The current study aimed to investigate Saudi preschool teachers' beliefs about emergent literacy skills and practices. To this end, an explanatory, sequential mixed methods research design was adopted. The study involved two phases. The first involved a Q methodology approach to answer the overarching questions, "What are Saudi preschool…

The inclusion of prekindergarten programs has increased awareness as to whether or not children are gaining the readiness skills necessary for a successful entry into kindergarten. This study examined the impact of preschool experiences on kindergarteners' reading readiness levels. This study determined whether or not there were differences in…

Twenty-two years ago, the National Reading Panel (2000) released a research synthesis of effective reading practices for classroom instruction. The first is phonemic awareness. The others are phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. This study examined the connection of assessment for kindergarten through second-grade students in the…

A 2014 study found that more than half of all Americans aged 16-74 do not possess the literacy skills needed to adequately cope with the demands of day-to-day life, with over 13 million people in the United States alone considered to be functionally illiterate. There have been numerous efforts to address these high illiteracy rates by way of Adult…

At-risk prekindergarten students (i.e., low SES, speech-language impaired) typically lag behind their peers in phonological awareness and other emergent literacy skills such as letter knowledge and vocabulary (Duursma et al., 2008; Lundberg, 2009). However, there is a limited amount of research that has studied the efficacy of phonological…

Young children with autism often are identified as experiencing problems in language, social, and behavioral development. Current research typically focuses on these three areas with little attention paid to the academic learning of these children. Because of this, young children with autism often do not engage in typical early literacy…

This dissertation study seeks to understand how teachers who work in an ASL/English bilingual educational program for preschool children conceptualize and utilize phonological instruction of American Sign Language (ASL). While instruction that promotes phonological awareness of spoken English is thought to provide educational benefits to young…

Phonological awareness (PA) is the ability to analyze spoken language into its component sounds and to manipulate these smaller units. Literature review related to PA shows that a variety of factor groups play a role in PA in Mandarin such as linguistic experience (spoken language, alphabetic literacy, and second language learning), item type,…