Research Findings: Researchers and policymakers emphasize that early childhood is a critical developmental stage with the potential to impact academic and social-emotional outcomes (G. Conti & J. J. Heckman, 2012; J. J. Heckman, 2012; R. Murnane, I. Sawhill, & C. Snow, 2012). Although there is substantial evidence that children's early…

Literacy gives children an opportunity to benefit from others' knowledge and experience that far exceeds what they can achieve when reliant on learning orally via personal encounters. Little is known about young children's understanding and use of print as a source of knowledge. Three experiments investigated children's use and understanding of…

The Big Lift™ (Big Lift) is a preschool-third-grade collective impact initiative in San Mateo County, California. The initiative is a partnership of the County of San Mateo, San Mateo County Office of Education, and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Launched in 2012, the initiative aims to boost children's reading proficiency by third grade…

The purpose of this study was to examine how executive function skills in verbal and nonverbal auditory tasks are related to early reading skills in beginning readers. Kindergarteners (N = 41, aged 5 years) completed verbal (phonemes) and nonverbal (environmental sounds) Continuous Performance tasks yielding measures of executive function (misses,…

The Peter Effect (Applegate & Applegate, 2004) claimed that one cannot be expected to give what one does not possess. We applied this notion to reading teacher preparation and hypothesized that teacher educators who do not possess an understanding of basic language constructs would not prepare teacher candidates with an understanding of these…

Early reading development is a complex process that includes the acquisition of skills such as alphabet recognition, phonemic awareness, and vocabulary development. Early educators make important instructional decisions in their classrooms about how to support these skills. Understanding these decisions, and the beliefs and experiences that…

Drawing from a four-year critical ethnographic study of young girls and their literacy practices inside and outside school, this article foregrounds a lived pedagogical moment when conflicting discourses about reading instruction collided in a critically focused second-grade classroom. Through my analyses I make the argument that the pervasiveness…

This study examined the relations among features of the classroom physical literacy environment (book materials, literacy area and writing materials) and psychological literacy environment (instructional support), and preschool children's gains in two areas of emergent literacy over an academic year. Results showed that features of the physical…

Reading is an important part of successful language acquisition. Motivating young learners to learn English through stories at an early age provides them the opportunity to widen their horizons and stimulate their early enthusiasm and enhance their awareness of the rich use of English. Stories are unquestionably a significant part of children's…

For students who have limited expressive language skills, both verbally and in writing, it is difficult for a teacher to assess the acquisition of reading skills. The authors examined the effects of computer-aided instruction (CAI) on the early reading and reading comprehension skills of six students with autism spectrum disorder, and other…

Much attention has been given to the impact of cooperative teachers on the pedagogical behaviour of student teachers. In many cases, however, cooperating teachers gain as much from the student teacher as the student teacher acquires from them. This study was designed to elicit answers to the following two questions: (1) What are the perspectives…

For decades, the international education community has focused on schools as the primary vehicle of learning. However, learning assessments in dozens of developing nations show that repeated attempts to affect student learning in schools have largely failed. Because students with perfect attendance in low-resource settings spend less than 25…

The Impact of Open Licensing on the Early Reader Ecosystem examines how to use open licensing to promote quality learning resources for young children that are relevant and interesting. Research in early reading tends to focus on traditional publishing value and supply chains, without taking much consideration of new approaches and solutions…

A growing body of research has emerged to support the concept of providing early childhood education as a quality investment for our children, unlocking early potential and creating lasting impacts related to school success and beyond. Several landmark studies indicated that a quality education targeted at our youngest learners has the ability to…

This study aims to investigate preschool staff's view of emergent literacy approaches in Swedish preschools with the following research question: How do preschool staff describe and explain the approaches they use in the emergent literacy environment of preschool? Focus-group interviews were conducted with 52 participating preschool units.…