how to select, analyse and use technology and making
professional judgements about its impact
on the development and learning of young
children (NAEYC, 2012). Early childhood
educators are to be provided with guidance
through continuing professional development opportunities and the sharing of good
practices. Parents and others who may have
the care of young children in the home require guidance too. Digital literacy skills for
children involve having a critical outlook on
technology in order to be able to make wise
choices in their use of technology.
Contents
CHARLES L. MIFSUD
References
Akkerman, S., Admirall, W. and Huizenga,
J. 2009. Storification in history education:
A mobile game in and about medieval
Amsterdam. Computers & Education
52(2):449-459.
Andrews, R. 2007. Research on teaching
secondary English with ICT. In Teaching
secondary English with ICT, A. Adams
and S. Brindley, 126-136. Berkshire:
Open University Press.
Au, K. H. and Raphael, T. E. 2000. Equity and
literacy in the next millennium. Reading
Research Quarterly 35(1):170-188.
Aubrey, C. and Dahl, S. 2008. A review of
the evidence on the use of ICT in the Early
Years Foundation Stage BECTA.
Barab, S., Thomas, M., Dodge, T., Carteaux,
R. and Tuzun, H. 2005. Making learning fun:
Quest Atlantis, a game without guns. Educational Technology Research & Development
53(1):86-107.
Burnett, C. 2010. Technology and literacy in
early childhood educational settings: A review of research. Journal of Early Childhood
Literacy 10(3):247-270.
Cairney, T. H. and Ruge, J. 1998. Community
literacy practices and schooling: Towards effective support for students. Canberra: DEET.
Clarke, W. 2006. Culture and explosion:
the semiotic gap? Doctoral Summer School
Conference, London. University of London:
Institute of Education.
Coller, B. D. and Scott, M. J. 2009. Effectiveness of using a video game to teach a course
in mechanical engineering. Computers &
Education 53(3):900-912.
Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M., eds. 2000. Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design
of social features. London: Routledge.
Contents
CHARLES L. MIFSUD
Christian Fller
Contents
CHRISTIAN FLLER
A Fundamental Change
In other words: Gutenberg and the letters
he used to print his bibles are dead. Long
live the literate cyborg with its digital glasses
on its nose, a bonsai screen that makes it
possible to be forever online and on. The
book is dead!
The book is alive. The book is dead. Which is
it? No idea. No one knows. And anyone who
says they do is a charlatan.
Although there are solid, rational arguments
for both sides. We are living in a time of
transition. The way in which we recognize
letters and combine them in order to create
sensible sentences is in the process of changing. That means something fundamental is
changing: the culture of the only life form
on the planet that uses symbols and their
depiction to communicate with each other.
The way in which we communicate, learn, ensure our past and future is mutating. In short,
everything is changing.
There is a paradigm shift taking place in
school, for example, which is still based on
the culture of printing started by Gutenberg
and which uses teaching plans, textbooks
and handwritten xs on paper. More precisely:
It seems to be the case. No: Its a fact. When
a country such as Turkey signs a contract
worth millions in order to provide each of
its school students, from Istanbul to East
Anatolia, with a tablet, then that is not just
news for publicly listed global players such as
Apple, Intel and Microsoft, it is also a signal
that the Third World, bordering on Europe, is
making the switch to computer screens even
before books have fully arrived there.
Furthermore, havent children themselves
long made the switch? The well-known
Kim-and-Jim surveys on how children and
adolescents use media show that smartphones, meaning those handheld, Internet-compatible knowledge machines, are becoming
increasingly prevalent: In 2010 only 8
percent of all schoolchildren used a mobile
phone capable of connecting with the Net;
in 2011 it was 22 percent; and in 2012 it was
40 percent. Rumor has it there are childrens
birthday parties at which six or seven of the
11-year-olds present have a smartphone in
their pocket. Meaning 110 percent of their
attention, or so it seems, is taken up by
these devices.
Christian Fller
Christian Fller is a German journalist and author. He was education
editor at the German daily newspaper die tageszeitung; and is now
author for Spiegel Online, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung
and Der Freitag as well as political-scientific journals such as Berliner Republik and Bltter fr deutsche und international Politik.
He is a Fulbright alumnus and was journalist-in-residence at the
Max-Planck-Institut fr Gesellschaftsforschung in Cologne. He is the
author of several books, including Die gute Schule (Smart School)
and Ausweg Privatschulen? (Exit Private Schools?).
Contents
Simone C. Ehmig
Contents
SIMONE C. EHMIG
Contents
SIMONE C. EHMIG
Summary
U Reading aloud promotes childrens early
language development and their cognitive,
emotional and social competencies.
U Reading aloud has a long-term impact as
an educational investment.
U Not enough reading aloud takes place in
families in Germany: Approximately one
child in three never or only rarely hears
and sees a story read aloud. Parents with
lower levels of education seldom read
aloud. Fathers are much less active in this
area than mothers.
U Digital applications hold great potential
for encouraging especially these groups to
read aloud.
U Picture book and childrens book apps
complement printed books in a variety
of reading-related situations, offering
new opportunities for reading aloud and
storytelling.
U Digital products can be used to encourage
fathers in particular to read aloud.
U Childrens book apps have significant
potential for increasing reading aloud
in families with less education, since those
families frequently own digital media.
References
Bhme-Drr, K. 1990. Die Rolle der Massenmedien im Spracherwerb. In K. Neumann
and M. Charlton (eds.): Spracherwerb und
Mediengebrauch. Tbingen: Francke Verlag,
149-168.
Groeben, N. and Hurrelmann, B. 2004.
Lesesozialisation in der Mediengesellschaft.
Ein Forschungsberblick. Weinheim: Beltz
Juventa.
Kreibich, H. and Ehmig, S. C., eds. 2010. Lesefreude trotz Risikofaktoren. Eine Studie zur
Lesesozialisation von Kindern in der Familie.
Mainz: Stiftung Lesen.
Medienpdagogischer Forschungsverbund
Sdwest, ed. 2013. KIM-Studie 2012. Kinder
+ Medien. Computer + Internet. Basisuntersuchung zum Medienumgang 6- bis 13-Jhriger in Deutschland. Stuttgart: Medienpdagogischer Forschungsverbund Sdwest.
OECD. 2012a. Education at a glance: OECD
Indicators 2012. Accessed June 7, 2013,
www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Documents/
oecd-eag-2012-en.pdf.
German country report, accessed June 13,
2013,
http://www.oecd.org/education/
EAG2012%20-%20Country%20note%20
-%20Germany.pdf.
OECD. 2012b. Lets read them a story! The
parent factor in education. 2. Read your
Contents
Contents
Irena Kozminska
Contents
IRENA KOZMINSKA
Supporting Parents
We make parents aware that they should
speak and read to their children as soon
as the children are born. We explain that
reading to children meets youngsters emotional needs, teaches them better language
skills and values, and develops a love for
books, thus giving them access to wiser, better and happier lives. Inspiration for our program came from Jim Trelease, the American
author of The Read-Aloud Handbook.
We also encourage kindergartens and
schools to support parents in reading to
children. Research conducted by our foundation shows that reading to children 20 minutes a day, every day, in kindergartens and
schools increases their vocabulary, under-
Irena Kozminska
Irena Kozminska is the founder and president of the ABCXXI - All
of Poland Reads to Kids Foundation established in 1998. She has
worked as a journalist in Polish radio and in business. From 1994
to 2000, while living in Washington, DC as the wife of the Polish
Ambassador to the US, she started her charitable work as the chairperson of two foundations: Breast Cancer Awareness Program for
Poland, and Child Awareness Program for Poland. From 2000 to 2010
she was a board member of the International Centre for Missing and
Exploited Children. After returning to Poland in 2000, she began raising awarness of the topic of children's emotional health. In 2001 she initiated a national
reading-to-children campaign. She is an initiator of educational programs for foundations,
as well as a lecturer and co-author of two books: Guiding the Child into the World of
Values and Educating through Reading.
Marek Szymanski
from their families and grandchildren. Moreover, instead of a real adult to guide them,
todays children have to rely on electronic
company: TV sets, computers and the Internet, which often attack their brains with
harmful and demoralizing content.
Contents
Sven Nickel
Family Literacy:
A Short Overview
Family literacy is a new concept that is still
little known within educational research.
Only recently have scholars gradually trained their sights on the family as a research
subject. Unsurprisingly, initial examinations
of family literacy programs (e.g., Purcell-Gates 2000; Wasik 2004; 2012) stressed that the
level of research is still insufficient. In recent
years, however, important insights have
been gained through additional reviews and
initial meta-studies.
The term family literacy is associated with
a number of meanings. It was first used by
Denny Taylor (1983) to describe the rich
and diverse uses of literacy within homes
and communities. Today, literacy within the
home is referred to as home literacy and
thus seen as separate from family literacy
programs, which address educational activities for families.
Of all the locations where emergent literacy takes place, the family is the most
important. The family is the social group
in which the parents and the childrens literacies meet, within which they use literacy,
develop their literacy, and interact in literacy
activities (Hannon 1995, 103). Literacy is a
part of the very fabric of family life [and
is] deeply embedded in the social processes
of family life (Taylor 1983, 87). Children
fic requirements of each situation. The programs are thus highly varied, in keeping with
the notion that one size does not fit all. In
general, they can be grouped into programs
that focus on children (and their parents, as
intermediaries) and programs that take the
entire family into account.
Effectiveness of Family
Literacy Programs
In recent years, an increasing focus has been
put on ensuring that family literacy programs
are effective. Program descriptions and
evaluations have become so numerous that
it is now hard to assimilate them all. Although the programs emphasize the structural effectiveness of parent-child programs
and present a theoretically convincing string
of arguments, their empirical robustness
leaves much to be desired given the lack of
evaluation, or evaluations that are methodologically weak. In recent years three metaanalyses have attempted to systematically
examine the various approaches empiric
robustness:
Number of
included
intervention
studies
Number
Generalized
of children effect
involved
(N)
1 Snchal
and Young
(2008)
16
N
= 1,340
Cohens
d = 0.65***
2 Manz
et al.
(2010)
14
N
= n.a.
Cohens
d = 0.33***
N
= 4,326
Cohens
d = 0.18***
3 van
30
Steensel
et al. (2011)
Mol et al.
2010
Contents
SVEN NICKEL
2.
3.
U >i>V}>iv>
series of assumptions. These include the
assumption that no literacy practices exist
at all in some families and that that such
families perpetuate low literacy from
generation to generation. This transmissi
on effect has now been documented.
It still remains necessary, however, to
disprove the idea that there are families
with no literacy practices. At the same
time, home literacy practices vary
considerably based on cultural and social
factors.
U "i>iV>Liii`VV>
is that numerous family literacy programs
declare as the norm a form of literacy
found among the white middle class.
Yet some programs do exist that very
consciously address specific cultural
conditions, such as programs for
aboriginal peoples in Canada.
U i>V>v>>vv>>vviV
the entire family and influences how
family life takes shape. Intervention
programs should therefore consider
the whole family. Most intervention
programs, however, are geared toward
helping parents learn practices that will
support their children as the children
learn in school. These programs are
primarily designed to compensate for
deficiencies in childrens language and
reading development. To that extent,
despite the best of intentions, they are
focused on shortcomings (Auerbach 1995).
U >}>`vVv>
lies home literacy activities, but attempt
to transplant in-school structures to the
home environment (cf. Auerbach 1989). In
contrast, for the relevant programs,
Anderson et al. (2010) calls for considering
an authentic literacy, one that is oriented
toward each familys practical, everyday
Contents
SVEN NICKEL
References
Auerbach, E. 1989. Towards a socio-contextual approach to family literacy. Harvard
Educational Review 59:165-181.
Phillips, L., Hayden, R. and Norris, S. 2006. Family literacy matters. A longitudinal parentchild literacy intervention study. Calgary:
Detseling.
Purcell-Gates, V. 2000. Family literacy: A
research review. In volume 3 of Handbook
of reading research, edited by M. L. Kamil,
P. B. Mosenthal, P. D. Pearson and R. Barr,
853-870. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.
Saint-Laurent, L. and Giasson, J. 2005. Effects
of a family literacy program adapting parental intervention to first graders evolution of
reading and writing abilities. Journal of Early
Childhood Literacy 5(3): 253-278.
Snchal, M. and Young, L. 2008. The effect
of family literacy intervention on childrens
acquisition of reading from kindergarten to
Grade 3: A meta-analytic review. Review of
Educational Research 78: 880-907.
Teale W. H. and Sulzby, E., eds. 1986. Emergent literacy: Writing and reading. Norwood,
NJ: Ablex.
van Steensel, R., McElvany, N., Kurvers, J. and
Herppich, S. 2011. How effective are family
literacy programs? Results of a meta-analysis.
Review of Educational Research 81:69-96.
van Steensel, R., Herppich, S., McElvany, N.
and Kurvers, J. 2012. How effective are family literacy programs for childrens literacy
skills? A review of meta-analytic evidence.
In Handbook of family literacy, 2nd edition,
edited by B. Wasik, 135-148. New York, NY:
Routledge.
Wasik, B., ed. 2004. Handbook of family
literacy. New York, NY: Routledge.
Wasik, B., ed. 2012. Handbook of family literacy, 2nd edition. New York, NY: Routledge.
Taylor, D. 1983. Family literacy: Young children learning to read and write. Portsmouth,
NH: Heinemann.
Contents
Johannes Theiner
One of the most striking results of educational research is not even dealt with seriously:
Parents and families are the most influential
factor on academic success. A lot of statistical
tricks are usually applied to analyse other
factors in educational research, but very
little is done to capitalise on the potential of
parental and familial influence.
Now hardly any debate on school education is possible without referring to PISA
results. European states have to compete.
One of the dangerous side effects is the
factory-like image of schools: They should
guarantee educational outcome. Educational institutions have to produce skilled
young people. They have to shape the uneducated child according to the catalogue
of expected abilities that can be best used
in the economy.
Some of the correlation effects in the performance of state systems under PISA test
conditions have been critically questioned
by experts. Nevertheless, numerous simple
recommendations for reorganising national school systems are based on comparisons of PISA performance data. Learning
outcomes and students achievements are
clearly less worthy if there is no appropriate way to measure them using PISA
patterns.
What makes parents such effective educators? How can they overrule all the pro-
Contents
JOHANNES THEINER
Storytelling
from every background. Parents representatives will always introduce a new perspective
when discussing educational and school issues
with teachers, school principals, educational
experts or political representatives.
Summary
Development of literacy starts with or even
before birth. The acquisition and development of language is the initial part of the
learning pathway that is dominated by parents and the family environment.
Parents need to be empowered. In days of
professionalisation, they do not trust the
uniqueness of their role as trusted and loved
primary educators. Schools and children
can benefit from a real partnership between
parents and teachers.
Political steps are being demanded to unleash
the potential of families to boost the learning
potential of children. It is necessary to accept
the diversity of family traditions and styles
rather than to extend school to home. Trust
is the magic word in realising partnerships.
Parents associations should thus be recognised as partners to school administrators and
political representatives. Parents representatives are the legitimate voice of active citizens
who are making the most important contribution to the learning that affects the whole
community.
Considerations should clearly go beyond the
employability aspect. Reading opens doors
into foreign spheres, leads to the unknown
secrets of science and makes available the
world of fantasy. It provides access to the opportunity of lifelong learning for professional
development as well as for pleasure. Finally,
reading skills should never be discussed without consideration of the cultural dimension.
Contents
JOHANNES THEINER
Final Reflections
What is education? Talking about education requires reflection on a basic question:
What are we really talking about? Is it the
acquisition of basic life skills? Is it guidance
towards the adaption of an individuals
behaviour to socially accepted norms? The
German language calls it Erziehung; English provides terms like upbringing. These
tasks are mainly addressed to parents and
families.
Is education the acquisition of cultural
techniques required to enter professional
development? Is the main purpose of state
institutions to provide adolescents with
the prerequisites for future jobs? Reading,
writing and mathematics are identified as
key abilities. Traditionally, this part of education is assigned to professional educators,
teachers, and institutions like schools.
In German the term Ausbildung is normally used to summarise these aspects. In
English and international discussions the
word training is frequently used to distinguish this kind of targeted development
from general education.
Should education also provide higher development of understanding and cognition?
Should it guide an individual to philosophical meta-cognition? Is this just a luxury for
upper-class children? Is there a need to turn
to the development of creative potential
through music and art? The German Bildung is used here. Parents usually claim to
devote a sufficient part of school time to
these high-level subjects and goals. Explaining the concept to well-educated non-German speakers, Bildung is assigned to the
late Enlightenment ideals of Humboldt and
his peers.
Contents
BETTER START WITH BOOKSTART: EVIDENCE FOR THE ONGOING BENEFITS OF EARLY LITERACY
Louise Chadwick
Contents
LOUISE CHADWICK
BETTER START WITH BOOKSTART: EVIDENCE FOR THE ONGOING BENEFITS OF EARLY LITERACY
Evidence:
Jo Blanden (University of Surrey) analysed
data from the British Cohort Study of children born in 1970, and found a strong link
between parents interest in educational
attainment and the likelihood that their
children will escape poverty; those who were
poor at the age of 30 were significantly less
likely to have been read to by their parents
when surveyed at the age of 5.
A study carried out by the National Centre
for Research in Childrens Literature found
that Bookstart families have better booksharing skills, read more with babies and
young children, are more likely to join the
library, are more confident when reading to
children and are more aware how reading
can help speech and language development
(National Centre for Research in Childrens
Literature 2001).
One of the guiding principles of the
Bookstart programme is to increase the
confidence of every parent and get them
actively involved in their childs learning. All
guidance material produced recognises the
role of parents and carers as a childs first
and most enduring educators. An indepen-
Evidence:
For many families sharing a book or story
at night is an ideal way to settle a child.
Bookstarts Social Return on Investment in
2010 found that many parents reported that
reading with their child had a calming effect.
Having routines and a rhythm to the day
helps children to gain confidence and independence. If a parent seems to be struggling
with routines the Bookstart pack offers an
ideal opportunity to strike up a conversation
about introducing regular events into their
babys day.
2. Supports Family Access to Other
Services
Gifting the pack provides an opportunity to
talk to parents or carers about appropriate
services available within a Childrens Centre
or the local library, to borrow books and
take part in early-years activities. This helps
with social cohesion and discourages social
isolation.
Evidence:
Research by Wade and Moore (1996) shows
that children and parents involved with
Contents
LOUISE CHADWICK
BETTER START WITH BOOKSTART: EVIDENCE FOR THE ONGOING BENEFITS OF EARLY LITERACY
References
Baker, L., Scher, D. and Mackler, K. 1997.
Home and family influences on motivations
for reading. Educational Psychologist 32:6982.
Bradley, L. 1988. Rhyme recognition and reading and spelling in young children. In Preschool prevention of reading failure, edited
by R. L. Masland and M. R. Masland. Parkton,
MD: York Press.
Bradley, L. and Bryant, P. E. 1983. Categorising sounds and learning to read: A causal
connection. Nature 301:419-421.
Bus, A. G., van Ijzendorn, M. H. and Pellegrini, A. D. 1995a. Joint book reading makes for
success in learning to read: A meta-analysis
on intergenerational transmission of literacy.
Review of Educational Research 65(1):1-21.
Kellett, M and Dar, A. 2007. Children researching links between poverty and literacy.
York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/childrenresearching-links-between-poverty-andliteracy
Contents
LOUISE CHADWICK
Louise Chadwick
Louise Chadwick is the director of Programmes at Booktrust, UK.
She is responsible for Bookstart as well as the programmes aimed
at children in school throughout England, Wales and Northern
Ireland. She also previously developed a programme called
Bookbite to inspire people over 60 to read and write more. Before
working for Booktrust, she worked as a teacher in post-compulsory
education, taking courses and education out to nontraditional
learners. She has also developed a number of projects supported
by the European Social Fund and aimed at breaking down barriers
to educational participation.
Contents
KEY COMPONENTS OF THE WORK OF VOLUNTEERS IN EARLY LITERACY AND READING PROJECTS
U >>>iivi>Vi
of the role of the family
Using Babys Corner tools, volunteers:
U
}>}i>Vi>`
monitoring sessions that involve
storytelling, singing lullabies and
reading childrens books
U *>V>i>Viv>v>
U iVii>`>}i
of change and social transformation
The volunteers play a fundamental role in
the development of projects like this:
U /i>iVi>i>Vivi
interpersonal in achieving human
development and the importance
of relating to the world through the word.
U /iii>L>i>}v
relationship between the child
and its environment while also helping
the family.
U /iv>V>iiV>`iii
of the children, as well as both the
families involved and their own.
U /i>V>iii>V>`>V]
theory and practice, engaging with
current realities.
U /i`i>`iii`v>
multidisciplinary approach and help
promote it.
U /i>Vii>>iL>i
experience and tools that will enable
replication of the project in other areas.
U /i`Viii>VLi
to the training of early childhood readers
and the formation of relevant attitudes
among parents and other adults close to
the child.
Contents
Abigail Moss
At the end of the projects first year, professionals and parents taking part reported a
significant increase in childrens basic literacy
skills and behaviours. Whilst the project
was designed to monitor families shifts in
attitudes, behaviours and engagement, with
the support of five settings we were able
to measure increases in attainment against
the Early Years Foundation Stage framework (EYFS) for children participating in
each centre or school. A practitioner review
found that, two months after involvement
in the project, 46% of participating children
had improved their communication development in terms of speaking and listening
from emergent levels to levels expected of
their age. 52% improved their engagement
with books and stories from emergent to
expected levels, with 16% improving from
expected levels to exceeding expectations
for their age.
Un{v>ivi>iiV`
have a positive long-term impact on their
childs reading and communication skills.
Unv>iii`>Vi>i
their confidence in sharing books with
their child.
Unii`>Vi>i>>iiv
the importance of talking with their child
about something they are interested in.
Through the project, families were introduced to the support available to them within
their community by being invited to attend
a family literacy activity at their local library
or childrens centre. Over half the families
who attended these sessions reported that it
was unlikely that they would have done so
without the support of the volunteer. 100%
of these families felt more confident about
attending activities after the project, with
94% intending to go again.
Project Learning
Contents
ABIGAIL MOSS
we will consider the capacity of local authority partners in light of external pressures
when setting targets. We will also look for
strong links with early-years settings and
libraries when building delivery partnerships
and ensure project aims and deliverables are
communicated early on.
Delivery timescales should be revised to account for complex set up, with consideration
made for school holiday periods. Allowances
should be made for low family retention
rates, which can be mitigated by spreading
the referral requirement across as many
settings within an area as possible. Literacy
Champion volunteers and families should
also work one-to-one within groups in order
to provide further peer support.
Programme Sustainability
beyond London
Literacy Champions is now operating across
childrens centres and housing estates and in
partnership with community organisations in
Birmingham and Middlesbrough, in addition
to 11 housing estates in London.
National Literacy Trust also has government funding to extend the support to 120
childrens centres and 3,600 families, and will
align the programme with the development
of a new multi-agency identification framework based on updated Home Learning Environment indicators. We would also like to
include adult literacy and English language
support and extend the peer volunteering
aspect to young people.
Abigail Moss
Abigail Moss is deputy director at the independent UK charity,
the National Literacy Trust. Since 2010 she has led and developed
the organisations programmes that address low literacy in the
poorest communities, all of which are based on extensive research
and surveys.
The organizations programmes include a joint venture with the
Premier League that uses the power of football to inspire young
readers; a business volunteering programme helping teenagers
improve their language and presentation skills; a book-gifting programme that has helped over 300,000 children develop as readers; and a community volunteering scheme helping parents improve their childrens home learning environment.
She initiated the charitys Oxfordshire Reading Campaign, which is set to significantly improve the reading levels of targeted Key Stage 1 pupils. She also developed a programme funded by the Department for Education that will engage families in literacy support
in childrens centres.
She also contributed to the new curriculum for schools in England and is a member of
the expert advisory panel for the Welsh government's National Literacy Programme. She
previously led cultural learning programmes at Arts Council England, worked in theatre
education, and taught English and coordinated literacy provision in a London secondary
school.
Contents
R. Malatesha Joshi
Introduction
Literacy skills encompassing reading and
writing skills are basic for survival, and lack
of development of these literacy skills will
have a serious and negative impact on the
individual and society. According to the
report of Partnership for Reading (2003),
more than 3,000 students drop out of high
school every school day in the United States; the main contributing factor provided
is poor reading and writing skills. Speaking
at a House of Representatives hearing
on measuring success, Lyon (2001) called
reading failure a national public health
problem because of the approximately 15%
of students who drop out of high school,
over 75% report difficulties in reading and
writing. Further, at least half of the adolescents with criminal records or histories of
substance abuse reportedly have reading
problems. Yet, in the United States, where
the data are available, and in other parts of
the world, where the data are not readily
available, the number of individuals with
poor reading and writing skills is overwhelming. In this paper, we will outline some of
the basic reasons for the lack of development of literary skills and demonstrate that
early identification and good teacher pre-
Although various reasons have been postulated for the literacy problems, Vellutino, Scanlon and Jaccard (2003) mentioned
environment and instruction as the two
basic reasons for literacy problems. Environmental reasons include poor oral language
development, the number of books available Seymour, Aro and Erskine (2003) examined
at home, parental attitudes and parental
word reading and decoding (by means of
models. In their seminal study, Hart and
non-word reading) in 13 different orthograRisley (1995) recorded the receptive and
phies in Europe. The results showed that
expressive vocabulary of children aged three
while it might take about one year of formal
years from different socioeconomic classes
instruction in transparent orthographies like
for eight months. They found that children
Finnish and Spanish to master the decoding
from welfare families were exposed to 10
skills, it may take two years for children
million words during those eight months
learning to read in an opaque orthography
and by the end of eight months, these
like English.
children had an expressive vocabulary of
about 500 words; children from middle class
Thus, various environmental factors such as
families were exposed to 20 million words
oral language development, family socioecoand had a vocabulary of 700 words; howenomic status, number of books available at
ver, children from professional families were
home and parents reading to children can
exposed to a total of 30 million words and
influence literacy development. Additionally,
had a total vocabulary of 1,100 words by
instructional factors such as lack of a suitable
the age of 3 years and 8 months. Vocabulary
literacy environment in schools, ineffective
development among these three groups was
instructional methods and the lack of knownot only quantitatively different but qualiledge teachers have about English language
tatively as well; professional families used
and structure can also impact negatively
more reasoning words while welfare families literacy development of children. Various reused more words that were short and also
search studies have shown that reading and
more command words such as dont do this writing difficulties are due to inefficient and
and stop. As can be seen, children from
inaccurate language processing (Moats and
poor families have poorer vocabulary than
Foorman 2003; Rayner, Foorman, Perfetti,
children from upper socioeconomic classes
Pesetsky, and Seidenberg 2001), and when
by approximately four years of age. Accorchildren are identified early and instructed
ding to Moats (2001), linguistically poor
on the basis of the language structure of
first graders knew 5,000 words; linguistically
literacy, the results have been consistently
rich knew 20,000 words. Additionally, papositive (Blachman, Tangel, Ball, Black and
rents reading to children at a very young age McGraw 1999; Brown and Felton 1990;
also has a significant impact on literacy deFoorman, Francis, Fletcher, Schatschneider
Contents
R. MALATESHA JOSHI
We have further explored teacher knowledge in order to find out the reasons for
their lack of knowledge. To begin with, since
most of the studies had administered the
non-standardized survey, first we standardized the instrument using exploratory and
confirmatory factor analyses and established
Contents
R. MALATESHA JOSHI
Conclusions
It has been shown that literacy development
is a necessity to function well in our society
and that literacy development in kindergarten and grade 1 can have a lasting impact on
performance in future grades in all subject
areas. Even though various factors, such as
poor socioeconomic background and orthography, may be related to poor development
of literacy skills, systematic explicit instruction
can overcome these problems and children
can still develop good literacy skills. However,
several studies have shown that classroom
teachers have not been provided with the
skills needed by their university faculty members for them to provide systematic instruction. Additionally, textbooks used in university literacy education classes do not provide
enough information to ensure systematic
explicit literacy instruction in early grade
levels. In order to improve the individual
and society at large, professionals have to be
prepared to deliver sound systematic literacy
instruction based on scientific research.
References
Binks-Cantrell, E., Joshi, R. M. and Washburn,
E. 2012. Validation of an instrument for assessing teacher knowledge of basic language
constructs of literacy. Annals of Dyslexia
62:153-171.
Binks-Cantrell, E., Washburn, E., Joshi, R. M.
and Hougan, M. 2012. Peter Effect in the
preparation of reading teachers. Scientific
Studies of Reading 16:526-536.
Contents
R. MALATESHA JOSHI
Contents
Pamela Oberhuemer
Contents
PAMELA OBERHUEMER
the group; how to engage with a wide variety of approaches to literacy; how to support
meaning-making and literacy activities in
child-initiated play; how to involve parents
effectively in literacy learning practices.
Overall, we can conclude that policy concepts of language and literacy learning vary
considerably, ranging from enrichment and
enhancement approaches to discrete skills
training. These policy frameworks are likely
to influence the knowledge-and-application
emphasis in professionalisation strategies.
What will the emphasis be during the coming years: readying for school or readying
for life?
References
Department for Education. 2012. Statutory
framework for the Early Years Foundation
Stage: Setting the standards for learning,
development and care for children from
birth to five. https://www.education.gov.uk/
publications/standard/AllPublications/Page1/
DFE-00023-2012.
Department for Education. 2013. 2013 Early
Years Foundation Stage Handbook. http://
www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/assessment/eyfs/a00217599/eyfshandbook.
Pamela Oberhuemer
Fried, L. 2009. Education, language and
professionalism: Issues in the professional development of early years practitioners in Germany. Early Years An International Journal
of Research and Development 29(1):33-44.
Moss, P. 2013. The relationship between
early childhood and compulsory education:
A properly political question. In Early childhood and compulsory education: Reconceptualising the relationship, edited by P. Moss,
2-50. London and New York: Routledge.
Oberhuemer, P., Schreyer, I. and Neuman,
M. J. 2010. Professionals in early childhood
education and care systems: European profiles and perspectives. Opladen/Farmington
Hills, MI: Barbara Budrich.
Pramling Samuelsson, I. and Sheridan, S.
2010. A turning point or a backward slide?
The challenge facing the Swedish preschool
today. Early Years An International Journal
of Research and Development 30(3):219-227.
Pamela Oberhuemer has a background in early years teaching in London and has been living in Munich, Germany, since 1974, where she
has worked for 35 years as a researcher at the State Institute of Early
Childhood Research. From 2006 to 2009 she was the lead researcher
for a study commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Family
and Youth Affairs on the early childhood workforce (education,
training and workplace settings) in the 27 European Union countries.
The publication documenting findings from the project, co-authored
with Dr. Inge Schreyer and Dr. Michelle Neuman, appeared in 2010
in both English and German. In 2011 Pamela conducted a systematic analysis of continuing
professional development systems in six European countries (Denmark, England, Hungary, Italy, Slovenia and Sweden), commissioned by the German Youth Institute (Deutsches
Jugendinstitut) for WiFF (Weiterbildungsinitiative Frhpdagogische Fachkrfte). Currently
she is contributing to an international project based at the London School of Economics
and funded by the Nuffield Foundation on equal access to childcare.
She has acted as a consultant to the OECD (on its Startin Strong reviews) and UNESCO (on
early childhood indicators, among other topics) and has been a guest speaker in many
countries, most recently Australia, the United Kingdom, South Korea and Turkey. She is a
co-editor of Early Years An International Research Journal. Throughout her career, she has
published widely in national and international books and journals. Her book, co-authored
with Dr. Michaela Ulich, on Working with Young Children in Europe was published in German, English and Japanese.
Contents
Inge Schreyer
An evaluation took place to assess the outcomes of the project. Questionnaires were
prepared for the staff at the centers, for
parents and for the language coaches. Questionnaires were filled out by the directors of
the participating centers and by a maximum
of four members of the pedagogical staff
at each center. Since the evaluation in many
cases started after the coaching began, there
were two different approaches: Participants
at the centers were questioned before
and after the coaching, or they were only
questioned after completing the coaching.
Afterwards, up to five parents per center
also filled out a form. The language coaches
were asked to complete a questionnaire
after each coaching session. All in all, nearly
12,000 questionnaires were filled out.
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to the coaching and how they impacted
the center, the team, themselves (the
person providing answers), the children
and the cooperation with parents
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and the coach
The evaluation revealed that most of the
centers greatly appreciated the coaching:
On average, both the coaches and the staff
rated the coaching good and more than
three-quarters of the centers would recommend participation in the project to another
center.
Important findings included the following:
After having completed the program, the
staff reported the presence of more play materials and books for the children. The staff
were also more able to attract the childrens
attention to language topics by installing
literacy centers, by reorganizing the books
in the group room or by buying new ones;
they were also better able to emphasize
literacy in general and to integrate children
whose first language was not German into
the community of the center. Furthermore,
the staff felt they knew better how to detect
specific aspects of the childrens language
and, following the coaching, felt more comfortable in talking to the parents concerning
the language skills or language problems of
their children. Especially non-German speaking parents profited from the coaching,
since one of the projects key goals was
the improvement of cooperation with the
parents. The staff also paid more attention
to their own behavior and use of language.
Regarding the team, perceptions after completing the coaching were twofold: Around
Contents
INGE SCHREYER
Susanne Brandt
Contents
SUSANNE BRANDT
2. Stories in Motion
Stories in Motion is an interdisciplinary
cooperative project that develops new
paths in the culture of storytelling. At first
glance the connection is not self-evident.
But a two-year project with libraries in the
German state of Lower Saxony has produced exciting, interdisciplinary results that
are leading to a change in the traditional
culture of reading-aloud and storytelling.
Books and motion have more in common
than many participants in the project first
realized. After some instructional and
practical workshops, the librarians understood not only the theory of why this is, but
also tried it out in a variety of ways and
developed a multitude of creative ideas and
applications. The project has thus put a lot
into motion literally and will continue to
Contents
SUSANNE BRANDT
Dai Yingyuan
Susanne Brandt
Susanne Brandt, born in 1964, studied library sciences in Hamburg
and Stuttgart and cultural science in Hagen, Germany. She has
also acquired special qualifications in rhythmics and literacy in the
context of social and educational work for children. She has led
various departments and public libraries in Cuxhaven and Westoverledingen and been a member of different commissions and
project groups dedicated to the topics of children's libraries and
literacy. She has been a lecturer at the Bchereizentrale SchleswigHolstein in Flensburg since 2011. She is also author of numerous
books and publications on reading and storytelling.
Contents
DAI YINGYUAN
Contents
DAI YINGYUAN
12 Reading Projects
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Contents
DAI YINGYUAN
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the calendar. Examples include the Chinese New Year series, Mums Love series (for
Mothers Day) and other series dedicated to
Life Education and Emotion Management.
Based on this book list, the Happy Reading
365 Project launches various reading activities. Every Sunday afternoon, for example,
volunteers, parents and children gather at
the Plane Tree Story House at SCL. Volunteers tell stories and read to others from the
books in the Happy Reading 365 book list.
People also enjoy the Storytelling Happy
Hour together. And on the third Saturday
of every month there is a free Storytellers
Workshop for parents, teachers, librarians
and any volunteers who would like to promote childrens reading habits during early
childhood. The workshop covers topics such
as how to choose a book for children, how
to improve childrens reading ability, the
theory and practices of parent-child reading,
interacting skills in parent-child reading, and
what is required of storytelling volunteers.
There is also a training course for early reading promoters every year. Finally, promoting early reading should not be separated
from the surrounding network, so the Happy
Reading 365 Project has a microblog to interact with readers online. It also has a Happy
Reading website to make book recommendations, release information about upcoming reading activities at SCL and provide
news about childrens reading and education
activities. It also allows parents and teachers
to share and discuss their experiences of
reading and parenting.
Using all of the above, this project tries to
increase awareness among parents, teachers
and society at large of the importance of
childrens reading. It also tries to get them
involved in childrens reading activities and
Contents
DAI YINGYUAN
when numerous reading programs for different ages have been launched. It is therefore
important to get other participants involved
such as kindergartens, schools, community
groups, businesses, NGOs, etc. It is important
not only for fundraising and gaining access
to other resources such as volunteers and
books, but it also helps others understand
the library and helps develop more readers.
For instance, the storytellers of the Storytelling Happy Hour of the Happy Reading 365
Project are all volunteers who are parents,
teachers, etc. Similarly, SCLs Ivy Information Resource Co-Development and Sharing
Project is a program for school libraries and
communities to share information and resources with SCL. If a kindergarten or school
takes part in this project, then its students
can borrow books from SCL but return them
to their school and vice versa. Geographically
it expands the scope of library services. The
utilization of new media and multimedia is
another good way to expand the scope of library services to every community and family
in the city. For example, SCL has launched
the e-Reading Station Electronic Resource
Platform. It is a touch-screen computer with
access to all the electronic resources SCL
has, so schools and communities that have
Dai Yingyuan
Dai Yingyuan is a project leader for reading promotion in the Department of Information Services at Shenzhen Childrens Library in Shenzhen, China. She is one of the first authorized reading promoters of
the Shenzhen Reading Association, the first of its kind in China. As
a practitioner she has conducted and participated in various reading
promotion events and programs. She holds a master of science in
research (education) from the University of Edinburgh, UK. Her research interests focus on reading promotion (especially early reading
promotion) in public libraries.
Contents
Helga Hofmann
Geographical Oddities
South Tyrol is one of the most northern provinces of Italy; it borders Austria and Switzerland and has a population of about 500,000
people. South Tyrol used to be part of the
Tyrol (in Austria) but was allotted to Italy
after World War I. Most people are bilingual
German/Italian and there is a small linguistic
sentations by experts, information in the media, etc. It was clear from the beginning that
this program needed lobbying. Therefore
the centre has organized training courses for
librarians to make them acquainted with the
importance of early literacy and has taught
them how to deal with small children in the
library. At the beginning of the program the
libraries were provided with a basic stock of
picture books for children up to the age of
three years. Courses and meetings have been
offered from the start for parents who are
keen on using the materials contained in the
Bookstart packs and other recommended
books in a more creative way.
Contents
HELGA HOFMANN
Notes
Wolf, Maryanne. 2007. Proust and the
squid: The story and science of the reading
brain, p 3. New York.
http://www.provinz.bz.it/kulturabteilung/
jugendarbeit/bookstart_de.asp (in German)
http://www.provinz.bz.it/kulturabteilung/
jugendarbeit/bookstart_it.asp (in Italian).
2
http://www.west-info.eu/files/Perspectiveson-Psychological-Science-2013-Protzko25-40.pdf.
3
Contents
Introduction
For centuries, libraries have been
characterized as places of wisdom,
meeting points for those who seek
knowledge and institutions to open the
doors to the world of art, culture and
science. Today, they are far more than
that. They offer classic literature next
to entertainment media. They organize
reading events with popular authors,
theme nights and media activities for
all age groups. Libraries can function
as a key to interest children in books
or reading in general. All around the
world, libraries play a major role in Early
Literacy Education. In many countries,
they represent the only possible place
for children to get in touch with books or
magazines. (Stiftung Lesen 2013, 68). In
Mexico, libraries and bebetecas libraries
for babies function poorly and scarcely.
Our Bebeteca Lee Antonia recently turned
5 and our experience with it has made
evident the importance of providing
adequate spaces for reading during early
childhood. In Mexico, the challenge is as
big as the size of the countrys territory,
but even more so given the complexity of
its culture and the history behind it.
all activities undertaken with children, giving them a characteristic image in different
contexts and times. Perhaps because of this,
when entering these spaces, they already
speak of games, even when no children
are present. As a theoretical category, playful texture is the result of a series of decisions, not always obvious to the teacher, that
draw from each of the components of the
situation (environment, materials, relationships, rules and regulations, content, etc.).
In child-care spaces, the special provision
associated with these materials and objects
and the way in which interpersonal relationships are established and games are
offered all make up this texture, which acts
as a substructure in which proposals ensue
(Sarl and Vicenc 2009, 95).
In our bebetecas, four material resources
are necessary for the construction of a
stimulating environment that nurtures
reading:
1. A collection of quality books consisting
of at least 100 books covering different
topics, categories and authors
2. Book Baskets, or containers used to
transport and present books within
the space
3. Non-slip mats to carpet the area where
the Book Baskets are located
4. Cushions to sit, lie and relax while
reading with young people
When thinking about reading in specific
environments with babies and children, we
ought to consider that the space should
provide them with the opportunity to encounter many different good books. Babies
and children should not only be able to
explore the various materials out there to
read, but to observe other people reading
these materials, thus learning by watching
what other people do with books. What
Contents
to the universe of stories in order to understand the world, in its own way and according to his own taste (Bonnaf 2008, 166).
Contents
References
Bonnaf, M. 2008. Los libros, eso es bueno
para los bebs. Mxico: Ocano.
Compton-Lilly, C., Rogers, R. and Lewis, T. Y.
2012. Analyzing epistemological considerations related to diversity: An integrative
critical literature review of family literacy
scholarship. Reading Research Quarterly
47(1):33-60.
Fujimoto, B. 2009. El futuro de la educacin
iberoamericana: es la no escolarizacin una
alternativa? In La primera infancia (0-6 aos)
y su futuro. Metas Educativas 2021, edited
by J. Palacios and E. Cordero, 105-114, Spain:
OEI-Fundacin Santillana.
Lpez, M. E. 2007. Nios pequeos lectores
amodales? Acerca de los inicios del camino
lector, la importancia de una buena biblioteca (o qu hace a un libro nutritivo) y
la trascendente presencia del mediador. A
construir. Educacin, integracin y diversidad
6(December 2007).
Patte, G. 2011. Qu los hace leer as? Los
nios, la lectura y las bibliotecas. Coleccin
Espacios para la Lectura. Mxico: FCE.
Ramrez, N. 2009. Primera infancia: una
agenda pendiente de derechos. In La primera infancia (0-6 aos) y su futuro. Metas
Educativas 2021, edited by J. Palacios and
E. Cordero, 63-71. Spain: OEI-Fundacin
Santillana.
Contents
Maja Vestbirk
The most important message is that everybody can stimulate and motivate young children to develop their language, it doesnt
take a professional. The crucial thing is that
the children are willing and ready to experience the books, touch them, chew them and
examine them. It is the being together and
having a good time that gives infant literature its strength and opens up an opportunity to use the language, to describe things in
words and to make noises.
The librarians knowledge about books and
reading strategies strengthens the presentation of the books and creates a stronger
bond between the libraries and the families.
The library is a good place to start becoming
involved in the local community and, by starting early, the chances are much greater that
children will have access to knowledge and
books later in life. Research carried out in
2011 showed that 58% of families changed
their reading habits after being part of the
Danish Bookstart program.
The Center for Child Language at the University of Southern Denmark is now conducting
a study and expects to publish results in 2016
on the impact of the program on childrens
language development.
Contents
MAJA VESTBIRK
Cooperation across sectors is crucial to ensure greater literacy among children. Both
kindergartens and libraries have gained
from the cooperation in the two projects,
which have made it easier for them to work
together towards a shared goal. In addition,
there is a demand for an early, joint effort.
The library can, for example, provide the
parents with tools and inspiration to read
to their children. To make sure that time
and geography do not become a barrier to
literacy, easy access for all must be created.
Just as throwing a ball to a child is a natural way of developing the childs motor
skills, early literacy programs can become a
natural way of developing a childs language skills. Literacy must become a natural
activity in the relationship between children and the adults in their lives. The infant
might not catch the ball, but throwing it is
an excellent and effective way of practicing.
Talking and reading to children can have a
similar effect.
Maja Vestbirk
Maja Vestbirk is a consultant in the Danish Agency for Culture and
a project manager for the Danish language development program
Bogstart. Her main focus areas are child culture and childrens
culture, early literacy, boys and reading, and childrens libraries.
She is also involved in reading projects such as Brnehavebiblioteker (Kindergarten Libraries), which provide children in day care
easy access to positive experiences with books and stories - both in
day care and at home; Drengelitteraturprisen (The Boys Literature
Prize), a literary award given to authors writing novels with the
purpose of inspiring young boys to read; Lselyst (Desire to Read) a national campaign
supporting initiatives such as reading campaigns for school children and literary activities
for youngsters; and a range of different early media literacy initiatives.
Research Background
It has long been recognized that early reading proficiency skills are linked to later academic success (Barth 2012). There is strong
research support for key areas of literacy de-
Contents
Striving Readers
The Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy
Program (SRCLP) is a federal program that
funds state-led initiatives aimed at advancing
the literacy skills of students from birth to
grade 12 (USDOE 2013). It was initially funded
for $200 million in Fiscal Year 2010. SRCLP is
comprised of two types of grants: formula
and discretionary. In FY 2010, formula grants
were awarded to 46 states, Puerto Rico and
the District of Columbia; most states received
grants of $150,000 (USDOE 2013). Formula
grants are awarded to state education agencies to support or establish a State Literacy
Team made of experts in literacy development and education who will help the state
develop a comprehensive literacy plan (USDOE
2013). Discretionary grants through SRCLP
are used to create comprehensive literacy
programs for birth to grade 12 students. State
Education Agencies (SEAs) must award 95%
of funds to local education agencies and early
childhood providers that serve high-needs
children, including students with disabilities
and limited English proficiency, with effective
literacy services (USDOE 2013). Fifteen percent
of sub-grants must be used to serve children
from birth to age five; 40% for children in
kindergarten through grade 5; and 40% for
middle and high-school students (USDOE
2013). Discretionary grants were awarded to
six states for Fiscal Years 2011 and 2012: Georgia, Louisiana, Montana, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Texas (USDOE 2013). The state plans
submitted by each of these states highlight
Third-Grade Reading
State leaders have taken notice of the
research on the importance of early reading
proficiency, responding with state-level education laws designed to improve early literacy.
According to the Education Commission of the
States (ECS), as of August 2012, 32 of the 50
states plus the District of Columbia had laws
aimed at improving third-grade reading proficiency (Rose 2012). Thirty-three of these states
require reading assessments to identify at-risk
readers, with 55% requiring an assessment
be administered annually from kindergarten
through grade 3, providing multiple opportunities to identify struggling readers and
track child progress. An additional 6% expand
assessments to pre-K programs as well (Rose
2012). However, 27% of states only require a
reading assessment in grade 3, which leaves
little time to provide interventions for a
struggling reader before the end of the year.
Thirty states have policies in place for interventions, though the timing of these interventions differs considerably among the 28 states
that specify in policy when these interventions
are administered (Rose 2012). The majority
(68%) of these states provide interventions
from kindergarten through grade 3, though
the 21% only specify interventions in grade 3,
once again raising the concern that students
are receiving assistance too late. The most
common required intervention for at-risk
readers, as seen in Table 1, is supplemental
Contents
Types of Intervention
Required
Recommended
50%
10%
37%
0%
27%
10%
Summer school
20%
40%
17%
43%
17%
20%
13%
3%
10%
7%
7%
7%
3%
37%
3%
10%
schools set high expectations and had stronger instructional leadership than those schools
that had been less successful at improving
student proficiency (OPPAGA 2006).
Recommendations
States that are focused on improving thirdgrade reading proficiency need to address this
issue from multiple angles, and cannot wait
until third grade to do so. States must draw
attention to the importance of third-grade
reading, framing it as an urgent education
issue for students, parents and educators. A
retention policy is only one way to do this
(Rose and Schimke 2012).
1. Improving third-grade literacy is an effort
that requires buy-in from the community,
which means not only keeping the parents
of individual students at-risk for retention
informed but also creating public goals and
resources for parents to use at home (Rose
and Schimke 2012). Several recent studies
have found a promising impact for parent
engagement interventions on childrens skills
such as comprehension (Roberts 2013), vocabulary growth (Ackerman 2013), and general
literacy skills (Kim and Quinn 2013).
2. High-quality pre-K and full-day kindergarten programs with a focus on early literacy
skills also play an important role in putting
students on track for grade-level reading
(Rose and Schimke 2012). The brain develops
rapidly in early childhood, creating a specific
window of opportunity that is sensitive to
experiences that establish certain capabilities.
Genetic studies indicate that only approximately one-third of the variability in language
and later reading is determined by genetic
factors (Dickinson 2011). This leaves ample
room for the effects of intervention, creating
a moderate to large impact on early literacy
skills and later achievement (NELP 2008). The
flip side to this sensitive period where interventions have the potential to provide the
most substantial impact is that it is also the
time when the brain is most highly susceptible
to the absence of these critical experiences.
This absence or lack of experience can have
lasting detrimental effects, thus making a
strong case for high-quality early education.
3. Successful personnel play a key role at all
grade levels in improving student literacy, so
states must invest in professional development for both teachers and school administrators, as well as develop strategies to ensure
the most successful literacy teachers are
available to work with students most in need
(Rose and Schimke 2012).
References
Ackerman, D. 2013. Working paper:
Chicago preschool inputs study: Effects
of the Backpack Project. New Brunswick,
NJ: NIEER.
Barth, J. 2012. Reading to learn: The importance of reading by the end of third grade
in Arkansas. Little Rock, AR: Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families.
Dickinson, D. K. 2011. Teachers language practices and academic outcomes of
preschool children. Science 333:964-967.
Fiester, L. 2010. Early warning! Why reading
by the end of third grade matters. A KIDS
COUNT special report. Baltimore: The Annie
E. Casey Foundation.
Gamse, B. C., Jacob, R. T., Horst, M., Boulay, B.
and Unlu, F. 2008. Reading first impact study:
Contents
Final report executive summary (NCEE 20094039). Washington, DC: National Center for
Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance,
Institute of Education Sciences, US Department
of Education.
Jackson, R., McCoy, A., Pistorino, C., Wilkinson,
A., Burghardt, J., Clark, M., Ross, C., Schochet, P.
and Swank, P. 2007. National evaluation of early reading first: Final report.Washington, DC:
US Government Printing Office, US Department
of Education, Institute of Education Sciences.
Kim J. S. and Quinn, D. M. 2013. The effects of
summer reading on low-income childrens
literacy achievement from kindergarten to
grade 8: A meta-analysis of classroom and
home interventions. Review of Educational
Research [Internet], retrieved Oct. 4, 2013,
http://rer.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/04/23/0034654313483906.full
Lesnick, J., Goerge, R., Smithgall, C. and Gwynne J. 2010. Reading on grade level
in third grade: How is it related to high school
performance and college enrollment?
Chicago: Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago.
National Center for Education Statistics. 2011.
The Nations Report Card: Reading 2011(NCES
2012457). Washington, DC: Institute of Education Sciences, US Department of Education.
National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).
2013. Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy
Program, retrieved May 28, 2013, http://www.
ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Involved/Action/AdvocacyDay/SRCL-2013-three-pager-040913_web.
pdf
National Early Literacy Panel (NELP). 2008. Developing early literacy: Report of the National
Megan Carolan
Megan Carolan is the policy research coordinator at the National
Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) in New Brunswick,
New Jersey, United States. She coordinates the annual State
Preschool Yearbook project and contributes to NIEERs blog. She
works on a variety of other projects centered on program policies
and spending for state-funded pre-K. Previously, Megan worked
for the New York City Department of Homeless Services and the
Center for Academic Excellence at Fairfield University. Megan holds
a bachelor's in sociology and politics from Fairfield University and
received a masters in public policy, with a concentration in social policy, from the Bloustein School at Rutgers University.
Contents
Cay Corneliuson
language development for very small children. Cooperation between them seems to be
ideal for improving results. The council has
given grants to several projects with this purpose, mostly led by different county libraries
in cooperation with local public libraries and
local healthcare. This field of cooperation
has a long tradition in Sweden. Different
joint programs for providing free books to
newborn children started in the 1970s. From
the beginning the state was involved in this
activity and gave allocations, mostly to projects providing free books, but also to other
projects and information campaigns.
The Swedish Arts Council coordinates activities in the cultural field, and is responsible
for the allocation of state cultural funding
for different forms of art, as well as to
public libraries. Cooperation between public
libraries and childrens healthcare providers
has been the focus of the councils efforts
for strengthening awareness of early literacy
education.
The Swedish Arts Council also has a strategy for working with children, based on the
Convention on Childrens Rights. Since 2009,
children have been singled out as an especially important group among the countrys
cultural objectives. Cultural policy is therefore to pay particular attention to the rights
of children and young people to culture.
A Statutory Role
Cooperation Is Necessary
Reading promotion and language development are areas that are well anchored in
Swedish legislation for cultural politics. Public libraries shall, according to the Swedish Library Law, pay special attention to children
and youth by providing books, information
technology and other media appropriate to
their needs, in order to promote language
development and stimulate reading.
Sustainability Is Weak
From the long-term perspective, local activities tend to be vulnerable. Ambitious and
enthusiastic librarians and nurses talk to
parents about language development and
hand out books. If the activities are not documented in official plans or made visible in
agreements, they tend to decline when there
is turnover in staff. To be sustainable, the
activities need to be established in official
plans. In Sweden, the cooperation also needs
to be reinforced on a national level if is to
be durable over the long term.
The Swedish Arts Council has used grants to
support projects with different focuses, such
as:
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librarians and nurses
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and other diagnoses
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different professional areas
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agreements and plans to strengthen
sustainability
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the library and helping them while they
are waiting for diagnosis and professional
treatment
The Swedish Arts Council is about to get
a new assignment for reading promotion,
perhaps as early as next year. Early literacy is
one of the topics identified as an important
subject for its activities. The challenge for
the future will be ensuring a good standard
all over the country and seeing to it that every child can make his or her voice heard.
Contents
CAY CORNELIUSON
Thomas Feist
Cay Corneliuson
Cay Corneliuson studied literature and art at the University of
Gothenburg, Sweden, and then library and information science,
becoming a librarian 1975. She also studied culture for children at
Stockholm University and has worked as a childrens librarian for
about 25 years. Between 1998 and 2003 she was a library consultant and project leader in Stockholm Public Library. She has written
articles and book reviews for newspapers (Svenska Dagbladet) and
the trade press since 1980. At present, she works as an administrative officer at the Swedish Arts Council. Her responsibilities are
grants for libraries and reading promotion. Her focus is developing methods for reading
promotion in a cultural context on the national level, based on the perception of literature as art. The goal is to create interest in reading for pleasure, mainly during leisure
time, but also in schools and the educational system.
Contents
THOMAS FEIST
Contents
Norbert Hocke
Norbert Hocke
Norbert Hocke is head of the Department of Youth Welfare and
Social Work and a member of the Federal Executive Board of the
German Education Union (GEW), Germany. A trained educator, he
worked as an education consultant at the Episcopal Youth Office in
Berlin and the Federation of German Catholic Youth from 1974 to
1978. After acquiring an advanced technical certificate he studied
social work and then education at the Technical University of Berlin. From 1983 to 1993 he was the head of a Protestant kindergarten in Berlin. In 1986 he was elected to the Federal Executive Board
of GEW where he is responsible for the Department of Youth Welfare and Social Work.
Other board duties include family policy. From September 1998 to April 2005 he held the
office of vice-chairman of GEW.
From 2001 to 2012 he was spokesman for the Federal Family Forum. He is a member of
the Association of Child and Youth Services (AGJ) and a member of the main committee
and the panel of experts for social professions/volunteering at the German Association
for Public and Private Welfare.
Contents
Good Practices
Contents
Viv Bird
History of Bookstart
Twenty years ago, sharing books with babies
was not common thinking. However, many
Contents
VIV BIRD
Conclusions
Bookstart has come a long way since its
beginnings in 1992. Sharing books with
babies in the early 1990s was not a common
idea, and the Bookstart programme has
undoubtedly meant that a baby today that
has no experience of a book is an exception. Booktrusts partnerships with publishers
remain strong and the industry continues to
support Booktrust as it develops new models of delivery. Library services and health
practitioners remain key partners. Special
Bookstart packs for children that are deaf
or visually impaired, and for children whose
first language is not English, ensure that no
child misses out. We are developing more
targeted approaches working with Childrens
Centres to give more intensive support to
those families that need it most.
Critically, the English Governments commitment to fund the programme has been
sustained, recognising the significant contribution Bookstart makes to the promotion
of literacy and early reading. Bookstart has
grown into a UK-wide programme, with
funding from the devolved governments in
Wales and Northern Ireland; in Scotland, the
government supports Bookbug, Bookstarts
Viv Bird
Viv Bird is chief executive of Booktrust, the UK-wide charity that
empowers people through reading and writing. Since her appointment in 2007, she has led Booktrust to become an influential voice
for reading for pleasure.
A former adult literacy teacher, project director and a school
governor for 25 years, she has wide experience in the education
and literacy fields. She is the author of a number of influential
policy papers on literacy and social inclusion and co-author of a
chapter in an international family literacy textbook.
She is the current chair of EU Read and is regularly invited to speak at international
events. In 2005, she was invited to become a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Contents
Bettina Kmmerling-Meibauer
1992, when a team of educators and university teachers decided to provide parents of
preschool children with picture books. They
investigated the influence of early joint book
reading and were able to show that it improves childrens language development and
acquaintance with narratives, a crucial precondition for the understanding of complex
stories. In addition, by means of long-term
studies, they were able to demonstrate the
connection between early book usage and
later skills in reading and writing (Moore and
Wade 2003).
Contents
BETTINA KMMERLING-MEIBAUER
References
Bloom, H. 2000. How children learn the meaning of words. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Gawlitzek, I. and Kmmerling-Meibauer, B.,
eds. 2013. Mehrsprachigkeit und Kinderliteratur. Stuttgart: Klett.
Jones, R. 1996. Emerging patterns of literacy: A multidisciplinary perspective. London:
Routledge.
Snow, C. 2006. What counts as literacy in early childhood? In Blackwell Handbook of Early
Childhood Development, edited by K. McCartney and D. Philips, 274-294. Oxford: Blackwell.
Contents
U xvi>i>i`>}iV`i
about stories more frequently.
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Based on these findings, the nationwide initiative Lesestart Three Milestones for Reading
was launched in 2011, by the German Reading Foundation (Stiftung Lesen) and funded by
the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
Contents
Bookstart Worldwide
Contents
Contents
Long-Term Perspectives
Contents
Wolfgang Tietze
1. Historic Perspective
Early literacy is deeply embedded in our culture. Literacy and early literacy are a central
part of our Protestant culture: The Reformation, initiated by Martin Luther 500 years
ago, created a change in religious thinking
and started a revolution in literacy. Gods
word and will were no longer to be interpreted and explained, potentially deformed,
by a hierarchically organized class of priests,
but everybody, every man, every woman
and every child, would have direct access to
Gods word and will.
Every individual was to have this opportunity. This basic concept had two implications.
First, Gods will, as depicted in the Bible,
had to be made accessible in the language
of the common people. This was done by
Martin Luthers famous translation of the
Bible, and all people were to be enabled to
read it as early as possible. In that sense, the
Protestant Reformation was the first very
comprehensive early literacy program.
Contents
WOLFGANG TIETZE
the PISA exams. A relatively high percentage of children in school were found to have
inadequate reading skills and underdeveloped language competencies, i.e., they
were behind in areas impacting their school
career and later life. This was especially the
case for children from a migrant background and also for those who were socially
disadvantaged.
Based on those and similar findings, all 16
states in Germany established corresponding policies in the last decade. Screening
and diagnosis programs were implemented
to identify children with language deficiencies. Depending on the diagnostic procedures, between 40% and 60% of the children
were identified as being in need of language development support. All states developed and implemented language support
programs, which have a number of things in
common:
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focusing on children with underdeveloped
language competencies.
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children enter formal schooling.
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5. Re-conceptualization
of Early Literacy Programs
Based on these experiences, a re-conceptualization of approaches to support the
language competencies of young children is
currently taking place in Germany. The magic
formula is now integrative language education and development in the daily routines
of early childhood providers (centers). In this
context, some of the states revised their early childhood education policies with regard
to fostering language competencies in children. The federal government has launched
a huge program involving 4,000 ECE centers
throughout the country and based on a
political agreement between the federal
government and all state governments. This
program is based on various assumptions,
including the following:
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rich language environment, i.e., in the day
to day context of children in their homes
and in their ECE centers.
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competencies can be acquired in
specialized contexts apart from the daily
routines and experiences that children are
involved in.
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them develop language competencies
needs to start early in life.
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especially need early language-learning
support in ECE centers.
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competencies, teachers need to act as
excellent language models.
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environment in the ECE centers, in which
children experience language, reading,
stories, books and communication as a
central part of their environment.
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Contents
WOLFGANG TIETZE
Eric A. Hanushek
Contents
ERIC A. HANUSHEK
Program Effects
Some Discussion
It is possible to translate these points into
economic impacts. One approach is to
look at the impact on individual earnings
into the future. One standard deviation in
achievement will increase individual lifetime earnings by an estimated 15%. Using
this expected impact, the present value of
gains from early childhood programs in the
United States would range from $3,000 for
an effect size of 0.02 s.d. to $30,600 for an
effect of 0.17 s.d. The present value of an
increase of slightly over five points of improvement would exceed the average spending
on K-12 education of $10,000 per student.
An alternative way to value the improvements from early childhood comes from the
aggregate impact on the national economy.
Past research has also shown that the quality of a countrys labor force as measured by
cognitive skills is directly related to longterm growth rates (Hanushek and Woessmann 2012).
Table 1 projects the impact of differing
numbers of PISA points on growth in GDP
for the United States. These gains can be
measured against what can be accomplished
from early childhood programs (as seen in
Figure 3). For example, a gain of 25 PISA
The simple conclusion from the prior estimates is that the potential economic gains
of expanded and improved early childhood
programs are huge. Moreover, these gains
come just from the increases in cognitive
skills. Any improvements in noncognitive
skills would be on top of these.
There do remain substantial questions that
are not addressed here. These calculations
build on an aggregate set of estimates from
existing programs. The characteristics of
these programs are not really well specified.
Neither are the appropriate ways to introduce such programs or to pay for them.
They also do not consider that the fade out
from these programs might be directly related to other policies. For example, improved
K-12 schooling that built more appropriately
on added skills from early childhood programs might reduce the amount of fade out.
In any event, the magnitude of potential
gains is sufficient to justify expanded public
actions to design and implement early childhood programs for disadvantaged youth.
Contents
ERIC A. HANUSHEK
Notes
Both have been extensively analyzed. For
the Perry Preschool Program, see, for example, Barnett (1992) and Schweinhart et
al. (2005). For Abecedarian, see, for example,
Campbell et al. (2001).
References
Fig. 1 Enrollment Rates of Three-Year-Olds in OECD, 2010
abilities: Growth curves from an early childhood educational experiment. Developmental Psychology 37(2): 231-242.
Gramlich, E. M. 1986. Evaluation of education projects: The case of the Perry
preschool program. Economics of Education
Review 5(1):17-24.
Hanushek, E. A. and Woessmann, L. 2012.
Do better schools lead to more growth?
Cognitive skills, economic outcomes, and
causation. Journal of Economic Growth 17(4,
December):267-321.
Schweinhart, L. J., Montie, J., Xiang, Z.,
Barnett, W. S., Belfield, C. R. and Nores, M.
2005. Lifetime effects: The high/scope Perry
preschool study through age 40. Ypsilanti,
MI: High/Scope Press.
Achievement Gain
Proportion Gains
from Preschool
$44
268%
10-65%
$49
289%
12-40%
Prof. Eric A. Hanushek, PhD, is the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior
Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University in Stanford,
California, in the United States. He is best known for introducing
rigorous economic analysis into educational policy deliberations.
He has produced some 20 books and over 200 scholarly articles.
He is chairman of the Executive Committee for the Texas Schools
Project at the University of Texas at Dallas, a research associate of
the National Bureau of Economic Research, a member of the Koret
Task Force on K-12 Education, and area coordinator for Economics
of Education in the CESifo Research Network. He previously served as chair of the Board
of Directors of the National Board for Education Sciences.
His most recent book, written with Paul E. Peterson and Ludger Woessmann, Endangering Prosperity: A Global View of the American School, analyzes the economic impacts of
higher student achievement.
Contents
Ulrike Hanemann
Literate Individuals
and Literate Societies
UNESCOs Education for All (EFA) goals
and those United Nations Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) which are concerned with education (discussed below)
are expressed in terms of individuals. However, education and literacy as part of
it does not concern only individuals (as
a rights framework alone might suggest).
It also has a critical social dimension. The
types of educational inputs (e.g., material and human resources), processes (e.g.,
curricula, teaching and learning strategies)
and outcomes (e.g., reading, writing and
numeracy skills) that are relevant to individuals are very much influenced by social
context. Moreover, the degree to which
a society enables, promotes and sustains
educational outcomes has an overwhelming impact on the demand for, and the
value of, these skills.
Contents
ULRIKE HANEMANN
Contents
ULRIKE HANEMANN
Task Force, coordinated by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and the Center for
Universal Education at Brookings, recently
released their first report with a proposed
Global Framework of Learning Domains.
Seven domains were identified to measure
learning outcomes: (1) physical well-being,
(2) social and emotional, (3) culture and arts,
(4) literacy and communication, (5) learning
approaches and cognition, (6) numeracy and
mathematics, and (7) science and technology (UIS and Center for Universal Education
at Brookings 2013). This does not yet reflect
the progression from simple to complex
skills levels, but it does illustrate how complex the notion of literacy as a foundation
of lifelong learning has become.
Increased Awareness
of the Literacy Challenge
There are indications that the literacy challenge is receiving increased attention. The
United Nations declared 2003-2012 as the
UN Literacy Decade (UNLD). UNESCO then
launched the Literacy Initiative for Empowerment (LIFE, 2006-2015) in support of the
objectives of the UNLD and with a focus on
those 36 countries in the world that face
the largest literacy challenge. In 2009, at
the Sixth International Conference on Adult
Education (CONFINTEA VI), 144 UNESCO
Member States committed to redoubling
efforts to achieve EFA Goal 4, with the
ultimate goal of preventing and breaking
the cycle of low literacy and creating a
fully literate world (UIL 2010, 6). All these
international initiatives and commitments
are contributing to the achievement of EFA
and the MDGs.
Contents
ULRIKE HANEMANN
Contents
ULRIKE HANEMANN
MISCONCEPTIONS
Schools are responsible for teaching
children to read and write.
THE FACTS
Schools have an important role, but are not the
only ones responsible. A broad range of actors
shape literacy development, from parents and
peers to health services and others.
extremely cost-effective.
Its too late to do anything about literacy problems after children finish primary school.
Contents
ULRIKE HANEMANN
Contents
ULRIKE HANEMANN
The principles that should guide the development of visions and strategies for effective literacy include the following:
U Pursuing a rights-based approach:
UNESCO promotes a rights-based ap
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used to distil lessons and effective
practices as well as to identify gaps that
need increased policy attention.
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and families on learning and social care
activities should have a shared understanding through initial and ongoing
continuing professional development.
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and networks such as Stiftung Lesen in
Germany10 should be strengthened.
Effective coherence between existing
activities and a long-term approach to
changing the culture of learning needs
to be ensured when introducing related
policy reforms.
Hence, related policies and strategies should
ensure a long-term approach to changing
the culture of learning; be comprehensive
and well-resourced to allow for sustainability; close social, gender and digital gaps;
and reach across departments, ministries
and institutions. They should encourage the
creation of partnerships for literacy development and promote genuine cooperation
and coordination between and among all
stakeholders. Further, they should address
all aspects of childhood (childhood-wide)
and focus on multiple-life-cycles education, in which children are guaranteed a
right to educated parents. This means parents should be given an active role to play
in supporting their childrens learning and
development, and at the same time they
should be supported in improving their own
literacy skills. Policies and strategies need
to ensure that the learning needs of adult
family members are considered alongside
those of the children and that this approach
recognises the role of parents as adult learners in their own right (family-related policy
Contents
ULRIKE HANEMANN
Notes
Literacy is not an end in itself. It is a fundamental human right (UNESCO 1975, 2).
(http://www.unesco.org/education/information/nfsunesco/pdf/PERSEP_E.PDF, p. 2).
This study was coordinated by the National Research and Development Centre for
Adult Literacy and Numeracy (NRDC) at the
University of Londons Institute of Education,
UK. The UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) in Hamburg, Germany, was part
of the research team.
9
10
In most countries the term basic education refers to primary education or primary
and lower secondary education in the national education systems.
4
Contents
ULRIKE HANEMANN
References
Carpentieri, J. et al. 2011. Family literacy in
Europe: Using parental support initiatives to
enhance early literacy development. London: National Research and Development
Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy
(NRDC) Institute of Education.
DeCoulon, A. et al. 2008. Research note:
Parents basic skills and their childrens
test scores (September). London: National
Research and Development Centre for Adult
Literacy and Numeracy (NRDC) Institute of
Education.
European Commission. 2012. EU high-level
group of experts on literacy: Final report,
September 2012. Luxembourg: European
Union Publications Office.
Feinstein, K. et al. 2004. A model of the
inter-generational transmission of educational success. London: Centre for Research on
the Wider benefits of Learning (WBL).
Hanemann, U. 2013. Early literacy A stepping stone for lifelong learning. Powerpoint
presentation at the Prepare for Life! conference in Leipzig, 14 March 2013.
Lamb, P. 2009. The learning family: A NIACE
briefing note. Leicester, UK: National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE).
Accessed 6 May 2013, http://shop.niace.org.
uk/media/catalog/product/L/e/LearningFamily-briefing.pdf
Lybolt, J. and Gottfred, C. 2003. Promoting
pre-school language. Geneva: International
Academy of Education and International
Bureau of Education (IBE).
Lynch, R. 2004. Exceptional returns: Economic, fiscal, and social benefits of investment
in early childhood development. Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute.
Morrison, F. et al. 2005. Improving literacy
in America, p. 48-49. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.
UHH (University of Hamburg). 2010. leo.
Level One Study. Literacy of adults at the
lower rungs of the ladder. Hamburg: University of Hamburg.
UIL (UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning). 2012. Global LIFE mid-term evaluation
report 2006-2011. Looking forward with
LIFE. Literacy initiative for empowerment.
Written by Ulrike Hanemann. Hamburg: UIL
UIL (UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning). 2010. Belm framework for action:
Harnessing the power and potential of adult
learning and education for a viable future.
Hamburg: UIL.
UIS (UNESCO Institute for Statistics) and the
Center for Universal Education at Brookings.
2013. Towards universal learning. What
every child should learn. Report No. 1 of
3, Learning Metrics Task Force, (February).
Montreal/Washington DC: UIS/Center for
Universal Education at Brookings.
UN (United Nations). 1948. The Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. New York, NY:
UN.
UN (United Nations). 2000. United Nations
Millennium Declaration. New York, NY: UN.
Accessed 6 May 2013,
http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration/
ares552e.pdf
Contents
LEIPZIG RECOMMENDATIONS
Leipzig Recommendations
on Early Literacy Education
Prepare for Life! Raising Awareness for Early Literacy Education, the international conference
of experts held from March 12 to 14, 2013 in Leipzig recognized the UNESCO definition on
literacy as the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and
use printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and
potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society. A total of 130 participants from over 35 countries developed a set of recommendations on how to improve Early
Literacy Education (ELE). The recommendations were compiled during the conference and
approved by all of the participants. Members of the editorial team included Wendy Cooling
(Founder of Bookstart, UK), Jrg F. Maas (CEO of Stiftung Lesen, Germany), Umesh Malhotra
(Co-founder and CEO of Hippocampus Learning Centres, India), Karin Taube (Ume University,
Sweden, and Member of the EU High Level Group of Experts on Literacy) and Duygu Yasar
(Coordinator of Early Childhood Education, Aev Mother Child Education Foundation,
Turkey). Based on the assumption that ELE is a prerequisite for any kind of skill acquisition,
it is important to recognize that early literacy is much more than learning the alphabet.
Having considered all aspects of ELE, the Prepare for Life!" conference calls for the full
involvement of all relevant partners:
U
LiL>`ii`L
strengthening networks and gaining access
to target groups through all, even noneducational institutions.
U /iiVVii>Vivi>V``
makes it a core interest of companies,
corporations, employers organizations
and others in the private sector who may
sponsor and support ELE and so invest in
children and their education.
Professionals
U /ii>ii`vVi>>`
interaction between all involved in ELE
whatever the gaps between social and
educational levels.
U
>V``i>Vi]L>>>`
other professionals have a huge
responsibility; we expect from them
the highest standards and in return they
must be paid appropriately. Only then can
we create, keep and cultivate motivation
and quality.
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>`
should be welcoming places giving space
and resources to families, including the
very youngest children. The training of
librarians must reflect their growing role
in ELE.
U />}vvi>`>`>i
technologies to the needs in early child
hood education. This means including
research and development of media
literacy and digital literacy into training
programs.
Volunteers
U
>i>Vi`V>>>vi
entire society. The responsibility cannot be
passed on fully to families and educational
institutions. This means strengthening the
role of volunteers.
U /ii}>vii`
Families
U *>i>`V>i>i>V`w
teachers, thus their integration into ELE
programs is central to their success. Outside institutions alone will not do the job.
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>Li}>i>>iLv
the child within the families. The popular
understanding of early is not early
enough. ELE within families should
permanently focus on childrens
perspectives and development and take
into account the needs, interests, and
developmental level of the child.
U
i}>i>`V>iLi
a central task in improving literacy. This
means raising awareness of themselves as
role models in using language, communication and media, and encouraging them
to be active in helping their children learn
more about language and literacy by tal
king with their children and reading aloud
to them every day.
U *>i`Liiii``i
a home rich in words and stories, and to
inspire children to speak, to sing, to play,
to move and to communicate. According
to the cultural and social parameters in
different countries, this should include
all media used in the families and their
surroundings.
Contents
LEIPZIG RECOMMENDATIONS
Society
U ,i>`}ii`>>ii
all parts of society: politics, economy
including campaigning at a large
scale. Campaigning needs a wide range of
partners and a defined benefit for all.
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social organizations, marginalized groups,
churches etc. can provide multidimensional
accesses to education, especially for
disadvantaged environments.
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be encouraged and celebrated.
U /ii>ii``iLVi`}i
and willingness to take the issues of ELE by
using celebrities of stage, screen music and
sport as role models.
Researchers
U
>i`V>i]vV
various scientific perspectives need to be
cooperating to achieve a common goal:
Economics, Neurosciences, Psychology,
Linguistics, Educational and Social Sciences,
Media Sciences including research on
digital literacy.
U -}iL`>`i>}v
connections between research and
programs are needed. Research must be
applied to overcome the Knowing-DoingGap. With regards to intervention, this
means that studies of effects have to be
directly aimed at the optimization of
programs. More evaluations need to be
published and to be publicly discussed.
U i}>vivviVi>Vi
ventions have to be equipped with enough
resources and must be implemented over a
longer period of time, which then allows
the measurement of long term effects. It is
only then possible to also prove and to
estimate the national economic return of
the literacy promotion in this way.
U ,ii>V
ii`>`>`
and among countries. This is why studies
should deal with comparable indicators.
This needs an exchange as much as possible
between researchers and practitioners
involved in ELE programs.
In conclusion, ELE is everyones responsibility.
It has to start at the beginning of a childs
life, to reach out to all children and to lead
on to more advanced forms of literacy development. ELE is about our countries futures.
U
iii>v>i]vi>]
governmental institutions as well as others
without an obvious connection to ELE
such as celebrities, media, volunteers, and
non-governmental organizations so as to
align efforts of all groups in society. This is
in accordance with the recommendations
of the EU High Level Group of Experts on
Literacy (2012).
U -VViv
ii>i>`
economic prosperity, to an increase of GDP
and more importantly will enrich
individual lives. Political commitment is
needed in terms of an inclusion in the
rhetoric of societal debate, leading to
sustainable financial and ideological
support (public, private and academic).
U >iiv
ii`Li`i
disseminated; in accordance with the
theory and practice debated at the
conference Prepare for Life! Raising
Awareness for Early Literacy Education.
More information about the "Prepare for
Life!" conference are available on the
website readingworldwide.com.
Contents
Appendix
Contents
France
Lire et faire lire
www.lireetfairelire.org
Germany
Akademie fr Lesefrderung Niedersachsen
www.alf-hannover.de
Brsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels
www.boersenverein.de
Argentina
Fundacin Leer
www.leer.org.ar
China
Shenzhen Library
www.szlib.gov.cn
Borromusverein e. V.
www.borromaeusverein.de
Brinck, Dr. Christine (Journalist and Author)
Australia
University of Western Sidney
www.university-of-western-sydney.com
Croatia
Public library Fran Galovic Koprivnica
www.sisterlibrariesnaple.wordpress.com
Bchereizentrale Schleswig-Holstein
www.bz-sh.de
Austria
Bchereien Wien
www.buechereien.wien.at
Czech Republic
Svet Knihy, Ltd.
www.svetknihy.cz
Bundesministerium fr Bildung
und Forschung
www.bmbf.de
Denmark
Aarhus Universitet
www.au.dk
Deutscher Bibliotheksverband e. V.
www.bibliotheksverband.de
PdQUIS gGmbH
www.paedquis.de
Seiteneinsteiger e. V.
www.seiteneinsteiger-hamburg.de
Stadtschulamt Frankfurt
www.frankfurt.de
Gewerkschaft Erziehung
und Wissenschaft (GEW)
www.gew.de
Stiftung Lesen
www.stiftunglesen.de
sterreichisches Bibliothekswerk
www.biblio.at
sterreichischer Buchklub der Jugend
www.buchklub.at
Universitt Wien
www.univie.ac.at
Belgium
Stichting Lezen
www.stichtinglezen.be
Brazil
Goethe Institute So Paulo
www.goethe.de
Instituto Brasil Leitor (IBL)
www.brasilleitor.org.br
Contents
Universitt Bremen
www.uni-bremen.de
Universitt Heidelberg
www.uni-heidelberg.de
Universitt Mainz
www.uni-mainz.de
Universitt Osnabrck
www.uni-osnabrueck.de
Ireland
St Patricks College
www.spd.dcu.ie
Italy
Centro per la Salute del Bambino
www.natiperleggere.it
Leseforum Sdtirol
www.provinz.bz.it
Luxembourg
Initiativ Freed um Liesen a.s.b.l.
www.freed-um-liesen.lu
Great Britain
Booktrust UK
www.booktrust.org.uk
Malta
Foundation for Educational Services (FES)
www.fes.org.mt
University of Malta
www.um.edu.mt
Mexico
Consejo Puebla de Lectura, Benemrita
Universidad Autnoma de Puebla
www.buap.mx
Scottish Booktrust
www.scottishbooktrust.com
Greece
Goethe Institut Athen
www.goethe.de
Poland
Fundacja ABCXXI - Caa Polska Czyta
Dzieciom
www.calapolskaczytadzieciom.pl
India
Goethe Institut Neu Delhi
www.goethe.de
Hippocampus
www.hrfindia.org
Observer Research Foundation
www.observerindia.com www.orfonline.org
Instytut Ksiki
www.instytutksiazki.pl
Russia
Goethe Institut Moskau
www.goethe.de
Slovenia
Javna agencija za knjigo RS - Slovenian
Book Agency
www.jakrs.si
South Africa
Family Literacy Project
www.familyliteracyproject.co.za
Goethe Institut Johannisburg
www.goethe.de
South Korea
Goethe Institut Seoul
www.goethe.de
Spain
Fundacin Germn Sanchez Ruiprez
www.fundaciongsr.com
Sweden
Kulturrdet - Department of Art and Culture
www.kulturradet.se
Ume University
www.umu.se
Switzerland
Pdagogische Hochschule St. Gallen
www.phsg.ch
Schweizerisches Institut fr Kinder- und
Jugendmedien
www.sikjm.ch
The Netherlands
Sectorinstituut Openbare Bibliotheken
www.siob.nl
Stichting Lezen
www.lezen.nl
University of Amsterdam - Kohnstamm
Instituut
www.sco-kohnstamminstituut.uva.nl
Turkey
Anne ocuk Egitim Vakf (AEV)
www.acev.org
Ko University
www.ku.edu.tr
Turkish Radio and Television (TRT)
www.trt-world.com
Ukraine
Ukrainian Research Centre for Children's
and Young Adult Literature
USA
Florida State University
www.fsu.edu
Hippy International
www.hippy-international.org
International Reading Association (IRA)
www.reading.org
National Institute for Early Education Research (nieer)
www.nieer.org
Stanford University
www.stanford.edu
Texas A & M University
www.tamu.edu
University of Michigan
www.umich.edu
Venezuela
Asociacin Civil Banco del Libro
www.bancodellibro.org.ve
Goethe Institut Caracas
www.goethe.de
Contents
ISBN 978-3-922695-22-6
Stiftung Lesen
Rmerwall 40
D-55131 Mainz
Phone: +49 6131 / 288 90-0
Telefax: +49 6131 / 230 333
www.stiftunglesen.de
mail@stiftunglesen.de
ISBN 978-3-922695-22-6