University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Supporting the professional development of early childhood educators: a case study of an emergent literacy intervention project

(USC Thesis Other)

Supporting the professional development of early childhood educators: a case study of an emergent literacy intervention project

PDF

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content

SUPPORTING THE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF
EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATORS:
A CASE STUDY OF AN EMERGENT LITERACY INTERVENTION PROJECT

by
Anamarie Tam
____________________________________________________________________

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION

August 2007

Copyright 2007 Anamarie Tam
ii

DEDICATION
This paper is dedicated to mi papito lindo, mi mamita, y mi hermanito. Thank
you Dad for your gentle love and your belief that I could do anything. You inspired
me to do my best always by being proud of me no matter what I did or how I did.
You knew, long before I did, that I would complete my doctorate. I miss you, but
keep your loving spirit eternally in my heart.
I am forever grateful for my Mom. You are a beautiful model of God’s love. I
know how much you have sacrificed for your family. Although you did not have the
opportunity to receive a formal education, you have been my best teacher and have
taught me the most important lessons about life. You have helped me keep my values
clear and helped me realize that a dissertation is just a paper that I could walk away
from at any time. Yet, your own perseverance and endless love inspired me to choose
to finish.
Thanks to my brother, Anthony. I am blessed to be your sister. You have kept
your spirits up and strengthened your faith as you deal with critical challenges in your
life. Your positive attitude and tenacity gives me strength. You have helped me see
that each day is precious and we need to use our God-given talents to make a
difference.
iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I want to share my sincere thanks with my dissertation committee. It has been
a long journey, so I appreciate your guidance along the way. I am grateful for the
opportunity to work with Dr. David Yaden, as we traveled along new paths to
establish a literacy-focused professional development program, as part of your
research study to implement an emergent literacy intervention to benefit students who
are too often highly at-risk to succeed later in school. You have helped me develop
my skills and voice as a researcher. Thanks to Dr. Genzuk for your support and input
related to second language issues and paraprofessionals. Your suggestions helped me
more clearly defend ideas in this paper. Sincere thanks to Dr. Wohlstetter for your
helpful guidance, insight, and encouragement. You helped me think more critically
and deeply. You are a wonderful role model as a dedicated professor and committed
professional.
Thank you, Pati. You have encouraged me to keep moving forward, no matter
how bumpy the road. You have enriched my life by helping me through both the
difficult times and the celebrations that accompanied our research, and with your
loving friendship. Our friendship grew out of the same passion to make a difference
for the children and families at NEOS.
Many thanks to my dear friend, Rosy. Since our teaching odyssey began
twenty years ago, you have been a blessing in my life. You have inspired me to be a
more confident person and a better educator. I am proud to be your friend, your
colleague, and comadre for Bruno, Franco, and Catalina. Working together, we share
iv

a belief that we make the world a better place and make a difference - one child and
one teacher at a time. I hope this paper captures a bit of that belief.
v

TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION …………………………………………………………………… ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ………………………………………………………. iii

LIST OF FIGURES ……………………………………………………………… viii

ABSTRACT ……………………………………………………………………... ix

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………….. 1
Problem Statement ……………………………………………………….. 3
Concerns about the Achievement Gap …………………………... 3
Universal Preschool ……………………………………… 4
Achievement of High Poverty Students …......................... 5
Achievement of Latino and English Language Learners .... 6
Response to Greater Accountability …………………………….. 8
Pressure from Title I Legislation ………………………... 8
Pressure on Head Start Programs ……………………….. 10
Significance ……………………………………………………………… 11
Purpose of the Study …………………………………………………….. 12
Research Questions ……………………………………………………… 13
Delimitations …………………………………………………………….. 14
Limitations ………………………………………………………………. 15

CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE …………………….... 17
Definition of Terms ……………………………………………………... 17
Sociocultural Theoretical Framework ………………………………...… 20
Development of Higher Mental Functions ……………………… 21
Role of Social Mediation ………………………………………... 22
Role of Sign Mediation ………………………………………..... 23
Early Childhood Education and Care Intervention Programs …………... 24
Quality Practices of Education and Care ……………………….. 25
Developmentally Appropriate Practice …………………. 25
Need For Early Language and Literacy Intervention …… 26
Comprehensive Intervention Programs …………………………. 27
High/Scope Perry Preschool ……………………………. 28
Abecedarian Program …………………………………… 29
Chicago Child-Parent Center Study …………………….. 29
Head Start ……………………………………………….. 30
Targeted Literacy Interventions ……………………………….... 33
Print Knowledge - Joint Book Reading …………………. 35
Print Knowledge - Little Books …………………………. 36
Print Knowledge - Environmental Print …………………. 37
vi

Phonological Skill Development ………………………... 38
Oral Language …………………………………………… 38
Impact of Interventions ………………………………………….. 40
Professional Development for Early Childhood Educators …………….. 41
Professional Development ………………………………………. 43
Education of Early Childhood Teachers ………………………… 44
Training Early Childhood Educators ……………………………. 46
Early Literacy Training Efforts ………………………….. 47
Linking Training And Education ………………………… 47
Models of Early Literacy Training ……………………………… 49
Education and Training of Paraprofessionals ……………………...……. 51
Summary ……………………………………………………………….... 54

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS …………………….... 56
Setting …………………………………………………………………... 60
Population ……………………………………………………………….. 62
Researcher’s Role ……………………………………………………….. 63
Data Collection ………………………………………………………….. 65
Data Management and Analysis ………………………………………… 66
Trustworthiness of Naturalistic Research ………………………. 68
Confirmability ………………………………………………….. 68
Dependability ………………………………………………….... 69
Credibility ……………………………………………………….. 70
Transferability …………………………………………………… 71
Conclusion ………………………………………………………………. 71

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS ……………………………………………………… 74
Design of Professional Development Activities ………………………… 76
Instructional Tools ………………………………………………. 77
Literacy Materials ……………………………………….. 77
Emergent Literacy Curriculum Framework ……………... 82
Professional Development ………………………………………. 86
Education and Credentials ………………………………. 87
Training …………………………………………………. 89
Literacy Teaching and Practice …………………………………. 98
Reading Demonstrations ………………………………… 100
Opportunities to Read …………………………………… 102
Writing Demonstrations ………………………………… 107
Table 1: Changes in Literacy Teaching and Practice ...... 113
Implementation of Professional Development Activities ………………. 114
Communication …………………………………………………. 115
Communication about Instructional Tools ……………… 115
Communication to Facilitate Training and Class Support 121
Communication to Support Literacy Teaching and Practice 124
vii

Collaboration ……………………………………………………. 128
Collaboration to Develop Instructional Tools …………... 128
Collaboration to Strengthen Training and Class Support ... 132
Collaboration to Enhance Literacy Teaching and Practice 138
Celebration .................................................................................... 141
Celebrating the Use of Instructional Tools ....................... 141
Celebrating the Impact of Training and Class Support ..... 146
Celebrating Literacy Teaching and Practice ..................... 150
Summary ................................................................................................... 154

CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS ....................................... 159
The Complexities of Designing and Implementing Professional
Development that is Responsive to the Needs of the Participants and the
Context in which They Interact ................................................................. 159
Sociocultural Theoretical Implications ..................................................... 159
Sociocultural Theoretical Model of Professional Development ... 159
Reflection Questions ..................................................................... 167
What are the key concepts and strategies participants
should know? .................................................................... 167
How do we support implementation? ............................... 168
How do we encourage and sustain continuous learning? .. 168
Pedagogical Implications .......................................................................... 169
Instructional Practices Based on Research .................................... 170
Sensitivity to Individual Needs and Contextual Factors ............... 172
Addressing Language Needs ............................................. 172
Addressing Cultural Sensitivity ........................................ 178
Ensuring Greater Access to Literacy Materials ................ 179
Caring and Skillful Teaching ....................................................... 180
Collaborative Teaching – Use of Assistants ................................. 182
Policy Implications ................................................................................... 183
Current Policy Recommendations ................................................ 184
Need to Build and Sustain Professional Communities Focused on
Learning about Literacy ................................................................ 185
Developing a Shared Vision of Early Literacy ................. 187
Providing Ongoing, Site-based Training ......................... 188
Mentoring .......................................................................... 189
Need for Site-level Accountability ............................................... 190
Ensuring Administrative Support ..................................... 191
Structuring Time for Learning and Sharing ...................... 192
Linking Professional Development with Supervision,
Evaluation, and Assessment .............................................. 193
Summary ................................................................................................... 195

REFERENCES ..................................................................................................... 201
viii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Conceptual Matrix of Design Categories ................................. 75

Figure 2: Conceptual Matrix of Implementation Categories .................... 75

Figure 3: A Sociocultural Theoretical View of Professional Development
in an Emergent Literacy Intervention ......................................... 161
ix

ABSTRACT

This qualitative case study describes and analyzes the process of establishing
and supporting on-going professional development that was context-sensitive, based
on research about promoting early literacy, and responsive to the needs of a group of
early childhood teachers who worked with children from high poverty homes and with
limited English skills. The present study is a secondary analysis of data from a 4-year
emergent literacy intervention research project that was originally conducted with the
support of the Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement.
The participating teachers worked with the 4-year-old students enrolled at an
inner-city child development center in southern California. Over 95% of these
students were from high-poverty homes and most were also Latino and beginning
English language learners.
The research study explores the design features and the implementation
process of the professional development that contributed to the success of an emergent
literacy program. The design categories included (a) instructional tools, (b)
professional development that incorporated training meetings and classroom support,
and (c) literacy teaching and practice that included reading and writing
demonstrations, and multiple opportunities for the students to read and write. Strong
levels of social interaction in the areas of (a) communication, (b) collaboration, and (c)
celebration were qualities that contributed to effective implementation.
The results have theoretical, pedagogical, and policy implications for other
early childhood programs that are beginning to incorporate more literacy teaching in
x

response to growing accountability for demonstrating stronger achievement. A
sociocultural theoretical model explains the interplay between the design and
implementation elements of the professional development effort. Pedagogical
implications include using (a) instructional practices based on research, (b) sensitivity
to individual and contextual factors including language and culture, (c) access to
literacy materials, (d) caring and skillful teaching, and (e) collaborative teaching that
includes the use of assistants. Policy implications focus on (a) the need to build and
sustain a professional community focused on learning about literacy and developing a
shared vision of early literacy through ongoing training and mentoring; and (b) the
need for site-level accountability and administrative support.
1

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
As pressure increases in American public schools for more accountability and
for improved student achievement, pressure also increases for recruiting, developing,
and retaining highly qualified teachers. High quality teaching is critical to increasing
student achievement (Darling-Hammond, 1995; Darling-Hammond, 1996).
Unfortunately, less qualified and less experienced teachers are more likely to teach
student populations who are considered most at-risk for academic failure, especially
students from economically disadvantaged families or from high minority schools
(Barton, 2003).
The push for higher student achievement and higher teacher quality has
consequences for early childhood programs. Early childhood programs are expected
to help all students enter the K-12 school system "ready to learn" in order to help
decrease the initial achievement gap between "disadvantaged" and mainstream student
populations (Goals 2000, 1994). As child development programs place more
emphasis on providing stronger academic foundations for reading, writing, and math,
many early childhood educators lack sufficient training and on-going support to
expertly teach these subjects in a developmentally appropriate manner. Although
building a strong pre-service program to train new early childhood educators is
important, seeking methods to support the professional development of the teachers
who are already working in the field is a critical need.
This qualitative case study describes and analyzes the process of establishing
and supporting professional development focused on early literacy instruction for the
2

teachers of the 4-year-old students in a child development center that primarily serves
Latino students in an impoverished area of downtown Los Angeles. By describing the
complexities of providing support that is sensitive to the needs of the teachers and
their students, this study builds awareness of the challenges that should be considered
when designing on-going professional development for early childhood teachers who
work with at-risk student populations.
This dissertation is organized into five chapters. The introductory section
highlights difficulties associated with increased governmental pressure to improve the
quality and impact of early childhood programs on students' academic achievement.
Regardful of this problem, the present study is explained, including the research
questions that focused this examination, and some limitations that impacted the study.
Chapter 2 includes a review of the empirical and theoretical research literature
related to the conceptual framework of the present study. In this section, I outlined
the sociocultural theoretical paradigm that underlies the main research question and
the qualitative research design of this descriptive case study. In addition, a review of
research related to early childhood interventions that promote emergent literacy for at-
risk students, and related to professional development efforts for early childhood
educators, indicate a strong need for further research in these areas.
In Chapter 3, I detail the design, data collection, and analysis procedures used
in the present qualitative descriptive case study. Then, I present the results of the
analysis of 4 years of project data, and outline how the professional development
activities at the research site promoted a stronger emergent literacy program.
3

Chapter 4 also includes a description of the planned design of the professional
development, as well as the social interactions between participants that influenced the
implementation of the staff development activities.
In the concluding chapter, I use the results of the data analysis to explain some
of the complexities of designing and implementing professional development that is
responsive to both the needs of the participants and the context in which they interact.
After reflecting on the complexities of the present qualitative case study, I summarized
lessons learned from the present research that have theoretical, pedagogical, and
policy implications for other early childhood programs

Problem Statement
Concerns about the Achievement Gap
Although there is continuing concern about the overall achievement of students
in the United States as compared to students from other nations (e.g. Lemke, 2001),
another persistent concern is the achievement gap between students from high poverty
and low poverty homes, as well as between White and minority students. Reducing
this achievement gap and preparing young children to enter the K-12 school system is
a high priority for early childhood programs. Given the high cost of quality preschool
programs, a hotly debated question is should funds for preschool programs be targeted
to the most at-risk populations or made available to all young children?

4

Universal Preschool
Universal preschool proponents share various reasons to support access by all
4-year-olds to early childhood education and care services. Some proponents feel that
universal prekindergarten (pre-K) programs assure broader public support by offering
services for all children, not just at-risk groups of children; thus promoting a sense of
equity (Raden, 1999). Another reason for the increasing support for universal pre-K is
to address the needs of the growing number of working mothers who seek childcare
and education programs. In addition, brain research demonstrates the previously
underestimated capacity of infants and young children to learn and benefit from
enriched educational experiences; therefore, preschool programs offer an opportunity
to better prepare students to be successful in the K-12 school system. However,
expanding program services is costly and assuring quality programs becomes more
complex. So, although public opinion may support offering high quality preschool
programs to all children, taxpayers may be hesitant to make a long-term financial
commitment to funding universal preschool programs. For example, in spite of
widespread publicity and support from a broad coalition, a proposition on the June
2006 ballot in California, the “Preschool for All Act” was defeated.
During the 2005-2006 school year, 38 states funded pre-K programs serving
primarily 4-year-olds (Barnett, Hustedt, Hawkinson, & Robin, 2006), and 20 states
provided supplemental funding to their Head Start programs (Education Commission
of the States, 2002). Several states, including Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine,
New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin, and West
5

Virginia offer pre-K programs to all 4-year-olds, but most are on a first-come-first-
serve basis; only Georgia and Oklahoma provide sufficient funds to offer a universal
pre-K program for almost all eligible children (Barnett, W.S., Hustedt, J.T., Robin,
K.B., Schulman K.L., 2005). Nevertheless, even in a universal pre-K program, an
important goal is to academically prepare students to help them become more ready to
be successful learners in the K-12 school system. So, until a high quality program can
be offered to all 4-year-olds, targeting the achievement of at-risk student populations
remains a priority.

Achievement of High Poverty Students
Unfortunately, the more children struggle with debilitating family risk factors,
such as family income below poverty level, a primary home language other than
English, mother not graduating from high school, and single-parent homes, the more
academically at-risk they are in reading and mathematics (Wirt, 2004). Therefore, a
significant challenge for early childhood programs is to help off-set the achievement
gap that begins before children enter school, and that is too often associated with
levels of poverty.
An analysis of the U.S. Department of Education's Early Childhood
Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort found that children entering kindergarten in
the highest socio-economic status (SES) group had an average cognitive score that
was 60% above the average score of the lowest SES group (Lee & Burkham, 2002).
The study suggested,
6

Of the many categories of factors considered - including race/ethnicity, family
educational expectations, access to quality child care, home reading, computer
use, and television habits, SES accounts for more of the unique variation in
cognitive scores than any other factor by far. (Lee, et al., 2002, p. 2)

Unfortunately, children who have not yet entered kindergarten (ages birth to four
years) represent the greatest percentage of children who live in poverty (Douglas-Hall,
2005). Furthermore, public schools with the highest percentages of low-SES students
(those eligible for free or reduced-price lunch) were more likely to employ beginning
teachers than were schools with the lowest percentages of such students (Wirt, 2004).
Therefore, a child from a low-income family faces enormous obstacles to success,
especially if he enters school with a lag in achievement, and consequently attends a
neighborhood school that has fewer economic resources and has less qualified, less
experienced teachers, as compared to a higher income student who attends a more
affluent school. As a result, the achievement gap between low and high SES students
often widens.

Achievement of Latino and English Language Learners
Unfortunately, the achievement challenge is further compounded for minority
students who often come from low-income homes. For example, 62% of Hispanic
children and 60% of African American children come from low-income families
(Douglas-Hall, 2005). Nearly 75% of entering kindergartners from African American
or Hispanic families have one or more risk factors, as compared to 29% from White
families (Zill & West, 2001, p. 20). Although Hispanic and African American
students as a group have made achievement gains, much work is needed to close the
7

achievement gap. The difference in achievement shows up in grades, results of
standardized tests, and high school and college completion. For example, in 2003, the
National Assessment of Educational Progress results in both 4
th
and 8
th
grade reading
indicated that 15% of Hispanic students performed at or above proficient, while 41%
of White students scored at or above proficient (NCES, 2004). In addition,
approximately 63% of Hispanic students complete high school, while the national
average is 85% (Council of Economic Advisers, 2000). Even later in life, Hispanic
adults not only have the lowest rates of attaining higher education, but also have not
experienced the recent significant increases evident among White and Black, non-
Hispanics (Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 2004).
The achievement of Hispanic students is further challenged if they enter school
with limited English proficiency. Unfortunately, English learners are over-represented
among students scoring at the lowest levels of the National Assessment of Educational
Progress, the California Standards test, and other measures of achievement—including
dropout and graduation rates and a-g course completion for UC/CSU admissions
eligibility (Ed Source, 2005). The struggle to raise the achievement of Hispanic
English language learners is especially acute in California since 41% of the students
identified as English learners in the United States live in California, and 83% of the
English learners in California speak Spanish as their primary language (Tafoya, 2002).
The concerns about the long-term achievement of children from low-income,
Hispanic, and limited English-speaking families, represent a major societal and
educational challenge, and thus explain the selection of the target group for this study.
8

Response to Greater Accountability
Given the persistent achievement gaps between mainstream "non-
disadvantaged" students, and Hispanic, low SES students, recent educational policies
are putting more pressure on schools to demonstrate stronger results for these target
groups. As federal initiatives push for higher levels of achievement for all students,
more emphasis on standards, assessment, and accountability is visible not only within
each state's K-12 public school system, but also within early childhood development
programs. Many of these requirements have focused increasingly on more highly
qualified teachers, and professional development.

Pressure from Title I Legislation
Although improving the academic achievement of disadvantaged students has
been the on-going intent of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of
1964, the two most recent reauthorizations of this act, Improving America’s Schools
Act (1994) and No Child Left Behind (2002), reflect this shift toward greater
accountability. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) states that a purpose of Title I
is “closing the achievement gap between high- and low-performing children,
especially the achievement gaps between minority and non-minority students, and
between disadvantaged children and their more advantaged peers" (Title I, 2002b).
In an effort to work toward this goal, the federal government is exerting even greater
pressure, especially in the area of teacher qualifications and professional development.
For example, each district that receives Title I funds must immediately begin to hire
9

only "highly-qualified teachers," who must have full certification, a bachelor's degree,
and demonstrated competence in subject knowledge and teaching (Department of
Education, 2004). Schools receiving Title I funds must ensure that there will be
highly qualified teachers in every classroom by 2005-2006. NCLB also mandates an
increase in "high-quality" professional development available to all teachers. In
addition, paraprofessionals are required to have at least 2 years of study at an
institution of higher education and have an associate's degree or pass a rigorous state
or local academic assessment, and participate in professional development. These
higher qualification requirements are not limited to the K-12 system since they also
apply to preschool programs funded by Title I funds.
Title I also finances programs that directly target the reading achievement of
young children, for example the Even Start Family Literacy Program, and Early
Reading First. Even Start supports projects that provide family literacy educational
services to low-income families and their children from birth to age seven. Early
Reading First is a competitive grant program that seeks to support the development of
language and literacy skills of preschoolers from low-income families. In both cases,
federal legislation requires that instruction be designed using "scientifically-based
reading research" and also requires professional development for the teaching staff.
Similar to the Title I requirements for highly qualified teachers mentioned
above, Even Start legislation also sets minimum levels of education for any teacher or
paraprofessional working with parents or their young children. It requires at least an
associate's degree that must be related to early childhood education. While both
10

programs are stricter and more specific about expected levels of teacher qualifications,
finding teachers, who may be bilingual or have experience working with the cultures
and population being served, is not a requirement.
Not only does this federal legislation exert tighter control over who can teach
in Title I programs, but also is more explicit about the content of professional
development. For example, recipients of an Early Reading First grant must provide:
Professional development that is based on scientifically-based reading
research, knowledge of early language and reading development and that will
assist in developing the preschool age children's - recognition, leading to
automatic recognition, of letters of the alphabet, knowledge of letters, sounds,
blending of letter sounds, and increasingly complex vocabulary; understanding
that written language is composed of phonemes and letters each representing
one or more speech sounds that in combination make up syllables, words, and
sentences; spoken language, including vocabulary and oral comprehension
abilities; and knowledge of the purposes and conventions of print (Title I,
2002a).

Pressure on Head Start Programs
Although Head Start is funded through the Department of Health and Human
Services, not Title I, this program also is facing stricter accountability and more
stringent control of the professional development of its teachers. One example of the
push for more accountability was the implementation of the Head Start National
Reporting System in 2003. This system was mandated to assess students entering and
exiting Head Start programs and provide information about the progress of their
children on early literacy, language, and numeracy measures for local program self-
assessment and program monitoring reviews (Head Start, 2006)
11

Currently, Congress is debating the Improving Head Start Act of 2007 to
reauthorize Head Start. The bill increases teacher qualifications and program
improvement activities, ensures the use of research-based practices to support
children’s early literacy, and increases accountability for “underperforming programs”
(Committee on Education and Labor, 2007). In spite of the focus on greater
accountability, this bill would end the controversial National Reporting System, partly
as a result of the challenges of individually assessing 3, 4, and 5 year olds, as well as
the huge costs involved.
In addition, as part of President Bush's Good Start, Grow Smart initiative, a
large group of Head Start teachers representing different programs from across the
country were required to participate in a national training program in 2003 that
provided 32 hours of training in literacy. Upon completion of the training, they were
expected to return to their own site to train all of their teachers (Good Start, Grow
Smart, 2003).
Another indication of the push for greater accountability for Head Start
programs is that several studies have been commissioned by the federal government to
examine Head Start outcomes. These studies include the Early Head Start Research
and Evaluation Project, the Family and Child Experiences Study, and the Head Start
Impact Study.
Significance
In summary, with increasing accountability for student achievement in public
schools, early childhood programs can offer important assistance to students who
12

typically enter school academically behind their more socio-economically advantaged
peers. As state and federal funding of early childhood programs for low-income
families increases, so do the expected qualifications of the teaching staff, including
what they are expected to know about content areas, such as early literacy. Meeting
these requirements becomes a challenge, especially for teachers who currently work in
child development centers, and who started teaching without college level training or
training related to teaching early literacy skills at the preschool level. Supporting
early childhood educators in order to improve the academic preparation of at-risk
populations, especially high poverty, and Hispanic English language learners, is an
important issue to examine further.

Purpose of the Study
The present study provides a rich and in-depth description of the challenges of
initiating and sustaining a professional development program that is based on research
related to emergent literacy theory and practice, as well as teacher needs. This
qualitative study is a secondary analysis of data from a 4-year emergent literacy
intervention research project, “The Impact of an Emergent Literacy Program in a
Preschool, Day-Care Setting,” which was funded through the Center for the
Improvement of Early Reading Achievement (CIERA) (Yaden, 2002). The project
was conducted at a child development center in the “Skid Row” area of downtown Los
Angeles, California. The goal of the CIERA research project was to provide multiple
opportunities for Spanish-speaking 4-year-olds to engage in a variety of reading and
13

writing activities within the center, at home, and in the community. The emergent
literacy intervention included (a) student-centered interventions that promoted direct
access to literacy materials and activities, (b) teacher staff development and classroom
support, and (c) a family involvement component that included a book loan program
and family literacy workshops. This comprehensive project is described further in the
research design section in Chapter 3. While results of the CIERA project
demonstrated growth of students' literacy development (see Chapter 3), it is important
to not only report outcomes, but to also examine how changes in the classroom helped
to foster the growth.

Research Questions
In order to guide a more focused examination of the existing data from the
larger CIERA emergent literacy intervention, this study analyzes the project data
related to the teachers' professional development and the nature of the training effort
and addresses the research question: What are the attributes of professional
development, in terms of design and implementation, which contributed to the success
of an early childhood emergent literacy program?
More specifically, the design features refer to what was planned and
accomplished, while implementation attributes refer to how the program was put into
practice, including the social interactions between the teachers and researchers.
Within this examination, contextual factors that influenced the design and
implementation attributes are highlighted. These contextual qualities specifically
14

relate to characteristics of who is being studied and where the project takes place.
Thus, this qualitative case study describes how working with teachers of Hispanic,
high-poverty English language learners in a child development program in the Skid
Row area of the inner city, impacted planned professional development activities.

Delimitations
Findings from the CIERA emergent literacy intervention showed its positive
impact on students’ literacy growth. For example, follow-up data collection at the
local elementary school demonstrated that students who participated in the
intervention had less need for remediation and less special education referrals than
peers who attended other local child development programs. Furthermore,
participating students also demonstrated stronger language skills in English and
Spanish, and higher scores on a norm-referenced test than peers who did not
participate in the intervention (see Yaden, 2002). However, additional analysis of
student assessment data, and correlations with teaching behaviors are not within the
scope of this planned study. Guided by the selected research question, this study is a
focused, qualitative examination of the classroom data collected during the 4 years of
the study as it relates to designing and implementing professional development
activities.

15

Limitations
A constraint on the present study is that it was based on a larger research
project funded by CIERA from 1997-2001. Therefore, this study was limited to an
analysis of data collected during that timeframe. While the data set is extensive and
includes fieldnotes, interviews, and questionnaires, gaps exist in the data. Often,
difficulty in providing coverage for teachers and assistants to participate in interviews
or complete questionnaires prevented collection of these data from each staff member;
therefore, the interviews and questionnaires do not reflect the voices of every
participant in the study. However, frequent interactions with staff members during
weekly visits helped the researchers to describe the staff’s perspectives as detailed in
the more comprehensive collection of fieldnotes.
Given the nature of an intervention project that involved the researchers in
direct support of on-site activities, as well as in collecting data to document the
progress of various components of the literacy intervention, not all aspects of the
project were equally documented. During the course of the 4 years of the study, the
support provided by the research assistants in the classroom became more specialized.
For example, by the third year of the study, one researcher became more involved in
studying student writing development and consequently began to focus fieldnotes
more around observing student behaviors in the classroom and collecting writing
samples, and less around observing the teachers. Thus, while I reviewed all available
project data related to the classroom intervention that was collected by the research
16

team, I drew mostly from the data that I originally helped to collect as a research
assistant, and that focused on recounting overall classroom interactions.
Another limitation was maintaining access to the teachers involved in the
study. High teacher turnover is a dilemma for many early childhood programs. By
the end of the CIERA study, only one of the project's original teachers remained at the
same site. Consequently, annual interview or questionnaire data was limited to one set
per teacher in most cases. Locating the teachers to do a member check of the reported
data was not possible. In addition, the site supervisors, who originally supported the
larger study, were no longer employed by the child development agency. Thus,
collection of follow-up data was not feasible.
Yet, in spite of the limitations, the current study provides helpful information
about the complex nature of the professional development support needed, especially
by early childhood teachers working with students who are often most at-risk of
failure in American schools. Since current trends in governmental policies and
funding of early childhood programs emphasize raising teacher qualifications and
mandating the content of training, on-going and in-depth support that tries to build on
the existing funds of knowledge of early childhood educators has been drastically
overlooked.
17

CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
This chapter explains and supports the underlying conceptual framework of the
present study. First, several key terms are defined in order to narrow and refine the
related literature review. Next, the sociocultural theoretical paradigm that frames the
research questions and the qualitative research design of this project are outlined.
Then, research related to child development programs that promote early literacy for
at-risk students, and to professional development efforts for early childhood educators
are reviewed and demonstrate the need for further research in this area.

Definition of Terms
In order to focus the literature review, several terms need clarification.
Sometimes, the terms preschool, prekindergarten, day care, child care, Head Start,
child development programs, nursery school, early childhood programs, and early
childhood education are used interchangeably. The confusion is understandable in
light of the proliferation of early childhood programs in response to the need for child
care services by parents who work, and the blurring of the division between the care
and education of young children. Several organizations classify the terms differently.
For example, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)
defines early childhood programs as "any group program in a center, school, or other
facility that serves children from birth through age 8…includ[ing] child care centers,
family child care homes, private and public preschools, kindergartens, and primary-
grade students" (Bredekamp & Copple, 1997, p. 3). In comparison, in a review of
18

early childhood intervention programs, Illig (1998) classifies the interventions as
preschool, child development, home visiting, and traditional day care programs.
Furthermore, a recent population report by the U.S. Census Bureau simply labels any
program for three and four year olds as nursery school, which is followed by
kindergarten, elementary school, high school, and college (Shin, 2005).
In Preschool Education in America, Barbara Beatty (1995) explains that
although the current difference between preschool education and child care may be
artificial; historically, they developed for different purposes. Beatty (1995) explains
that infant schools were introduced to benefit children from lower class families since
a general belief existed that young children from poor families should be educated
outside the home, while no consensus existed that similar experiences were beneficial
for children from higher-class backgrounds. She further states, "These ambivalent,
class-biased European attitudes greatly influenced ideas about the education of young
children in America, set the precedent for separate preschools for rich and poor, and
sowed tenacious doubts about the effects and value of early educational programs"
(Beatty, 1995, p. 2). Therefore, while many advocates of preschool programs are
pushing for universal access similar to kindergarten, current programs often reflect a
dichotomy of serving children whose families are able to pay for private programs and
those who qualify for programs with governmental assistance based on financial need.
Programs serving young children can be described using a variety of terms:
• Early childhood programs is an overarching term that refers to both early
childhood education and child care programs that provide service to children
from birth to age eight.

19

• Child care and day care traditionally refer to programs that provide for the
safety and welfare of infants, toddlers, and young children while parents work.

•Preschool programs refer to early education programs for 3- and 4-year-olds.
In the past, preschool programs were often half day programs, but now often
include a child care component to address the needs of working parents.

• Prekindergarten is a preschool early education program that helps prepare
children to enter kindergarten the following year.

• Head Start is a federally funded preschool program that includes
comprehensive child welfare services including early learning, health,
nutrition, and parent education.

• Child development programs are long-term, structured, and intensive
educational day care programs designed to offset potential cognitive delay for
at-risk infants and toddlers. These programs typically begin with infants and
continue until the child enters kindergarten (Illig, 1998, p. 13).

Thus, while terms related to early childhood programs are often used broadly,
each term connotes different program emphases. The site for the present study labels
itself as a child development center. Since I have focused this study on the
professional development of the teachers who were involved in an early literacy
intervention research project with their 4-year-old students, the instructional aspect of
the program was examined. However, recognizing that the child care and
development components of the program also contributed to the program’s overall
strength, I referred to the project site as a child development program (CDP), or as an
early childhood education and care (ECEC) program in order to highlight the
education component of the research, without ignoring its child care setting.
Consequently, research that only examines child care, or home-based programs was
not reviewed. In addition, while the term early childhood programs refers to settings
20

that serve children from birth to age 8, this study will use the terms, CDP and ECEC
to refer to programs designed for students prior to entering the K-12 school system.

Sociocultural Theoretical Framework
A sociocultural theoretical perspective guided the conceptual framework of
this case study, and thus led to the development of the overall research question that
examined both the design and implementation of a successful professional
development program that targeted the development of early literacy. Several key
ideas from sociocultural theory, and, more specifically, from the collective work of
psychologist L.S. Vygotsky (1987, 1997), help to explain the study’s emphasis on the
social interactions between the teachers, students, and researchers as a key attribute
related to the successful implementation of professional development activities.
A central tenet of sociocultural theory is that a child's development cannot be
understood by focusing solely on the individual; the social world in which that
individual life has developed must also be examined (Gallimore & Tharp, 1990;
Vygotsky, 1997). Michael Cole (1990) explains that a sociocultural or a
sociohistorical view distinguishes the psychological processes of humans as
"culturally mediated, historically developing, and aris[ing] from practical activity" (p.
91). Thus, while I examined key findings from the data in this study, as it might
pertain to other professional development efforts for early childhood educators, I was
also aware that a sociocultural perspective recognizes data as bound to a specific
social, cultural, and institutional setting.
21

The Development of Higher Mental Functions
Three interrelated concepts from sociocultural theory influenced the design of
the present study. These ideas included (a) the development of higher mental
functions, (b) the role of social mediation, and (c) the role of sign mediation.
Vygotsky (1997) proposes that an individual's higher mental functions have origins in
social life, and include both the action of mastering the "external materials" or
outcomes of cultural development and thinking, such as language, writing, arithmetic,
and drawing; as well as the cognitive "processes" such as voluntary attention, logical
memory, and formation of concepts, that lead to the development of higher mental
functions (p. 14). He adds that any function in a child's cultural development appears
twice or on two planes, first the social, then the psychological. It first appears
between people as an "intermental" category, and then within the child as an
"intramental" category (Vygotsky, 1997, p. 106). Thus, Vygotsky's theory moves
beyond a behaviorist’s view that focuses on the biological and maturational processes
of development to a view of development that recognizes the critical influence of
external social and cultural factors.
Consequently, as children interact with others in meaningful, literacy-rich
environments, they begin to internalize the higher mental functions of reading and
writing. Therefore, an assumption of this study is that the social and cultural
interactions among teachers and students influence the development of early reading
and writing; thus, how, where, and with whom learning takes place is as important as
the skills, or what, is learned. Hence, the main research question of the present study
22

not only focuses on the materials that were provided to support more emergent literacy
activities in the classroom and the planned professional development activities, but
also focuses on how the changes in thinking and practice were facilitated.

Role of Social Mediation
A closely related concept is the importance of social mediation. Children
develop their intellectual skills as they interact and learn from others. Vygotsky
(1987) explains that this social mediation and learning occur within a zone of
proximal development, which is the difference between a child's actual development
and the level of performance that he achieves in collaboration with a more
knowledgeable peer or adult (p. 209). Children learn to internalize and transform the
help they receive from others to direct their own problem solving behaviors.
Consequently, intentional teaching and guidance occurring within this zone, not just
social interaction, leads to the development of higher level thinking. In terms of
emergent literacy, this concept of social mediation reinforces the critical role of the
teacher to teach early literacy skills in a manner that is developmentally appropriate to
a young child’s zone of proximal development. Therefore, this theory affirms the
need for a case study that carefully describes the attributes of a professional
development effort that influenced the “teaching” that took place between the
researchers, teachers, and students.

23

Role of Sign Mediation
Vygotsky (1997) believed that humans create "signs" as a type of artificial
stimulus or mediator in order to transform the external to internal. In other words,
humans use signs to change and regulate their natural forms of behavior and thinking
process. Through the use of mental tools such as reading, writing, and language,
natural forms of behavior and cognition are transformed into higher cultural forms
unique to humans (Dixon-Krauss, 1996, p. 9). Thus, as children gain control of these
culturally meaningful tools, they are able to think at higher, more abstract, and
metacognitive levels. For example, the ability to use their growing literacy skills
allow students to learn more about their world, build their background knowledge, and
expand their levels of thinking.
Emergent literacy assumes that children are continuously developing literacy
skills from infancy as they attempt to interpret or communicate using symbols such as
print, scribbles, or pictures in meaningful real-world contexts (Dixon-Krauss, 1996, p.
18; Teale & Sulzby, 1994). Therefore, in relation to this study, observations of the
teachers were analyzed in order to show how they made changes in the ways they
helped their students transform their "natural" behavior and cognition through the use
of the signs and symbols of early literacy.
While this study draws upon emergent literacy research to suggest key
conceptual understandings needed by beginning readers and writers, sociocultural
theory acknowledges that a child's literacy development is encouraged and shaped by
more knowledgeable adults in the child's world. Since this learning takes place in a
24

specific social, historical, and cultural setting, teacher mediation is influenced and
shaped by this setting. So, while students at different child development centers may
be taught the same early literacy skills, the context and social mediation provided by
individual teachers helps make students' experiences unique. Therefore, a focus on the
contextual elements that affected the design and implementation of the professional
development program was included in this study.

Early Childhood Education and Care Intervention Programs
Quality ECEC programs promote the development of healthy, socially
competent, and academically prepared children. Research that identifies
characteristics of quality ECEC programs often includes reference to structural factors
such as the benefits of low student to teacher ratio, group size, accreditation, higher
teacher qualifications, higher teacher pay, and lower teacher turnover (Espinosa,
2002; Russell, 1990; National Center for Education Statistics, 1994). Process factors,
such as teacher-child interactions, learning opportunities, and classroom environment
and materials, are also another dimension of quality. The quality of the daily
transactions between ECEC providers and their students has the most influence of
early childhood programs on children's development (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000).
Therefore, in the present study, I focused on the process factors in recognition of the
teacher’s critical role in affecting the quality of the program.

25

Quality Practices of Education and Care
Developmentally Appropriate Practice
An effective intervention relies on quality teaching. An example of how the
definition of quality practice has expanded in ECEC programs is provided by
NAEYC. As the largest organization of early childhood educators, NAEYC has been
instrumental in trying to outline characteristics of quality programs and in accrediting
ECEC programs based on established standards. NAEYC developed a position
statement to define Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP) in order to set some
guidelines for quality professional practice in early childhood programs. NAEYC was
concerned that with the proliferation of early childhood programs, instructional
practices used with older children, but inappropriate for young children, would be
adopted. DAP promotes a child-centered curriculum by building on what is known
about child development and learning in general, and what is known about the needs
of each individual child in the group. The initial position statement was written in
1987 and revised in 1996. The definition of DAP was revised to include more
emphasis on the critical role of the teacher to directly support children's development
and learning, and the influence of a child's social and cultural context on his learning
(Bredekamp & Copple, 1997).
In response to increasing political pressure for stronger outcomes, more
attention has shifted to what is taught in ECEC programs. For example, early literacy
skills, which were reserved for kindergarten and first grade in the past, are now much
more prevalent in ECEC curriculum. Accepting the potential of ECEC programs to
26

directly influence a child's emerging literacy prior to starting kindergarten, NAEYC
wrote another position statement, with the International Reading Association,
Learning to Read and Write: Developmentally Appropriate Practice for Young
Children (IRA & NAEYC, 1998). The purpose of this position statement is to further
expand the definition of DAP in order to clarify the teacher's specific role in directly
supporting early literacy development in preschool children, and outlines some
beneficial instructional practices.

Need for Early Language and Literacy Intervention
While factors, such as student to teacher ratio, low teacher turn-over, and DAP,
are important to the overall quality and impact of ECEC programs, this review
examines research related to child development programs that specifically promote the
language and literacy development of young students who are most at risk of
experiencing academic difficulties due to limited English proficiency and low SES
backgrounds, when they enter elementary school. Unfortunately, most students who
enter elementary school with large gaps in their language and literacy skills never
catch up to the academic levels of their more advantaged peers.
Several longitudinal studies show that first grade reading ability is a strong
predictor of later reading outcomes. For example, one study concluded that if a child
was a poor reader in first grade, then there would be a 90% chance he would be a poor
reader in fourth grade (Juel, 1988). Another study found that first grade reading
ability was a strong predictor of reading outcomes in eleventh grade (Cunningham &
27

Stanovich, 1997). Therefore, early efforts to build literacy skills can impact long-term
reading achievement.
Similarly, the language gap between at-risk and higher SES children is already
very wide by the time a child is 3 years old. Hart and Risley's (1995) two and a half
year study of 42 families demonstrated different trajectories of word learning of
students based on SES. For example, the researchers found that children in families
receiving governmental support were exposed on average to 616 words an hour, while
children from working class homes were exposed to about 1251 words per hour, and
the children of professionals were exposed to about 2,153 words an hour. So, the
amount of language exposure at home is important and highlights the need to promote
language and literacy development especially for at-risk students in ECEC programs.
Consequently, this study recognizes the significance and value of developing
the language and literacy skills of young children in ECEC programs. The
sociocultural theoretical framework that underpins the present study also emphasizes
the critical importance of reading, writing, and language as cultural tools that help
children shape their thinking and metacognition. Therefore, this review will highlight
comprehensive interventions that include (a) a general focus on language and literacy,
and (b) targeted interventions that promote specific early literacy skills.

Comprehensive Intervention Programs
Comprehensive intervention programs include more than a single component
or strategy to improve student learning and development. These programs focus on
28

developing at-risk students' cognitive abilities, which in turn promote their language
and literacy development. Longitudinal research related to successful comprehensive
ECEC intervention programs often are cited as support for the cost-effectiveness and
long-term success of high quality early childhood programs especially for at-risk
students. Among the most well known programs with a strong research base are (a)
the High/Scope Perry Preschool, (b) the Abecedarian Project, (c) the Chicago Child
Parent Center Program, and (d) Head Start.

High/Scope Perry Preschool
Both the Carolina Abecedarian Project and the High/Scope Perry Preschool
Program are recognized as two high-quality, model programs. The High/Scope
Preschool Program started in 1962 in Ypsilanti, Michigan and consisted of 2 1/2 hour
preschool classes for 3- and 4-year-olds and weekly home visits by the teacher
(Schweinhart, Barnes, & Weikart, 1993). The project involved 123 randomly assigned
preschoolers. Most of the students were African Americans from families living
below federal poverty levels. Certificated teachers led daily classes of small groups of
five or six children through steps of planning and following through on activities that
promoted cognitive development. The High/Scope Perry Preschool Program has
documented positive effects for participants through age 40, including higher
achievement, better grades, better attitude toward school, less special education
placement, less retention, greater high school graduation, more employment, higher
median annual earnings, less use of social services, and less overall arrests as
29

compared to the control group (Schweinhart, Montie, Xiang, Barnett, Belfield, &
Nores, 2005).

Abecedarian Program
The Abecedarian Study is a longitudinal examination, conducted by the
University of North Carolina, of the benefits of an intensive early childhood education
program for children from low-income families that started in the 1970s. In contrast
to the High/Scope Perry preschool, the children were provided services starting in
infancy through age five. Fifty-seven students, out of a group of 111, were randomly
assigned to the intervention. The children in the project were involved in activities
that addressed social, emotional, and cognitive development, with a special emphasis
on language. In a follow-up study, students, at age 21, who participated in the
program demonstrated higher reading and math achievement, higher cognitive scores,
less retention, less special education placement, higher levels of educational
attainment, and higher employment rates (Campbell, Ramey, Pungello, Sparling, &
Miller-Johnson, 2002; Campbell, Helms, Sparling, & Ramey, 1998).

Chicago Child-Parent Center Study
While the Abecedarian and High/Scope Perry Preschool studies are examples
of model demonstration programs, the Chicago Child-Parent Center Study examines a
large-scale public program funded through Title I. The Child-Parent Center Program
provides comprehensive services including half day preschool for children ages three
30

and four, half or full day kindergarten, and school-age family and health services for
children through age nine. While Head Start is coordinated through social service
agencies, the Chicago Child-Parent Center program is run by school districts. The
program is child-focused, but maintains an orientation to academics and literacy
development, and requires parent involvement. The follow-up 15-year study of
matched-group cohorts of 1539, low-income, African American children demonstrated
that those who participated in the program had higher rates of school completion,
higher levels of education, lower rates of arrest, lower rates of retention, and lower
rates of special education services (Reynolds, 2001).

Head Start
Head Start is federally-funded early childhood program that provides
comprehensive services to high poverty 3- and 4-year-olds and their families.
Services include education, health, social services, and parent involvement. Various
studies of the Head Start program have been conducted since its inception in 1965. In
a review of major Head Start studies, Barnett (1995) explains that several studies
showed that students who participated in the program had higher achievement gains in
reading and math, less retention, and less special education placement than the control
group. Yet, in many cases, although the children who participated in Head Start made
steady gains, progress was not statistically significant in closing the achievement gap
(Barnett, 1995). As Congress debates reauthorization of the seven billion dollar Head
Start program, outcomes are being examined more closely.
31

In 1997, the Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) study was
initiated to examine child outcomes and program quality. Based on standardized
assessments of cognitive skills, the study shows that children enter Head Start at a
great disadvantage when compared to other children. In spite of gains in areas of
school readiness, including strong growth in vocabulary, early writing, and social
emotional development, children in Head Start still enter kindergarten substantially
below national averages (Administration for Children and Families, 2003).
The implications of these four interventions are that high quality programs can
promote long-term positive effects, such as higher achievement scores, less special
education placement, and less grade retentions, for children from high poverty homes.
Model programs such as the High/Scope Perry Preschool and the Abecedarian Project,
are more costly, and maintain high quality by small group sizes, low adult-child ratios,
on-going professional development, credentialed teachers, and salaries comparable to
public school programs (Frede, 1998). Large-scale programs such as the Chicago
Child-Parent Center and Head Start also can have long lasting positive effects.
Yet, making program quality enhancements to these large-scale programs, such
as raising qualifications for Head Start teachers to have an Associate or Bachelor's
degree, or mandating testing of all four and five year old children in Head Start
programs, have costly implications. For example, in 1999, researchers of the
Abecedarian Project estimated the cost of offering programs with similar quality at
$11,000 per year per child (NAEYC, 1999). At a time of growing consensus for the
32

value of universal preschool for all 4-year-olds, federal and state budgets for education
and social services are tighter.
In addition, the current quality of most early childhood programs in the United
States reflects a lack of excellence. An estimated 60% - 86% of child care centers
provide mediocre or poor quality services (Barnett & Kelley, 2006; Cost Quality and
Child Outcomes Study Team, 1995; Helburn & Howes, 1996). Ensuring access to
high quality programs for all preschoolers is an incredible challenge; yet, poor quality
programs may hinder their social, emotional, and academic growth. Therefore, the
question remains of how to help students improve their achievement overall, and early
reading skills in particular, when they do not attend model programs that maintain
high levels of quality.
Also, another concern is how to help the growing number of students who are
entering early childhood programs with limited English proficiency. The population
studied in the High/Scope Perry Preschool, Abecedarian, and the Child-Parent Center
Studies included mostly African American children who spoke English as their
primary language. Thus, these studies did not specifically measure the effects on
English language learners.
In comparison, Head Start currently enrolls approximately 31% Hispanic
students (Administration for Children and Families, 2005). While not all of the
Hispanic students in the program are English language learners, the English learners
who spoke Spanish were assessed in both English and Spanish in the FACES study.
Although the children made some gains in learning English vocabulary words, they
33

showed no gains compared to national norms in the ability to identify letters
(Administration for Children and Families, 2003). Thus, more studies are needed to
examine the characteristics of ECEC programs that successfully promote the language
and literacy skills of this growing population.

Targeted Literacy Interventions
Given the cost and complexity of developing comprehensive programs for at-
risk preschoolers, another intervention strategy is promoting specific early literacy
skills that research suggests as predictors of learning to read successfully. A very
influential publication commissioned by the federal government, Report of the
National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read examined scientific research on
reading instruction for school-aged children (National Reading Panel, 2000). The
report identified five essential components of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics,
fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. The National Reading Panel report is the
cornerstone for the federal Reading First grant that supports implementation of reading
programs, which are based on the scientific research summarized in the report.
Since the National Reading Panel Report focused on kindergarten through
grade three, Congress also recommended that additional research regarding early
reading development and instruction be conducted as needed. As a result, the National
Early Literacy Panel was formed to study research in order to identify abilities of
children from birth though age five that predict later achievement in literacy.
Although the National Early Literacy Panel continues its work, some initial reports
34

have identified unique predictors from multivariate studies: alphabetic knowledge,
phonological sensitivity, invented spelling, and oral language (National Center for
Family Literacy, 2004). One of the researchers on the National Early Literacy Panel
classified these variables into (a) oral language (including vocabulary to understand
and convey meaning), (b) phonological processing (sensitivity to sound structure of
English), and (c) print knowledge (knowledge of letters/sounds, concepts of print,
books) (Lonigan, 2005). Based on the analysis by the National Early Literacy Panel,
these variables are predictors of how well and how early children will learn to read
and write once they are exposed to formal reading instruction from kindergarten to
grade three. Therefore, linking targeted ECEC literacy interventions to the areas of
oral language, print knowledge, and phonological awareness can help build important
foundational skills, especially for students who are most academically at-risk when
they enter kindergarten.
In a review of emergent literacy research, Yaden, Rowe, and MacGillivray
(2000) outline the key domains of emergent literacy research: storybook reading,
sociodramatic play, emergent writing, emergent literacy and the home, metalinguistic
awareness, emergent literacy growth in children with special needs, and
comprehensive emergent literacy programs. Although the review was published prior
to the formation of the National Early Literacy Panel, further analysis of the studies
could classify the interventions according to their impact on oral language,
phonological sensitivity, and print knowledge skills. While research has not isolated
one approach as best, targeted strategies that involve book reading, phonological skill
35

development, and the quantity and quality of environmental print in ECEC settings
have been supported and can help promote the essential skills the National Early
Literacy Panel suggested.

Print Knowledge - Joint Book Reading
Joint book reading promotes language and literacy development across several
areas, including vocabulary, print awareness, children's writing, and enjoyment of
reading (Whitehurst & Lonigan, 2001). Dialogic reading has been widely researched
and involves an adult actively listening, asking questions, expanding information, and
prompting the child to expand talk about a text. A study conducted with low-income
children attending two preschool programs demonstrated that teachers using a six-
week small group dialogic reading intervention produced positive changes in the
development of children's language (Lonigan, Anthony, Bloomfield, Dyer, & Samwel,
1999). In addition, a longitudinal study of dialogic reading in 15 Head Start
classrooms showed strong effects on writing and print concepts (Whitehurst et al.,
1994).
However, the role of the teacher is critical to the success of the intervention.
For example, in a study by Kertoy (1994), teachers who used more “commenting”
about what was being read, helped children to respond more about the story meaning,
while teachers who used more “questioning” encouraged students to make more
comments about the story structure and print. Similarly, another study examined the
impact of one-on-one interactive storybook reading between a researcher and a group
36

of 4-year-olds from low-income families (Morrow, 1988). Children involved in the
interactive book reading made significantly more responses, including more responses
about meaning than the control group. Children involved in the repeated reading of
the storybooks also tended to make more comments about the story structure and print.
Thus, depending on the interaction and focus of the dialog between child and teacher,
joint book reading promotes a variety of skills, not just print knowledge.

Print Knowledge - Little Books
The Little Books Program is another intervention that has shown positive
effects in promoting print knowledge. Little Books are simple short stories that
connect spoken words to print by using familiar themes, print to picture match, and
high frequency words. One study of this program involved 240 at-risk 4-year-olds.
Their teachers were trained to read and discuss one Little Book each week. Students
participating in the Little Books intervention demonstrated stronger print awareness,
including growth of letter knowledge, and writing (Mason, Kerr, Sinha, &
McCormick, 1990). Once again, the teacher played an important role in facilitating
the growth of print awareness by introducing, reading, and talking about the books in a
developmentally appropriate manner for students who were not yet able to read in a
conventional manner.

37

Print Knowledge - Environmental Print
Several studies demonstrate the impact of poverty in limiting exposure to print
and developing literacy concepts. Smith and Dixon (1995) found that many of the
low-SES 4-year-olds in their study arrived at school with a distinct disadvantage in
understanding written language as compared to their mid-SES counterparts. Similarly,
another set of researchers surveyed parents and determined that preschoolers who
became "poor readers" had less frequent early literacy-related experiences than those
who became "better readers" (Scarborough, Dobrich, & Hager, 1991). In addition, in
a study of four low- and middle-income communities, Neuman and Celano (2001)
found a striking difference in the literacy resources available in the communities,
which may contribute to variance in reading achievement. Differential access to
literacy resources reflected disparities in income levels. Even within preschool
settings, difference in access to print materials was noted for publicly funded
preschool vs. private or not-for-profit preschools which had more literacy resources
(McGill-Franzen & Lanford, 1994; McGill-Franzen, Lanford, & Adams, 1997).
Therefore, one intervention strategy is to increase access to literacy through
enhanced environmental print and access to books. For example, in one study of eight
Head Start classrooms, the researchers enhanced play settings with literacy materials.
Increasing environmental print in the classrooms resulted in increased literacy-related
play activities (Neuman & Roskos, 1993). In another study, Neuman (1999) studied
the impact of providing a "flood" of high quality children's books to over 330 early
childhood centers and providing ten hours of training to the child care staff about
38

promoting early literacy through storybook reading. The intervention was associated
not only with increased access to books, more verbal interaction around literacy, and
more time reading and discussing books; but also significant growth in the areas of
letter name knowledge, concepts of print, concepts of narrative, and emergent writing
by the children participating in the intervention when compared to the control group.
Thus, enriching the literacy environment is one way to provide access to resources that
can help stimulate early language and literacy skills for at-risk students who often
enter elementary school academically behind their more affluent peers.

Phonological Skill Development
Most phonological skill development studies have been conducted with
children in kindergarten or first grade. Yet, a few studies have demonstrated that
phonological awareness can be promoted through interventions with young children.
For example, one study of preschool children, who were exposed to 12 weeks of a
phonological sensitivity training, demonstrated larger gains in phonological awareness
than the control group (Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1991). Since wide differences in
phonological awareness are predictive of future reading achievement, investigating
ways to promote this ability will continue to be a focus of research.

Oral Language
Since most young children are not able to read conventionally, oral language
mediates most early learning, including early literacy learning. Both school and home
39

contribute to a child's language and literacy development. Unfortunately, studies have
demonstrated that preschool programs for low-income children often score in the
“inadequate” range in measures of the language environment (see Snow, Burns, &
Griffin, 1998). In a study that investigated the literacy environment in 30 community-
based day care centers, Dunn, Beach, and Kontos (1994) found relatively
impoverished literacy environments. Attending a higher quality child care program
(as measured using the Early Childhood Environmental Scale) predicted a significant
portion of the variance in children's language development.
The quality and quantity of adult-child discourse can enhance a child's
language development. As described previously, interactive book reading is a
validated intervention that promotes oral language (Arnold, Lonigan, Whitehurst, &
Epstein, 1994; Valdez-Menchaca & Whitehurst, 1992; Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998).
Dialogic reading has been shown to produce larger effects than similar amounts of
traditional picture book reading on the oral language and skills of children from
middle to upper income families (Arnold et al., 1994). Yet, the quality of the
discussion between the child and the teacher affects the language effects of the
intervention. For example, in a study of 4-year-olds in a Head Start program,
language effects were larger for the students whose caregivers actively involved them
in the book reading part of the intervention (Whitehurst et al., 1994). Other
researchers found that stronger decontextualized language use, such as prompting
answers, predictions, and vocabulary, led to stronger language development
(Dickinson & Smith, 1994). So, while these interventions help promote oral language,
40

reducing the language gap between children from lower and higher SES backgrounds
is an enormous challenge.

Impact of Interventions
In summary, targeted literacy interventions can promote skills that are
predictors of later reading achievement. However, the majority of the studies
demonstrate short-term gains that fade by the end of kindergarten or a little later in
elementary school. Unlike some of the comprehensive intervention programs, like the
High/Scope Perry Preschool, which examine long-term effects, the goal of targeted
literacy interventions is to boost the foundational literacy skills of these at-risk
students so that they enter kindergarten more ready to learn in the context of a formal
school setting. By accelerating a young child's emerging literacy, transition to
elementary school is eased, for example by reducing exposure to negative tracking and
to low expectations from parents and teachers at the onset of schooling (Entwisle,
1995).
Overall, the selected research on comprehensive interventions, and targeted
emergent literacy interventions demonstrate positive effects for students. However, an
area of concern is that the majority of the participants in these studies were
monolingual English-speaking children, and thus do not reflect a linguistically diverse
group, especially beginning English language learners. As the percentage of Latino
students in the United States increases, including many who enter school with Spanish
41

as their primary language, more research on the impact of literacy interventions with a
limited English-speaking population is needed.
In addition, the success of these interventions was not determined by program
materials, but, rather, by the skillful and dedicated implementation by the staff or
researchers. Ideally, ECEC programs should have the capacity to continuously
support its teachers to effectively implement and sustain the intervention for the
benefit of all of its students, and not be dependent on outside experts or researchers.
Thus, the successful, long-term implementation of early learning interventions
necessitates effective professional development. Yet, the reviewed research literature
does not provide rich, detailed information on the challenges, strengths, and qualities
of the professional development effort that helped ensure the success of the program.

Professional Development for Early Childhood Educators
Strengthening the qualifications of early childhood educators to support the
learning of young children is needed to enhance the impact of child development
programs, especially for at-risk students. Teacher capacity-building has been found to
be the most productive investment for schools and exceeds the effects of teacher
experience or class size (Cooter, 2003, p. 198). Researchers studying the Tennessee
Value Added Assessment System, which monitors student improvement within and
across school years, have reported an example of the powerful effect of teachers. The
researchers found that students assigned to the most effective teachers for three years
in a row performed 50 percentile points higher than comparable students who are
42

assigned to the least effective teachers for three years in a row. This led the
researchers to conclude that, "teacher effectiveness is the single biggest factor
influencing gains in achievement" (Corey, 2004).
Unfortunately, children who are most at-risk rarely have the opportunity to
attend high quality programs with strongly prepared educators. As Darling-Hammond
(1996) states,
In the nation's poorest schools…thousands of children are taught throughout
their school careers by a parade of teachers without preparation in the fields in
which they teach, inexperienced beginners with little training and no
mentoring, and short-term substitutes trying to cope with constant staff
disruptions. (p. 195)

Similarly, a study of the teaching profession in California found that students in
schools measured as the lowest achieving by the state's Academic Performance Index
are five times more likely to face underprepared teachers than students in the highest
performing schools, and are likely to face a string of underprepared teachers, resulting
in their falling even farther behind (Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning,
2005).
While these studies focus on the K-12 school system in which teachers are
required to have at least a bachelor's degree, the problem is even more acute in ECEC
programs in which most teachers have much lower levels of formal education, and
who are assuming a greater role in providing early learning experiences to help
prepare young children for elementary school. In many states, childcare providers are
not required to have a post-secondary degree or child development certificate (see
Whitebook, 2003b). As compared to private, or multi-funded programs that tend to
43

have less stringent hiring criteria, not all state-funded preschools require teachers to
have a four-year degree. After examining teacher qualifications in state-funded
programs, Ackerman and Barnett (2006) reported that eighteen states required early
childhood teachers to have a BA, nine states did not require teachers to have a BA if
they worked outside of a public school setting, and twelve states did not require their
ECEC teachers to have a BA degree.
Reflecting the historical development of early childhood programs to either
provide child care support for working parents or to enrich children's learning and
development, a unified child and family policy does not exist in the United States. As
a result, the preparation of early childhood education providers is a "patchwork of
preservice degrees, specialized training opportunities, and credentials" which varies by
state, locale, and type of program (Welch-Ross, Wolf, Moorehouse, & Rathgeb, 2006,
p. 369).

Professional Development
Maxwell, Feild, and Clifford (2006) recently reviewed studies that measured
the professional development of ECEC educators. Each study included a sample of at
least 50 teachers, and was reported in a peer-reviewed journal. Maxwell, et al. (2006)
found that researchers did not provide explicit statements defining various
professional development terms and instead implicitly defined the terms by how
questions were asked in their measures (p. 23). Since they found no common
definition of professional development, they identified three components of
44

professional development that were present in the studies: education, training, and
credentials. Education refers to coursework within the formal education system.
While credentials and certification may also involve coursework, the granting agency
is usually not the college or university. Training refers to informal and in-service
training. Therefore, in this study, the term professional development refers to the
overall efforts to improve the skills and education of the early childhood staff, and
training to refer to the specific activities conducted with the teaching staff.

Education of Early Childhood Teachers
A consistent research finding is the positive effects of higher educational levels
of ECEC teachers. In a recent review of research that examines the relationship
between teacher preparation and child outcomes of 3- and 4-year-olds in center-based
care, Whitebook (2003b) concluded that, "optimal teacher behavior in center-based
settings, and the skill and knowledge upon which it rests, are best achieved through a
four-year college degree, which includes, in most instances, some specialized content
in early childhood education or child development" (p. 16). Classrooms, where the
teachers had at least a bachelor's degree, tended to be richer language and literacy
environments, and had better teacher-child interactions; teachers were often more
sensitive, less punitive, and more engaged (Howes, Phillips, & Whitebook, 1992;
Whitebook, 2003a; Administration for Children and Families, 2003). Based on the
research that associates classroom quality with levels of teacher education, a recent
publication commissioned by the National Research Council, Eager to Learn:
45

Educating our Preschoolers, recommends requiring a college degree with specialized
education in child development and the education of young children for all ECEC
teachers (Bowman, Donovan, & Burns, 2001).
However, raising the educational requirements of the ECEC workforce also
raises the concern about its impact on the diversity of the workforce, especially
attracting African American or Hispanic teachers into a field that pays substantially
less than they can earn in most jobs requiring a bachelor's degree. Especially as
demographics shift to include a growing number of Hispanics and more English
language learners in early childhood programs, the impact of teachers who can
promote language and literacy in both Spanish and English should be explored.
Therefore, raising the educational requirements of early childhood educators is
not sufficient. Programs rated as high quality, with tools such as the Early Childhood
Environment Rating Scale, typically have sufficient resources to provide a variety of
learning materials, a safe and nurturing environment with small class sizes, a teacher
support system, and compensation levels comparable to kindergarten teachers in the
K-12 school system, in order to attract and keep more highly educated staff. Based on
information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Center for the Child Care
Workforce (2004) reports that the median hourly wage for preschool teachers was
$9.53, and $7.90 for child care workers. Only 18 occupations of the 770 surveyed by
the Bureau of Labor Statistics had lower salaries than a child care worker. The
turnover rate reported for preschool teachers in California was over 20% in most
46

cases, with a high of 45% each year. The turnover rate in the United States is
estimated at approximately 30% (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000).
Whitebook, Sakai, Gerber, and Howes (2001) examined center quality and its
relation to qualifications of staff. They found that maintaining a high level of quality
over time was linked to retaining the greatest number of teachers with bachelor's
degrees. Thus, ensuring working conditions that reduce teacher turnover, also impacts
the caliber of intervention programs. Therefore, improving the excellence of ECEC
programs by increasing the educational levels of its workforce is a complex and costly
long-term process and investment; other professional development options should be
explored in the short-term.

Training Early Childhood Educators
Improving training opportunities for current ECEC educators is another route
to professional development. Yet, as Maxwell, Feild, and Clifford (2006) highlight,
research related to training is limited in scope:
Little research to date has provided the foundation needed to understand the
impact of training and to develop specific hypotheses about training. Does the
type of training really matter? If so, what type is better than another? Is on-
site training, for example, better than off-site training?…Similarly, what
differences do researchers expect among teachers who have had certain
training content? Other factors about training such as quality - a factor that is
rarely measured - may matter more than either type of content (p. 33-34).

Therefore, since current research focuses heavily on the education of ECEC teachers,
and provides only limited information on the potential impact of training, further
47

research is needed on effective strategies to help these educators learn about specific
content areas, such as early literacy (Martinez-Beck & Zaslow, 2006).

Early Literacy Training Efforts
As research related to early literacy, brain development, and language
development converges with growing political pressure to improve the teaching
capacity of ECEC providers in the area of language and literacy, the need for on-going
training related to emergent literacy is urgent. Although a few training efforts have
focused on early literacy, detailed accounts of the professional development effort do
not exist. Furthermore, research related to the impact of the training is often reported
in terms of the number of educators trained, and not the impact on students or teaching
practice. For example, in the Summer and Fall of 2002, the Head Start Bureau
launched Project STEP (Summer Teacher Education Program) which provided a four-
day training related to research-based literacy practices, to more than 3,000 Head Start
staff. These quickly trained ECEC providers then were designated "Early Literacy
Specialists" who returned to their sites to provide training to nearly 50,000 teachers
(Whitten, 2002). Yet, the impact of such a large scale, short term, and costly training
effort on the early literacy skills of the children has not been carefully researched.

Linking Training and Education
Other early literacy training efforts for ECEC providers are linked to
university-school partnerships, and thus usually involve formal coursework. For
48

example, one study reported a university's effort to develop teachers' knowledge about
emergent literacy skills by combining participation in an undergraduate literacy course
with placement as an assistant in a literacy-rich preschool (Young & Romeo, 1999).
Another collaborative project between a school district and university promoted
change in literacy practices as a result of a 3-year staff development program that
involved administrative support, a course on early literacy development, classroom
observations, teacher goal setting, and discussion groups (Morrow, Casey, & Haworth,
2003). Once again, research related to the impact of the professional development on
children's early literacy outcomes, as well as a more detailed account of the nature of
the training that could help provide guidance for other programs, is lacking.
Other programs include training and require teachers to work toward a college
degree and teaching credential. For example, the Bright Beginnings Program in North
Carolina, requires its teachers to have a birth through K license. However, the
program also involves its teachers and assistants in ongoing professional development
that helps strengthen the language and literacy focus of the program. Literacy
facilitators provide one-on-one coaching, training in best practices, strategies for
improving instruction and biweekly curriculum review and planning (Smith, Pellin, &
Agruso, 2003). Children who participated in the Bright Beginnings Program
demonstrated higher rates of grade level reading proficiency than the comparison
group through third grade. While this study reports the components of its staff
development, including certification of teachers, topics for new teacher support and
professional development, and teacher assistant training, the monograph still does not
49

provide descriptive information about the nature of the training, including its strengths
and weaknesses.

Models of Early Literacy Training
Recognizing the need for effective professional development to support early
literacy development, David Dickinson worked with the Education Development
Center in New England to develop several models of professional development. He
describes (a) a teacher-researcher model, (b) a credit-bearing model, (c) a distributed
learning model, (d) a systems reform effort, and (e) whole-school professional
development (Dickinson & Brady, 2006). The teacher-researcher model included
observations and feedback by the researchers, professional reading assignments, and
reflections on practice. The researchers documented positive changes in teacher
behaviors. However, no assessment results of the children were reported. Although
this model encouraged strong collaboration, reflection, and inquiry between the
teaching staff and researchers, this training effort was discontinued in search of a
model that could involve more teachers.
The researchers developed the Literacy Environment Enrichment Program
(LEEP), which is a course that awards college credits to teachers who participate. The
program includes discussion, demonstrations, lectures, hands-on activities, and
assignments. Children in the classrooms of teachers with LEEP training scored higher
than average on spring measures of both receptive vocabulary and phonemic
awareness than a comparison group. Two variations of LEEP were developed. The
50

distributed learning model of LEEP uses distance learning technologies, including
face-to-face delivery of course content, interactive television, and web-based
resources. Including lessons from LEEP, the systems reform model is embedded
within the existing support systems infrastructure for early childhood staff. This
model includes assistance of higher education faculty and a professional development
lattice. (Dickinson & Brady, 2006, p. 151-155). These three LEEP-related models
were successful in training larger numbers of ECEC providers. These models
included a formal education component. While most ECEC educators appreciate
earning college credit as a result of their participation in training, many also find it
difficult to enter or return to college in order to complete a degree. The challenges of
completing courses for ECEC providers is visible especially in the distributed learning
model which attempted to facilitate access to course content through the use of
technology. This program experienced a 45% attrition rate (Dickinson & Brady, 2006,
p. 153).
The final model is the Program-Delivered Literacy In-service Training (PD-
LIT) model. This whole-school training model is provided in eight 4-hour modules
during in-service workshop times to all classroom staff in a program. It requires an in-
house trainer and systems for monitoring and follow-through. The researchers
reported that the impact of the training on program practices has varied by program.
They suggested that since the training involved all classroom staff, not just the
teachers who wanted to take formal coursework, some struggled to understand the
concepts and materials presented. The research team reported an effort to provide
51

additional time for staff, whose primary language is not English, to understand the
concepts and practices (Dickinson & Brady, 2006, p. 159-160). Thus, the PD-LIT
model attempts to institutionalize effective approaches, set expectations for
performance, and nurture buy-in.
However, the PD-LIT model raises questions related to the effectiveness of
training that is pre-packaged into modules, and to engaging child care providers who
have "limited educational backgrounds" (Dickinson & Brady, 2006, p. 164), or who
are second language learners. Therefore, the present case study examined these two
issues in the context of early literacy intervention and training. More specifically, as a
qualitative investigation, this study addresses the need for research to "understand the
personal characteristics, experiences, and workplace contexts that are linked to
'effective teaching' practices in the absence of preservice training or attainment of
higher levels of formal education" (Tout, Zaslow, & Berry, 2006, p. 104).

Education and Training of Paraprofessionals
As discussed earlier, research has shown the link between higher levels of
teacher education and higher quality child development programs. Yet, little research
specifically analyzes the instructional impact of paraeducators in the early childhood
classroom. With greater accountability for early childhood programs to help reduce
the achievement gap for students who are typically the most at-risk to struggle in
school, paraeducators have the potential to vastly enrich the instructional program.
Therefore, this case study will contribute to the field by describing qualities of the
52

classroom assistants that helped to enhance the strength of the early literacy
intervention.
In general, paraprofessionals have been expected to continue their education as
part of a career ladder, and pursue certification or a degree. Yet, most of the teaching
assistants are women who often live the near the school, chose the position because it
was compatible with their family schedule, especially if they were raising children;
and started with no specific preparation for the job (French, 1999). Therefore, many
are not actively pursuing a teaching credential.
About 75% of all paraeducators work in elementary schools and half of this
workforce is hired for special education (Railsback, Reed, & Schmidt, 2002).
Accordingly, most available research relates to paraprofessionals in the K-12 school
system and frequently relates to their role in special education programs (e.g. SPeNSE,
2001; U.S. Department of Education, 2003). Historically, the increased use of
paraeducators can be traced to the late 1950s with shortages of licensed teachers
following World War II, and to the 1960s and 1970s with Title I, Head Start, and the
Education for All Handicapped Children Act. As a result of these federal legislative
acts, funding was available to hire paraprofessionals to help meet the needs of students
who came from educationally or economically disadvantaged backgrounds (Pickett,
Likins, & Wallace, 2003).
In addition to the research related to teaching assistants in special education
and K-12 settings, another strand of research relates to the importance of
paraeducators as a rich source of candidates to address teacher shortages and the need
53

for more diversity (Genzuk & Baca, 1998; Genzuk & French, 2002, Haselkorn &
Fideler, 1996; Jackson, Bolden, & Fenwick, 2001). Other studies examine the role of
paraprofessionals in building “cultural bridges” in multilingual, diverse classrooms
since many of the assistants come from the same racial, cultural, and linguistic
background as the students (e.g. Chopra et al., 2004; Rueda & De Neve, 1999; Monzo
& Rueda, 2001).
The role of the educational assistant is especially helpful in an ECE setting in
order to maintain the required adult-to-student ratios and to provide language support
in multilingual classrooms. While some training is mandated by Title I and Head Start
legislation, such as completion of two years of higher education coursework, little is
known about ongoing, site-based efforts to help paraprofessionals in developing skills
to support early literacy instruction in ECE classrooms. For example, NAEYC’s
(1993) position statement about early childhood professional development expresses
the need for an “articulated system of professional development for all individuals
working in all early childhood settings,” but once again the focus is on general
guidelines, not specific training recommendations designed to promote instructional
skills that will support early literacy development.
Currently, most state-funded programs only require a high school diploma or
GED for teacher aides (Education Commission of the States, 2006b). In a recent
review of professional development for instructional paraprofessionals, over 60% of
the states did not report any existing professional development programs, and only 10
states reported funding professional development programs designed for paraeducators
54

(Education Commission of the States, 2006a). Several of these state-reported
professional development programs involved coursework to promote a career ladder
into teaching, but none of these programs specifically focused on the
paraprofessional’s role in teaching early literacy skills. Therefore, the current case
study helps to expand available research about ways to provide meaningful training
for paraeducators in the area of emergent literacy.

Summary
Various studies support the effectiveness of ECEC intervention programs that
facilitate literacy learning by young children prior to entering elementary school.
While comprehensive intervention programs, such as the High/Scope Perry preschool
program, promise long-term gains for at-risk students, targeted interventions can assist
these students to develop important early literacy skills that are predictors of later
reading success. However, the effectiveness of the interventions depends on quality
teaching. While research highlights the impact of early childhood educators who have
higher levels of formal education, most ECEC providers do not have a bachelor's
degree or specialized training related to teaching early literacy. Therefore, it is
important to examine ways to provide meaningful professional development
experiences to educators already in the field, especially to those working with students
who are most at-risk for failure in school.
Given high teacher turnover rates, it is beneficial to examine ways to support
school-wide training to promote and sustain a collaborative culture of on-going
55

professional learning, instead of solely fostering the pursuit of training, education, and
credentials on an individualized basis. However, few studies examined the
effectiveness and challenges of providing on-going training to early childhood
educators, especially training related to emergent literacy. Furthermore, none of the
studies reviewed specifically addressed ways to support the professional development
of early childhood teachers who may struggle with language issues as they work with
students who do not speak English.
A sociocultural perspective affirms that a packaged “one-size-fits-all” training
program for ECEC educators will not be successful because it fails to recognize the
importance and unique character of the social relationships and interactions between
all participants in a given setting that promote meaningful learning within a zone of
proximal development. Thus, research is necessary in order to explore the added
difficulties of providing training for all staff members regardless of previous
experience, formal educational levels, and buy-in. This issue is critical in a bilingual
setting in which not only the students may have limited English proficiency, but also
various members of the teaching staff. Therefore, a qualitative descriptive case study
will not only summarize the role of staff development in an effective early literacy
intervention program, but also carefully portray the process and challenges of
providing on-going training for educators who are struggling to help a group of
children who are at high risk of failure at school, and, consequently, in their socio-
economic lives.

56

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
The present research project is a qualitative case study that describes the
design and implementation of professional development for a group of early childhood
educators, during their participation in a 4-year emergent literacy intervention project
at a child development site in a high poverty area of downtown Los Angeles,
California. The selected research site provides early education and care to children
who qualify based on several factors placing them at-risk, such as coming from low-
income, and single-parent homes. Also, most of the students are beginning English
language learners. The primary research question examined: What are the attributes
of professional development, in terms of design and implementation, which
contributed to the success of an early childhood emergent literacy program?
A case study research design involves an "in-depth study of instances of a
phenomenon in its natural context and from the perspective of the participants involved
in the phenomenon" (Gall, Borg, & Gall, 1996). Not only does this case study examine
the characteristics of the professional development effort, it does so in the context of a
child development program which serves mostly Hispanic English language learners
from high poverty homes. These students represent a group often at-risk of school
failure and who would benefit greatly from quality early childhood educational
services. By providing an in-depth description of this individual case, important
themes have been identified which help to clarify some of the complexities related to
designing literacy-based professional development, and thus would be applicable to
other early childhood settings.
57

In contrast to a quantitative study, a qualitative study is better suited to
understanding the challenges of teaching and developing as an early childhood
professional working with Spanish-speaking children in the inner-city, through both
the participants' and researchers' viewpoints. Reflecting a sociocultural theoretical
perspective, the interactions between the researchers and participants within this
specific real-life, not artificially-controlled, setting were important considerations in
the qualitative design of this study.
A qualitative approach involves immersion in the daily life of the setting, and
seeks to discover participants' perspectives on their worlds, given the "socially
constructed nature of reality, the intimate relationship between researcher and what is
studied, and the situational constraints that shape inquiry" (Denzin & Lincoln, 1998, p.
8; Marshall & Rossman, 1995, p. 4). Thus, a qualitative paradigm validates the
importance of the context and setting, and seeks to better understand the perspectives
and lived experiences of the case study participants (Denzin & Lincoln, 1998; Gall,
Borg, & Gall, 1996; Marshall & Rossman, 1995).
The present case study draws upon the work conducted in a larger emergent
literacy intervention project, which was funded by the Office of Educational Research
and Improvement, and was awarded to the University of Southern California (USC) by
CIERA. The project, “The Impact of an Emergent Literacy Program in a Preschool,
Day-Care Setting,” was a 4-year, longitudinal examination of the effectiveness of an
emergent literacy intervention in an early childhood center located in a high-poverty
area of downtown Los Angeles. The CIERA study's primary purpose was to provide
58

multiple opportunities for Spanish-speaking 4-year-olds to engage in a variety of
reading and writing activities within the center, at home, and in the community. The
project provided support services to help the teaching staff and parents foster activities
and environments that encourage developmentally appropriate early literacy activities.
The main activities of this emergent literacy intervention included: (a) creating a
language and literacy program for the two classes of 4-year-olds by facilitating a big
book shared reading program, promoting independent reading, and installing writing,
listening, and sociodramatic play centers; (b) providing classroom support and in-
service workshops on emergent literacy theory, practical teaching strategies, and the
assessment of developmental growth in reading and writing; (c) monitoring the
language and literacy development of the children, both in the center and on through
second grade; and (d) establishing a book-loan program and providing two or three
workshops each year for parents on how they could engage their children in
developmentally appropriate literacy activities in the home and community (see
Yaden et al., 2000).
Assessment results of the students who participated in the CIERA emergent
literacy study were an indication of the success of the project. During the 4 years of
the study, each of the cohorts demonstrated stronger gains than a comparison group of
students who did not receive the emergent literacy intervention. The primary
assessment used was Marie Clay’s (1993) Concept About Print test, which examines
what a child is attending to on a printed page. While Clay (1993) states that the test’s
greatest value is diagnostic, she provides stanine scores for a research group of
59

children from age 5 – 7. Although Clay did not list scores for 4-year olds, the research
team used the stanine scores as a point of reference to compare the growth of students
in the intervention. For example, cohort 1 showed a gain from a mean score of 3.14
(stanine 2) on the pretest to 6.42 (stanine 3) on the post-test. Students in cohort 4
showed a gain from 4.95 (stanine 3) to 9.22 (stanine 4); while the comparison group of
students showed little gain from 4.66 to 4.89 (stanine 3) (Yaden & Brassell, 2002). In
addition, children in the intervention group correctly answered more difficult items on
the Concepts About Print test than the control group. Based on Clay’s (1993)
suggested age expectation for items, children in the intervention were answering many
items that the average student would answer correctly at the end of kindergarten and
beginning of first grade (Yaden & Brassell, 2002).
Furthermore, reviewing data from students who registered in the local public
kindergarten, students who participated in the CIERA project were referred less often
to remediation programs than students, from other nearby preschool programs, who
attended the same kindergarten (Yaden, 2002). In addition, results from students in
cohort 2 demonstrated performance above the national norm in English on the
Stanford Achievement Test, (i.e. these students averaged scores at or above the 58
th

percentile in the reading subtest). Consequently, they scored above other groups of
English language learners in the large school district (Yaden, 2002).
Various aspects of the larger CIERA project already have been analyzed and
reported previously, including assessment results, the book lending library family
component, and the collaborative nature of the research effort (e.g. Yaden, Madrigal,
60

& Tam, 2003; Yaden & Brassell, 2002; Yaden & Tam, 2000; Yaden et al., 2000).
However, an in-depth longitudinal report and analysis of the nature and impact of the
professional development endeavor was lacking. Since outcome data from the project
documented stronger reading achievement by the participating 4-year-old students as
compared to a cohort of non-participating students, it was important to examine how
teachers helped foster students' literacy growth. By carefully reporting the changing
nature of the teachers' role and the support provided by the researchers during the
course of the longitudinal study, the intensive efforts and challenges that should be
considered in order to duplicate the success of the program are highlighted in the
present study.

Setting
Nuestra Escuelita/Our Little School (NEOS) (pseudonym) was the selected
research site. The NEOS center is located in central downtown Los Angeles,
California. The project site is one of several child development centers affiliated with
the NEOS organization. The center receives funding from multiple sources and
provides a variety of services to the community, including day care and educational
services for the children in each classroom, parent education classes after school, and
other social services such as referrals for counseling and other health services. NEOS
was founded in 1980 and describes itself as:
A nonprofit family service agency designed to raise at-risk children out of
poverty and into brighter futures through positive educational opportunities
and support involving families and communities. The agency serves more than
3,500 families each year and more than 1,300 children, ranging from 6 weeks
61

to 18 years old, each weekday. Programs and services are located at 15 sites in
Pico-Union, Central, East, West, and South Central Los Angeles, and Ontario
(NEOS, 2005).

The project site is located in the Skid Row area of downtown, near toy and
clothing factories, and fish and produce warehouses. While the NEOS center provides
a safe and inviting learning environment for its children, it is located in a high traffic
area that is often cluttered with trash, and homeless people who camp out in nearby
streets and who seek housing and food at the nearby shelter. Although there have
been efforts to increase law enforcement, the area has been plagued with crime,
prostitution, and vandalism. Thus, safety is a concern. A private security guard helps
ensure the safety of the parents, students, and employees of NEOS.
Children, ranging from 6-week-old infants to 5-year-olds, attend this NEOS
center. Classes include an infant class, a 2-year-old class, two 3-year-old classes, and
two 4-year-old classes. NEOS is considered a "child development center," with an
emphasis on developing the "whole child" and providing child care for working
parents. Therefore, as explained earlier, the program is more than either a preschool
program which is typically a half-day program focused on developing a child's skills
in preparation for kindergarten, or a child care center that provides safe supervision for
children while parents work. As a child development center, NEOS also provides
comprehensive services, such as social and educational services, to support the
students and their families.

62

Population
The present case study focused on the teachers of the 4-year-olds in both
classes. The target teachers included the lead teacher and the supporting
paraprofessionals in each of the two classrooms. While the teachers were the focus of
the data analysis, their interaction with students and the researchers also was
documented. During the course of the study, the lead teachers included one male and
three females. Susan is Korean and speaks both Korean and English. The other
teachers, Pablo, Monica, and Margarita, are Hispanic, and bilingual in Spanish and
English. The paraprofessionals who worked with the teachers were all Hispanic, with
the exception of one Anglo and one African-American assistant. Each classroom
typically had one lead teacher and two paraprofessionals, however staffing was not
always consistent. The issue of providing professional development and support for a
staff with high turnover is an important concern and is addressed in this study.
Retaining teachers with high levels of ECEC training is a large problem, which
affects the quality of early childhood programs. Especially in programs that serve
high-poverty students and that frequently offer only low-paying positions, the problem
of retaining teachers is even more acute. During the 4 years of the CIERA emergent
literacy project, each classroom of 4-year-olds had two different lead teachers. Three
of the four teachers chose to leave the center for other positions by the end of the
fourth year of the project. While the assistants in each classroom were often assigned
to different classrooms each year by the center’s site supervisors, most of these
paraprofessionals had worked at NEOS for several years, and thus had a longer
63

affiliation with the organization and its students, than the lead teachers. Therefore,
their support role in the classroom was important and relevant to this study.
Each classroom of 4-year-olds was staffed for 24 students. However, during 2
years, one classroom enrolled 32 students. Approximately 98% of the students
attending Nuestra Escuelita were children of families with incomes below federal
poverty standards. In 2002, the federal poverty line was $18,100 for a family of four.
According to figures from the NEOS organization, 60% of the families served by the
center were headed by single mothers, with an average of three to four children and an
average household income of $584-$1030 per month (Yaden, 2002). With the
exception of one or two students in each classroom, all of the target students in this
study were Hispanic who spoke Spanish as their dominant primary language, and most
had very limited English proficiency. This study also includes an examination of how
professional development efforts were adjusted in consideration of these contextual
factors of poverty and language proficiency.

Researcher's Role
The USC research team working on the CIERA emergent literacy project
included the principal investigator and five research assistants. Two of the research
assistants were responsible for coordinating the book loan program to increase access
of books in the home and to involve parents in literacy activities with their child.
Another research assistant coordinated the testing and assessment component of the
project. The other two research assistants, including myself, were involved directly in
64

the classroom to support the professional development of the teachers in order to
increase literacy-related activities in their classrooms. This support included in-
service training, modeling lessons, and informal coaching.
Since the present case study draws upon the existing data from the CIERA
research study, concerns related to selecting the location of the study and facilitating
the researchers' initial entry into the site were previously addressed by the lead
investigator of the larger CIERA project and the NEOS administrators. Nonetheless,
based on a sociocultural view, as each researcher began work at NEOS, a different
social dynamic was created. Therefore, contextual issues related to building rapport
and trust between the researchers and the participants were analyzed and add
credibility that the data reflected an understanding of the site and participants that
could only develop over time. This examination also illustrates potential problems
with short-term interventions. More specifically, by providing on-site support for the
duration of the 4-year study, researchers had the opportunity to build positive working
relationships with the participants, which in turn made possible richer descriptions and
deeper understandings.
I joined the research project in 1998 and worked with the teachers at Nuestra
Escuelita for the duration of the classroom intervention, which ended in 2001. Since
my own experience as an educator relates to teaching in the primary grades at the
elementary school level, and not in child development or preschool programs, I tried
to be sensitive to any personal biases that could have influenced my field observations.
For example, I assume that (a) early literacy can and should be taught in
65

developmentally appropriate ways, (b) early literacy skills in English can be promoted
through instruction in a child's primary language, and (c) learning is dependent on the
conditions of learning created by the teacher, but which occurs in a larger
setting/context/system. Based on these assumptions, I anticipated some sensitivity to
reporting how the teacher specifically promoted or hindered literacy learning, and how
the setting promoted or hindered teacher learning. These assumptions are aligned with
the sociocultural perspective, which guides the theoretical framework for this study.

Data Collection
Several sources of data that included both the teachers and paraprofessionals,
including fieldnotes, interviews, questionnaires, and focus groups, were reviewed in
order to examine the design and implementation attributes of this professional
development effort:
• 234 sets of fieldnotes, including,
209 classroom observations
6 meetings with administration
19 staff development meetings
• 2 focus group meetings (n = 11)
• 1 set of surveys (n = 4)
• 1 set of interviews (n = 7)
• 2 sets of questionnaires (n = 7)

The main source of data was participant observation as documented in
fieldnotes of classroom activities, teacher interactions and conversations, and formal
meetings. Extensive fieldnotes that narrate the research team's observations and
activities while on-site were collected by the lead investigator. To limit the extent of
the author's observational bias, fieldnotes from each of the five research assistants and
66

principal investigator were reviewed for relevant information about the professional
development activities in the teachers' classrooms.
In addition, pertinent information was gleaned from two sets of questionnaires,
two focus group meetings, a survey, and one set of interviews. Since interview and
focus group data more closely reflects the voice of the teacher participants, this data
helped triangulate the observational data collected by the researchers and reflective of
our perspectives.

Data Management and Analysis
Since the overall CIERA project focused on the impact of the intervention on
students, reporting assessment data on student outcomes was critical. However, the
focus of the present study is describing the process of the classroom intervention.
During the 4 years of research at the project site, the team of researchers collected
large amounts of both student and classroom data. Since the larger project
emphasized the effects of the intervention on student achievement, insufficient time
was available to do the close reading, open coding, initial memos, focused coding, and
integrative memos that are part of on-going data analysis in an ethnographic approach
(e.g. Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995). Therefore, an ethnographic or qualitative
reexamination of the rich set of data from the larger project revealed useful
information about the nature and impact of the professional development effort.
The plan for analysis was guided by the work of Miles and Huberman (1994)
and involved (a) data reduction, (b) data display, and (c) conclusion drawing/
67

verification. Miles and Huberman describe their perspective on research as
"transcendental realism" because they assume that "social phenomena exist not only in
the mind but also in the objective world - and that some lawful and reasonably stable
relationships are to be found among them" (p. 4). Therefore, researchers should be
accountable for the rationality and trustworthiness of their methods. Miles and
Huberman (1994) would argue that effective and systematic analysis methods help
address the problem of confidence often associated with qualitative findings.
Considering the large amount of data to be reviewed, the primary task was data
reduction, or the process of synthesizing fieldnotes. Fieldnotes were read and
summarized using a contact summary sheet that included information about (a) the
people, events, or situations involved, (b) the main themes or issues in the contact, and
(c) relevance to the research questions (Miles & Huberman, 1994, p. 51).
Based on the research questions, a start list of codes was developed. Then, two
to three months of contact sheets were reviewed and coded. Based on this group of
fieldnotes, pattern codes that identified an emergent theme or explanation were
created. Miles and Huberman (1994) clarify that first level coding summarizes
segments of data, while pattern codes group the summaries into sets, themes, or
constructs (p. 69). A memo that summarized key ideas and emerging themes was
written for each cluster of fieldnotes. The coded data and memos were reviewed for
each year of the present study. Then, a conceptually oriented data display was
developed based on the memos (see Miles & Huberman, 1994, p. 127-141).
Specifically, a conceptually clustered matrix was developed to represent and
68

synthesize the most salient conceptual themes that were documented in the data.
Finally, the memos and data displays were reviewed across the four years of the
present study to draw conclusions related to the overall professional development
efforts and teaching activities at this project site.

Trustworthiness of Naturalistic Research
Qualitative research can be characterized as descriptive and analytic inquiry
that is an interactive process between researcher and participants, and "relies on
people's words and observable behavior as the primary data" (Marshall & Rossman,
1995, p. 4). Thus, qualitative research is value laden, and efforts to ensure confidence
in the data and findings are important. Lincoln and Guba (1985) characterize
trustworthiness by the qualities of credibility, transferability, dependability, and
confirmability. Based on these qualities, both Miles and Huberman (1994, p. 278-
280), and Marshall and Rossman (1995, p. 143 - 146) suggest reflective questions to
help researchers review the trustworthiness of their research and conclusions. These
questions have guided the following discussion of how the proposed study addresses
issues of quality and trustworthiness.

Confirmability
In the preceding description of the data collection and analysis, efforts to
increase the trustworthiness of the research are present. Confirmability is associated
with objectivity and whether the data confirms the findings. To increase the study's
69

confirmability, methods and procedures have been described explicitly to demonstrate
how the conclusions were derived. I explained the process of data reduction, data
display, and conclusion drawing that I used to analyze the collected data. Also, I
highlighted potential biases prior to beginning the data analysis. During data analysis,
I continued to be sensitive and made transparent my dual role as researcher and as an
active participant.

Dependability
Dependability involves quality control, consistency, and care throughout the
study and across researchers. Dependability was strengthened by triangulation of
findings through analysis of my fieldnotes, questionnaires, and interviews conducted
throughout the larger study, as well as looking for congruence within the accounts of
other researchers in the project. The boundaries of the present study have been framed
through a sociocultural theoretical framework; the research question and case study
design are consistent with this framework. Thus, data analysis was more focused,
cohesive, and consistent. The principal investigator of the CIERA study led some data
quality checks at meetings with the research assistants during the larger intervention
study. This quality check included reading through fieldnotes and highlighting areas
of strength and weaknesses in the data collection as outlined by Emerson, Fretz, and
Shaw (1995). As stated previously, one concern about the dependability of project
data collected by the five research assistants was that as their involvement with a
specific component of the intervention increased, the focus of their observations and
70

fieldnotes changed from capturing overall classroom interactions which were often
related to the planned professional development activities, to more narrow
observations directly related to the components they were most involved with. So,
while I looked for similarities and differences among the data reported by the other
researchers in the project, I relied most heavily on a careful analysis of the 4 years of
data that I collected during my participation in the intervention project.

Credibility
The longitudinal design of the research adds to the credibility and authenticity
of the findings. By working in the classrooms throughout the 4 years of the
intervention, I had the opportunity to work closely with the participants. This, in turn,
helps to add richness and depth to the descriptions, as well as a better understanding of
the participants' perspectives. Also, since the intervention concluded several years
ago, data analysis relied on organizing, studying, and reflecting on the raw data
collected versus relying on recent impressions and emotions of a researcher still in the
field. Using contact summary sheets, codes, and memos that helped describe each
chunk or cluster of data also enhanced credibility. Through constant comparison,
pattern codes were developed and helped refine emerging themes. This careful
analysis ensured that the conclusions are comprehensive and representative of the
larger intervention.

71

Transferability
The transferability of findings to other CDP was not the intent of the present
research. Based on a sociocultural frame of reference, each setting is unique and
reflects the social dynamics of the participants. However, the results of this study can
impact further research and provide some guidelines that may be helpful to other
programs. The emerging themes to be discussed in Chapter 4 represent topics that
should be addressed in follow-up studies at NEOS, especially as the NEOS
organization seeks to scale up the emergent literacy intervention to other sites, or with
other projects looking to implement more literacy-related professional development.

Conclusion
The present study provides insight into the complexities of fostering on-going
professional development focused on early literacy in an early childhood setting. One
of the complexities includes working with teachers and assistants who participated in
the project with various understandings about emergent literacy and various levels of
English and Spanish proficiency. In light of current policies and categorical funding
that require more literacy activities in early childhood programs, early detection of
reading difficulties, and higher teacher qualifications, the study's findings will add to
the limited research base related to literacy-focused training for early childhood
teachers.
Secondly, most of the research on ECEC interventions target low SES
students, but none of the studies reviewed in Chapter 2 closely examined the dynamics
72

of the changing role of the teacher in fostering emergent literacy for children who are
more at-risk for academic failure due to both poverty and limited English proficiency.
Since the emergent literacy intervention was successful in promoting gains for
participating students in both English and Spanish literacy skills, this study offers
insights for enhancing the learning of young children in a bilingual CDP setting.
In addition, this study extends further the findings of the larger CIERA
emergent literacy intervention project. It provides much needed analysis of the rich
data set collected over 4 years that is related to the professional development
component of the project. Providing professional development for ECEC providers is
currently a critical topic. As more states expand their early childhood programs,
insufficient teachers with a 4-year college degree and specialized child development
training are available or are willing to work in a setting that often pays much less than
an elementary school setting.
Finally, the qualitative design of this case study reflects careful planning in
order to transform raw data into important conclusions as objectively and
systematically as possible, while trying to honestly represent the voices of the teachers
in the field. With growing preference and emphasis on quantitative experimental
research, fewer resources are available to fund longitudinal qualitative studies. Unlike
other professional development efforts that seek to train as many participants as
possible, this study benefits by taking a rich and detailed look at the long-term efforts
at one site. The goal of this study was to describe examples, which illustrate that it is
not only the what, but also the how; and not only the quantity, but also the quality of
73

professional development that makes a significant difference for both teachers and
students.

74

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS
This chapter presents the analysis of project data collected between October
1997 and June 2001 as it relates to the research question: What are the attributes of
professional development, in terms of design and implementation, which contributed
to the success of an early childhood emergent literacy program? The first section
describes the design of staff development that was planned by the researchers to
promote early literacy at the NEOS site. These design activities were drawn from the
research literature about early literacy, and were intended to be transferable to other
ECEC programs with staff seeking to strengthen the early literacy growth of their
preschoolers.
The second section describes the interactions between the participants that
influenced the implementation of the staff development activities. Since these
interactions occurred between a specific set of participants within a particular setting,
the resulting dynamics are unique; however, the description of the interactions also
serves as an example of why some professional development activities may work well
in one school, but not in others.
The final section summarizes the findings and highlights why the professional
development activities at NEOS succeeded in contributing to a stronger emergent
literacy program with resulting gains in student achievement.
As described in Chapter 3, I reviewed the project data using a start list of codes
in order to categorize the design and implementation components of the professional
development activities that contributed to the success of the emergent literacy project
75

at NEOS. Then, I developed pattern codes to synthesize the emerging categories.
These patterns are represented in Figure 1 and Figure 2, and will be further explained
in the present chapter.

Design
Categories
Instructional Tools Professional
Development
Literacy Teaching and
Practice
Observed
Categories
Literacy Materials
Curriculum Framework
Education
Training
Meetings
Classroom Support

Reading Demonstrations
Opportunities to Read
Writing Demonstrations
Opportunities to Write

Figure 1. Conceptual Matrix of Design Categories

Implementation
Categories
Communication
What is said?
Collaboration
What is done?
Celebration
What is supported
and encouraged?
Contextual
Filters
Participants Contextual Issues
Teachers Language and Culture
Assistants Socioeconomic Status
Students Organizational Structures
Researchers Academic Expectations
Administrators
Parents

Figure 2. Conceptual Matrix of Implementation Categories

The data that related to the design of the staff development were categorized
into (a) instructional tools, (b) professional development, and (c) literacy teaching and
practice. Instructional tools included the reading and writing materials provided by
the researchers to support the intervention and the emergent literacy curriculum
framework. The professional development category refers to activities facilitated by
the researchers to help the NEOS staff adopt more early literacy instructional
strategies. Evidence of the use of the instructional tools and the application of the
76

knowledge gained from professional development was classified as literacy teaching
and practice.
Data describing the social interactions that facilitated implementation of the
professional development activities were grouped together under the following
concepts: (a) communication, (b) collaboration, and (c) celebration. These categories
reflect the sociocultural theoretical framework of this study, which establishes the
importance of socially mediated learning that occurs within a specific setting.
In addition to classifying the social interactions that supported the
implementation of the activities, several contextual filters, related to the specific
setting and participants involved in the research, were identified from the project data.
These filters affected the nature of communication, collaboration, and celebration by
the participants in the emergent literacy project. These filters reflected the influence
of the participants’ economic resources, their cultural background, their beliefs about
using English and Spanish, their perceptions of NEOS as an organization, and their
academic expectations of what is developmentally appropriate for 4 year olds. These
contextual filters are not discussed separately since they vary for each individual and
are embedded within the discussion of the design and implementation categories of the
professional development effort.

Design of Professional Development Activities
The primary purpose of the original 4-year longitudinal study of the
effectiveness of an emergent literacy intervention was “to provide multiple
77

opportunities for Spanish-speaking, 4-year-old children to engage in a variety of
reading and writing activities within the center, at home and in the surrounding
community” (Yaden, 2002). More specifically, the project planned several strategies:
1. Create a 2- to 3-hour language and literacy program for approximately 55
4-year-olds (each year for 4 years) by instituting a big-book shared reading
program and installing writing, listening, and sociodramatic play centers

2. Provide classroom support and in-service workshops on emergent literacy
theory, practical teaching strategies, and the assessment of developmental
growth in reading and writing for agency teachers and paraprofessionals

3. Monitor the language and literacy development of the children, both in the
center and on through second grade

4. Establish a book-lending library and provide periodic workshops for parents
on how they can engage their children in developmentally appropriate literacy
activities in the home and community (Yaden, 2002).

The first two strategies of the original intervention will be described in more detail as
it applies to the three design categories of this study, i.e. instructional tools,
professional development, and literacy teaching and practice. How these planned
strategies were modified to accommodate the needs of the participants and to be more
context sensitive will be explained in the implementation section of this chapter.

Instructional Tools
Literacy Materials
When the initial research project began, NEOS was being remodeled to
accommodate its ECEC program in a new location. Therefore, helping to supply
materials to support the planned early literacy intervention was the initial priority.
78

Without sufficient materials for reading and writing, any planned early literacy
training for the teachers would be purposeless.
In order to get to know the teaching staff at the NEOS, a focus group was held
in November 1997. The teachers who participated in the focus group indicated that
one of the activities they included during circle time was sharing books with their
students. None of the teachers mentioned using books to teach students emergent
literacy concepts, or using big books to invite students to see the text and participate in
reading along with the teacher’s guidance. Instead, teachers placed emphasis on
talking about the pictures. In addition, few books were visible in the classrooms. The
books that were displayed were old, tattered, and most were written at a readability
level for older students. In one classroom, a researcher found a couple books written
in languages the students did not speak, including Italian and Korean. Since
increasing teacher and student access to reading and writing materials was a key
component of the emergent literacy intervention, the next section briefly describes the
materials provided to the two NEOS classrooms.
Big books. The main instructional strategy included in the design of the
intervention was shared reading (Holdaway, 1979). This strategy encourages students
to participate in a supportive reading experience that parallels the interactions that
often occur during parent-child book reading. By reading big books, students can see
the print and observe how the teacher reads the text, and thus becomes more familiar
with concepts of print, a sense of story, and book language. By rereading favorite
79

stories, young children can participate in the book reading without knowing how to
decode the words.
The emergent literacy project provided 57 big books to be shared between the
two classrooms of 4-year-olds. The initial purchase of 24 books included 17 books in
English and 7 books in Spanish. These books represented both fiction and non-fiction
texts. Some of the books were selected because they had simple or repetitive text,
such as “Pink Pig,” “The Bath,” or “Story Time.” With the exception of one big book,
the Spanish books were translations of stories written in English, for example,
“Cuanto es un millón? [How Much is a Million?],” “Un sillón para mama [A Chair for
My Mother],” or “La familia de Clifford [Clifford’s Family].”
Based on the need for more books that the students could understand, more
Spanish books were added to the big book collection. Ten Spanish big books were
purchased and 15 more were donated. These included more books written originally
in Spanish (not translations) and consequently used more rhyme and repetition to
develop the story. Also, the project purchased eight more English big books. Based
on teacher requests, these big books included more concept books about the alphabet,
days of the week, and counting, such as “Cookie’s Week,” and “Ten Black Dots.”
Classroom library books. During each of the 4 years of the emergent literacy
project, the researchers purchased classroom library books for each of the two classes.
During the initial visits to the research site, our research team counted less than 20
books available for students to use in each classroom. Therefore, we gathered input
from the teachers to suggest the titles and topics of books they wanted in their class
80

libraries. Topics and themes requested by the teachers included books about alphabet,
shapes, numbers, colors, weather, seasons, body, holidays, folktales, animals,
dinosaurs, nature, health and safety, family, and different cultures, as well as books
about favorite characters such as Clifford, Spot, Arthur, and Elmo. While some books
were purchased for the classroom libraries only, the research team also purchased
some of the same titles for the Book Loan program in order to promote literacy links
between school and home. As mentioned previously, the Book Loan program was an
important component of the emergent literacy intervention that was designed to
increase access to books at home by the NEOS children and their parents through an
on-site lending library (see Madrigal, 2005).
Between July 1998 and March 2001, the emergent literacy research project
purchased 225 books for each classroom. In addition, about 80 books were donated to
each of the two rooms. Thus, about 100 new books were added to each classroom
each year. As documented in project field notes, each time new books were
introduced into the classroom, a higher percentage of students chose to read books
during independent activity time without any prompting by the teacher. For example,
a new set of books was delivered to each classroom on Halloween. In spite of
students’ excitement about being dressed up in costumes and about getting ready to
participate in a Halloween parade, 11 out of the 24 students in the classroom asked to
see one of the new books instead of playing in one of the other areas. Therefore,
increasing the number of books directly available to students helped to facilitate more
opportunities for students to engage in reading.
81

Environmental print. In addition to the big books and classroom library books,
the researchers also helped the teachers increase the amount of environmental print in
their classrooms. Our research team helped the teachers label items in the classroom,
for example table [mesa], library [biblioteca], and toys [juguetes] using one color for
words written in English and another color for Spanish. We also helped the teachers
set up in each classroom an alphabet line, and word wall using students’ names. The
purpose of increasing environmental print was to help make students’ learning
environment more print-rich, to serve as an instructional tool for teachers, and to help
students develop the concept of speech-print match.
Sociodramatic play areas. One of the planned strategies to increase access to
literacy materials at NEOS was to establish sociodramatic play areas. Researchers
(e.g. Pellegrini & Galda, 1993; Roskos & Neuman, 2001) have demonstrated the
value of engaging students in dramatic play that includes literacy tools and supportive
adult language that will foster literacy understandings. Our research team discussed
the possibility of setting up various play areas such as a post office or restaurant.
However, due to space limitations in each classroom, additional play areas were not
created. Instead, we added reading and writing materials to existing areas, such as the
kitchen and house areas.
Writing center. Establishing a writing center was the final activity area in the
planned design to increase access to literacy materials. The writing center consisted of
a table with shelving to store a variety of writing materials, such as pencils, markers,
crayons, colored pencils, pencil sharpener, sticky notes, stapler, envelopes, and an
82

assortment of paper. This center was planned as a resource center that invited students
to explore a variety of writing materials in their attempts to convey a written message
to others, or role-play the literacy behaviors of their teachers and parents. Researchers
set up a writing center in each classroom, and helped to restock the writing supplies
throughout the year.

Emergent Literacy Curriculum Framework
A variety of instructional practices are characteristic of an emergent literacy
classroom. For example, Teale (1995) suggested that the following instructional
practices help to develop early reading and writing concepts: Group storybook
readings or lap readings, storybook reading or “pretend reading” by children, written
language embedded in daily classroom routines and activities, response to literature
through discussion, writing, art, music, or drama; writing demonstrated by the teacher
and attempted by the children, phonemic awareness through rhymes and language
play, and letter and letter-sound activities. While a review of project data verified that
the classroom intervention included all of the practices suggested by Teale; the
elements of the proposed design were clustered under three broad categories of
support: (a) providing various reading and writing materials to enrich the
opportunities for students to interact with text, (b) promoting the use of shared reading
of big books, and (c) providing classroom support and training related to emergent
literacy theory.
83

Initially, the lead teachers in each of the two classrooms of 4-year-olds
expressed interest in a literacy curriculum that would be written as a teacher’s guide
with specific lesson plans, activity ideas, and the necessary materials for the lessons.
However, the research team believed that literacy learning for young children is
developmental and should be responsive to the needs and interests of the students, and
therefore should not be scripted. We believed that by building the instructional skills
and knowledge of the teachers, they would be able to use a wide range of materials
and strategies to adjust to the needs of their students, without being confined to a
particular set of lessons that might not address the needs of students entering school
with limited English skills, limited access to reading and writing materials at home,
and different cultural and background experiences.
Since the primary focus was to promote the use of shared reading, we did not
originally plan to include a specific curriculum. However, after two months of support
activities in the classroom, the project’s principal investigator recognized the need for
an emergent literacy curriculum that specifically outlined several key concepts. These
emergent literacy concepts were based on the components of emergent literacy
assessment as outlined by Lipson and Wixson (1997, p. 246) and include (a)
environmental print and functions of print, (b) concepts of book print, (c) story sense,
(d) phonemic awareness, (e) speech-print match, and (f) control of reading and
writing. I helped to develop an emergent literacy curricular framework in order to
define and elaborate on the aforementioned literacy concepts the research team wanted
teachers to understand and promote with their students (Tam, 2000):
84

1. Environmental print – Students begin to recognize print and graphic
symbols in the world around them. Classrooms support a literacy-rich
environment.

Functions of print – Students begin to recognize how print can be used for
different purposes and to symbolize meaning.

2. Concepts of book print – Students develop an understanding of the
characteristics and conventions of written language (the basic rules of how
print works) to convey meaning.

3. Story sense – Students enjoy listening to stories and develop an awareness
of how stories are organized, for example characters, setting, and plot.

4. Phonemic awareness – Students develop awareness of sounds within
spoken words. They begin to distinguish differences in sounds (for
example, /b/ and /d/ and positioning within a word (for example, a
beginning or ending sound).

5. Speech-print match – Students begin to understand that letters can represent
sounds, and that letters can be organized to form words. They begin to
understand that words are meaningful chunks of language that can be
grouped together in a sentence.

6. Control of reading and writing – Students attempt to use their knowledge of
sounds, letters, words, and story sense to read or write words.

In addition to an explanation of the emergent literacy concepts, the curricular
framework included a description of the learning contexts created by teachers that
supported development of their students’ literacy concepts:
1. Teachers should model reading and writing behaviors.

2. Teachers should provide guidance and support for emerging literacy
behaviors.

3. Teachers should create opportunities for students to explore, practice, and
share emergent literacy behaviors.

4. Teachers should assess students’ growth and identify areas needing further
development. (Tam, 2000)

85

In order to provide a practical explanation of each of the concepts, I included a list of
observable student behaviors that would indicate progress in understanding the
selected concept, examples of teacher-guided activities that would help to develop the
concept, and examples of student-initiated explorations that could be encouraged
during independent activity time. For example, the emergent literacy framework
suggests that a student may be observed turning pages correctly and pretending to
track print across the page as he is developing concepts of book print. To support this
understanding, the teacher could do a think-aloud to describe the process of a “return
sweep” at the end of a line of text. Independently, a student may use a pointer and
attempt to track print as he reads a charted poem on an easel.
Based on an emergent literacy perspective, the CIERA intervention
emphasized the concurrent development of listening, speaking, reading, and writing in
“real-life settings for real-life activities in order to ‘get things done’” (Teale & Sulzby,
1986). Therefore, although we developed a curriculum that outlined several key
literacy concepts that we wanted teachers to understand and specifically promote with
students, we emphasized teaching these concepts in the context of meaningful reading
and writing interactions with students. For example, the National Reading Panel
(2000) highlighted the importance of letter knowledge and phonemic awareness as
predictors of how well children will learn to read within the first two years of
instruction. While researchers have questioned the scope of the research reviewed by
the reading panel (e.g. Krashen, 1999; Pressley, 2001), our research team emphasized
86

the importance of introducing these skills through meaningful and fun activities, and
not through isolated drill focused on mastery.
The research team focused on establishing a 2-3 hour language and literacy
block with the belief that teachers can help accelerate young children’s literacy
development by planning for its use, and not simply relying on incidental exposure to
reading and writing. So, although the teachers continued to plan for art, music, and
play activities within the daily schedule, including within the language and literacy
block, we tried to encourage the teaching staff to look for opportunities for students to
see and use literacy throughout the day.
As a curricular framework, and not as a specific literacy program, the emergent
literacy concepts, and teacher behaviors that help develop these concepts, served as
the focal point of the research team’s professional development efforts.

Professional Development
In addition to the instructional tools, the second design category of the overall
professional development effort was the training activities that were planned to
support the emergent literacy intervention. As defined in Chapter 2, professional
development refers to the overall efforts to improve the skills and education of the
early childhood staff. Education refers to coursework within the formal education
system. Credentials and certification often involve coursework, but the granting
agency is usually not the college or university. Training refers to informal and in-
service support and training. Although the education of the staff will be mentioned
87

briefly, the focus of this section is the training provided during in-service meetings
and during classroom activities to support the children’s development of emergent
reading and writing.

Education and Credentials
The research team recognized the importance of providing support and training
for both the teachers, and the paraprofessionals who were an integral part of the
teaching staff. While several studies reinforce the link between high quality ECEC
programs and teachers who have a bachelor’s degree (e.g. Administration for
Children and Families, 2003; Bowman, Donovan, & Burns, 2001; Whitebook, 2003b),
we found that teachers who completed their 4-year college degree soon left NEOS for
higher paying positions; therefore supporting the training of assistants was important
to the longitudinal success of the project.
Out of the four lead teachers who worked in the 4-year-olds classrooms during
the project, only Susan had her bachelor’s degree. In spite of being the teacher with
the highest level of completed education, Susan resigned after one year. Both Pablo
and Monica were working on their bachelor’s degrees during the study. They took
classes after work and on the weekends in order to complete their degrees. Monica
was also working on her professional clear credential in order to be able to teach at the
elementary school level. Soon after Pablo and Monica completed their degrees, both
left their teaching positions at NEOS. Monica was hired to teach kindergarten at an
elementary school, while Pablo was hired for a supervisory position for another ECEC
88

program. Margarita mentioned her interest in going back to school to complete her
bachelor’s degree, but knew that she would not until her own children were older. She
had the most experience working at NEOS and was the only lead teacher who
remained when the research study concluded in 2001.
At a meeting with the principal investigator at the beginning of the research
study in 1997, a NEOS administrator explained the minimum education requirements
for the teaching staff. Teachers needed to have 24 credits in early childhood
education; a bachelor’s degree was preferred but an associate’s degree was acceptable.
Associate teachers needed 12 units in early childhood education, and assistants needed
6 units. Salary was linked to the number of credits each staff member had, not
necessarily their years of experience, effectiveness, or dedication. For example,
Teresa was an associate who was well-liked by her peers, demonstrated positive
interactions with her students, and promoted more early literacy skills than the lead
teacher she worked with; yet, she was getting paid less than a newly hired associate
who was often observed leading circle time with little preparation or planning.
Another example illustrating compensation issues involves Angela who was an
assistant who actively supported and facilitated the emergent literacy intervention.
She was a teacher in a preschool program in Mexico, but only had enough credits to
work as an assistant at NEOS, and thus was only paid $6/hour.
So, while the level of formal education of the teaching staff is often a factor
associated with high quality ECEC programs, we found that teachers with a bachelor’s
degree often did not stay more than a year at NEOS, while assistants who had less
89

post-secondary coursework often stayed longer at NEOS. Thus, assistants had great
potential to impact the literacy learning of the children and to benefit from on-site
training.

Training
The training design included (a) staff development meetings, and (b) classroom
support activities to build the teaching staff’s knowledge and implementation of
practices that support early literacy. The training effort included both teachers and
assistants.
Staff development meetings. The study design included “on-going in-services
on emergent literacy theory, activities, and developmental growth in reading and
writing for child care agency teachers and paraprofessionals” (Yaden, 2002). During
the planning stages, staff development meetings were supposed to be scheduled once a
month during NEOS’ regular staff meetings on Mondays. However, since the staff
meetings did not occur on a consistent schedule, and the agendas were often full of
site-based issues, the research team decided, after the first year of the project, to
schedule separate meetings focusing solely on early literacy.
During the first year of the emergent literacy intervention in 1997 – 1998, four
meetings were documented. Field notes from the first two meetings involved the
research team talking with administration to facilitate research activities. The other
two meetings provided a forum to introduce the project to the teaching staff.
90

Unfortunately, scheduling the in-service meetings was difficult due to the
challenges of providing release time to the ECEC staff, who care for children from
7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. It was not possible to arrange meetings before or after work,
since the NEOS teaching staff had different schedules to accommodate the extended
hours at the facility. Therefore, the research team’s project manager scheduled
meetings with the child services supervisor. Although the attempt was made to
schedule meetings every month, nearly 40% of the meetings were cancelled or
rescheduled during the first two years of the project, often due to the difficulty of
finding substitute coverage for the staff from the classes of 4-year-olds to attend the
meetings. Meetings were held during the children’s naptime that followed lunch,
since this was the time block requiring less supervision. Teachers and assistants often
staggered their lunch during this time so that one adult could remain with the class as
the children slept, instead of the usual two or three teachers. Therefore, the in-service
meetings were scheduled for about 1-1.5 hours during this time, and staff from the
infant, toddler, or 3-year-olds classes were often recruited in order to cover for the
teachers and assistants from the 4-year-old classes to attend the training.
Staff development meetings - Topics. The initial focus of the staff development
meetings was to explain the research project and its goal of strengthening the language
and literacy skills of the 4-year-old children at the child development center by
implementing (a) a morning language and literacy time block that included a big book
shared reading program, (b) writing, listening, and sociodramatic play centers; (c)
91

classroom support and in-service training, (d) assessment of the literacy development
of the children, and (e) a book-lending library and workshops for parents.
Research team members led two subsequent meetings to introduce emergent
literacy theory and the value of shared reading. Emergent literacy theory explains the
concept of how early reading and writing concepts, behaviors, and attitudes precede
and develop into conventional literacy. This view of literacy differs from a reading
readiness approach, which stresses the need for children to develop prerequisite skills
before they are capable of reading and writing. Teale (1995) explains that an
emergent literacy instructional perspective supports involving children in reading and
writing as they start of school, interacting with children in a print-rich environment,
making students aware of the use of written language in the classroom, and involving
children in play and lessons in which reading and writing are used for a variety of
purposes.
Following these introductory meetings, I facilitated the monthly training
meetings, which focused on explaining the emergent literacy concepts that were
integrated into the project’s curriculum framework. As stated previously, these
concepts included environmental print and functions of print, concepts of book print,
story sense, phonemic awareness, speech-print match, and control of reading and
writing. We focused on one concept at each meeting and highlighted an instructional
strategy that would help to develop that concept. This strategy then became the
emphasis of classroom support activities by the researchers for the next month.
92

The core instructional strategy at the heart of the intervention program was
shared reading in which the teacher involves a group of young children in reading a
big book. The research team discussed how to use big books and charted stories to
develop students’ awareness of each of the emergent literacy concepts that were
included in the curriculum framework. For example, highlighting how to read the
large text from top to bottom and left to right, and how to use punctuation helped to
develop students’ understanding of concepts of print. Other instructional strategies
were introduced, such as labeling items in the classroom to increase environmental
print, choral reading of rhymes and poems to develop phonemic awareness, modeled
and interactive writing, and using a Language Experience Approach (Stauffer, 1970)
to promote speech to print match.
Staff development meetings - Observations. In addition to the discussion of
emergent literacy concepts and instructional strategies, staff development meetings
also included sharing observations of students’ developing reading and writing skills.
Researchers often shared specific examples from fieldnotes of their classroom
observations of students’ developing reading and writing behaviors as well as the
teaching practices that prompted the student behaviors. Both teachers and assistants
also shared their observations and student work samples they collected each month.
Thus, the staff development meetings helped participants to develop a general
understanding of emergent literacy theory to reinforce specific instructional strategies
and concepts from the curriculum framework, and to analyze examples of students’
reading and writing development.
93

Classroom support. Another component of our training effort was the ongoing
support provided in the classroom. The research team developed a schedule of
classroom support activities in order to coordinate the efforts of the two research
assistants who spent time on site collecting data as well as facilitating the literacy
intervention with the teaching staff. At first, the schedule simply included which days
the researchers would be on site and what they would be doing, i.e. observing or
modeling a strategy. Later, as the researchers began to concentrate on a specific
component of the intervention, the schedule of classroom support activities was
aligned to the emergent literacy concept that was discussed during the in-service
meeting that month.
For example, when story sense was discussed, the researchers not only looked
for examples of students participating in literacy activities, but also how the teacher
and students were engaged in activities that helped to deepen an understanding of the
language and structure of narrative stories. For example, a student was demonstrating
story sense when she attempted to read a book and began reciting, “Había una
vez…[Once upon a time…]”, and ended the story “Colorín, colorado, este cuento se
ha acabado [Colorín, Colorado and so the story ends].” Also, the two researchers
modeled reading and writing about books and emphasized an awareness of character,
setting, and plot.
Based on a sociocultural view that recognizes teaching and learning as a social
interaction that builds upon the current knowledge base of the learner, the majority of
the visits by the researchers during the first year of the emergent literacy intervention
94

were dedicated to observing existing teaching practices as they related to early literacy
development. The research team dedicated time to observing, building rapport, and
learning about the teachers and programs at NEOS, and expanding communication
with administration.
Between October 1997 and December 1998, researchers documented 46 visits
to NEOS: 42% percent of the visits were dedicated to classroom observations, 32%
recorded meetings with administration and teachers, 17% described modeling of
shared reading by the researchers, and 9% recorded support activities related to
increasing environmental print such as labeling classroom areas and supplies and
setting up the writing center.
In subsequent years, researchers divided time in the classroom into modeling
reading and writing strategies, providing informal feedback, observing, and collecting
student assessment data to monitor their growth. Members from the research team
visited each of the two 4-year-olds classrooms once or twice a week. Research
assistants modeled lessons in each of the classrooms at least once a month.
Classroom support – Reading. Since shared reading was included in the
emergent literacy intervention plan as the main instructional strategy to be
incorporated into the morning literacy block, the research assistants primarily focused
on modeling shared reading using big books and charted texts and poems during the
start-up and second year of the project. In addition to modeling shared reading, the
planned design for classroom support also involved observing the teachers and
assistants as they engaged students in reading activities during the morning circle time
95

and the activity time block that followed the teacher-guided lesson. The research team
documented how the teaching staff incorporated the strategies, that had been modeled
previously by the researchers, into their instructional practice, and how children
demonstrated increased reading behaviors over time.
An example of a modeled big book reading involved the researcher reading
“La familia de Clifford [Clifford’s Family].” The teacher and two assistants sat on the
rug with the children. The teacher had asked the researcher to model reading this
book since it was a longer text than students were used to reading, and she wanted to
see how to involve and keep the students focused.
The researcher checked for students’ background knowledge about Clifford.
Some students knew he was a big dog, but could not recall qualities about his
character. The researcher set a purpose for reading, “Vamos a mirar a los dibujos y
tratar de pensar lo que va a pasar en el cuento para ayudarnos cuando leemos las
palabras. [We will look at the pictures and try to think what will happen in the story
to help us understand the story when we read the words].” Then the researcher
explained to the students how she would use English to preview the story by flipping
through the pictures and describing in simple terms what they could see in the
pictures. She said several words in English and asked the students to repeat. Several
times, she asked a question and tried to provide some wait time to encourage students
to respond, but reverted to Spanish when students did not respond, to see if their lack
of response was due to limited English skills. Then the researcher read the story in
Spanish while pointing to the words as she read. At several points she paused to
96

check for understanding by asking questions in Spanish and drawing students’
attention to information gathered from the pictures vs. information learned from the
words on the page. Later, the researcher shared some key points with the staff about
the lesson and highlighted the explicit use of two languages in a systematic way,
previewing and reviewing, tracking the print, and asking questions to check for
understanding.
During follow-up observations, the researcher looked for examples of the
teachers using the strategies modeled during the big book reading. For example, the
researcher provided positive feedback to both teacher Monica and assistant Angela
when they read the words in a text as written in English or Spanish, but told students
when they would revert to using the second language. This helped to develop the
concept that words in a book are written in a particular language, but other languages
can also help us make meaning of what we read. In addition, researchers looked for
examples of the students reading big books that had been read previously, and
“playing teacher” by asking questions and tracking the print for others.
Classroom support – Writing. The original design of the emergent literacy
intervention included professional development activities that established in-
classroom support to facilitate understanding of emergent literacy theory and the use
of developmentally appropriate activities consistent with that view. An emergent
literacy view supports activities that engage young children in both reading and
writing.
At the beginning of the project, researchers provided classroom support and
97

training related to the purpose and use of a writing center. Before the project began,
neither classroom had a specific area reserved for children to write. Funds from the
intervention study helped to purchase a writing center and needed writing supplies for
each classroom. The researchers were involved directly in conducting lessons for
students that demonstrated how to use and care for the various writing supplies such as
markers, pens, pencil sharpeners, and envelopes. Researchers also explained the use
of the writing area as an activity center that students could use to explore different
writing supplies that they may not have access to at home and to rehearse the writing
behaviors they see modeled by adults.
In addition to the writing center, the research team also extended classroom
support to include modeling the use of writing to support classroom activities, such as
learning about the alphabet, name writing, and creating very simple texts about books
or experiences they have shared. One strategy the researchers modeled was the use of
the Language Experience Approach (Stauffer, 1970). This strategy shows students
that what they say can be written, and what is written can be read. Therefore, student
dictations serve as texts they can read.
An example of how writing was demonstrated by researchers as a tool to
deepen students’ understanding of reading was a modeled lesson of a Language
Experience Approach story. A researcher read the story, “Zoo-Looking.” After
showing students the cover and reading the title and author, she asked what they
thought would happen in this book since they also recently went to the zoo. Two
students predicted what the characters might see. As the researcher read the text, she
98

tracked the print, and encouraged more predictions about the animals that the
characters would see. She paused as she read to see if students joined in to read the
repetitive parts. Some responded with prompting by their teachers who sat on the rug
with the children. Then, the students helped to write a Language Experience
Approach story about the book. Several students volunteered a sentence, which the
researcher wrote exactly as dictated. Some students were disappointed because they
wanted the researcher to write their sentence but the chart paper was full. They were
told they could go to the writing center if they wanted to write their own sentence and
add it to the story.
The Language Experience Approach was explained at a staff in-service
meeting, and then modeled by the researchers several times in each classroom. The
researcher provided feedback by pointing out the key features of the strategy after she
modeled the strategy, and by reinforcing these behaviors when used by the teacher to
write a story based on what students dictated. One member of the research team
concentrated her observations and modeled lessons to support a deeper understanding
of the role of writing in an emergent literacy classroom. Not only did the researcher
conduct modeled writing lessons, she also collected writing samples that were shown
to teachers as examples of students’ developing concepts of reading and writing.

Literacy Teaching and Practice
The following section outlines observed changes in literacy teaching and
practice that accompanied students’ growth in their understanding of literacy concepts,
99

during the 4 years of the emergent literacy intervention project. The observed changes
are clustered into four categories:
• Reading Demonstrations - Teacher models reading for her students and,
facilitates and encourages student participation in reading activities

• Opportunities to Read - Occasions that encourage student-initiated reading

• Writing Demonstrations – Teacher models writing for her students

• Opportunities to Write – Occasions that encourage student-initiated writing

These categories embody three of the learning contexts created by teachers to promote
literacy learning as described in the project’s curricular framework: Teachers should
model reading and writing behaviors, teachers should provide guidance and support
for emerging literacy behaviors, and teachers should create opportunities for students
to explore, practice, and share emergent literacy behaviors (Tam, 2000).
The instructional tools and professional development that were described in the
preceding sections facilitated changes during the 4 years of the intervention, in terms
of the amount and quality of reading and writing demonstrations, and of reading and
writing opportunities. However, the level of use of demonstrations and opportunities
to practice reading and writing varied by teacher, and impacted students’ development
of reading and writing skills and concepts. Following a description of the changes that
occurred in both classrooms as a result of the literacy materials and training provided
by the researchers, implementation issues are outlined in the final section of this
chapter.

100

Reading Demonstrations
Group storybook reading. Teachers who participated in the initial focus group
in 1997 shared that they read books to their students. However, during the first five
site visits during the project start-up, researchers did not observe teachers reading to
students on a daily basis. Students did not participate in shared reading and no big
books were available in the classrooms. The teachers said that they checked out
books from the library for temporary use in their classrooms since they had so few
books. During the first focus group, the teachers expressed their wish for more books
and resources.
As a result of the instructional materials provided by the research team, as well
as the on-going training related to the use of shared reading to promote reading
development, teacher-led storybook reading became a daily classroom routine.
Teachers continued to read for the children’s enjoyment, but also learned how to
model reading to show what good readers do as they read, and build students’
awareness of the process of reading. By the fourth year of the intervention project, the
two lead teachers read to their students every day during circle time. They each had
access to over 100 books in their classrooms as well as shared access to approximately
60 big books. Each classroom had a collection of teacher-made big books and poems
made collaboratively with the research team that supported their monthly themes.
Thus, the materials enabled teachers to lead read-alouds in English as well as Spanish,
and shared reading of big books, and charted poems and texts.
101

Concept development - Phonemic awareness, letters, and sounds. Even
though, prior to the start of the research study, the teachers of the 4-year-old students
engaged the children in singing songs or chanting poems, no emphasis was placed on
developing students’ awareness of the individual letter sounds that made up the words
they were singing. Learning letters was not seen as developmentally appropriate and
was discouraged by site supervisors.
Through the professional development efforts of the researchers, teachers and
assistants learned the importance of developing phonemic awareness since it is an
important predictor of how well a student would learn to read in the elementary
grades. They learned that students were capable of learning letters and that the letters
could be taught in developmentally appropriate ways in the meaningful context of
reading and writing without using worksheets or copying activities.
With each additional year of the intervention, teachers incorporated more
phonemic awareness activities and more focus on letters and sounds. By highlighting
and playing with the sounds in rhyming words in a poem or song, teachers and
assistants were demonstrating that words are made up of distinct sounds. This
understanding establishes the foundation for the alphabetic principle that explains that
the sounds that make up words can be represented by symbols that others can also
read.
By the final year of the project, classroom observations documented teachers’
daily use of charted poems and songs to develop students’ awareness of rhyming
words as well as their awareness of speech to print match. As students were engaged
102

in listening to sounds and blending them together, thinking of words that started with a
target sound, and more interactive writing, students began to demonstrate more
developed reading and writing skills than they had in previous years. Thus, both
teachers and assistants not only read books for enjoyment and motivation, but also to
explicitly strengthen students’ awareness of emergent literacy concepts such as story
sense, phonemic awareness, and speech to print match through storybook reading.

Opportunities to Read
Reading by students – Activity time. In addition to the teacher-led circle time,
students had activity times in which they could choose from a variety of pursuits.
Following circle time, teachers sometimes led a guided activity and then allowed time
for students to participate in free choice activities. At the start of the research project,
typical follow-up activities included using one of the play areas in the room such as
the house, blocks, and toys areas, or doing an art project at one of the tables. Few
literacy follow-up activities were observed, with the exception of helping students to
write their names on art projects. Since students often played with toys on the rug
during activity time, no area was designated specifically for students who might be
interested in reading books. Most of the reading occurred during circle time and was
done by the teacher or assistant. Few books were available to students and most were
torn, poorly cared for, and not appealing or developmentally appropriate. During the
initial visits to NEOS, researchers documented only 10 - 20 books in each of the two
103

classrooms. Consequently, only one or two students were observed to occasionally
self-select reading as a free choice activity.
Slowly during the course of the emergent literacy project, teachers began to
include more literacy follow-up activities. By the second year of the intervention,
reading books on the rug and using the writing center were added to the play areas that
students could choose to use. With each year of the project, researchers observed a
steady increase in the number of students who freely choose to go to a designated
reading area on the rug or table to select books to read. For example, several students
arrived at NEOS around 7:00 a.m. Since many parents took the bus to NEOS, these
children would need to wake up by 5:30 a.m. Yet, on two separate occasions,
members of the teaching staff told researchers that although several of the students
who arrived early seemed half asleep, they often automatically went to the class
library to read a book without teacher prompting. Also, after naptime, students often
selected a book to read while they waited for others to wake up.
Teachers and researchers fostered this behavior by reading books every day,
demonstrating high interest in the stories they read, and showing excitement as they
introduced new books for the classroom library. Teachers often rotated the selection
of books to increase students’ motivation to read different stories. By participating in
shared reading, students developed a sense of story so they could retell their own
versions of the story, as well as a view of themselves as readers.
Reading by students – Independent Reading Time. At the beginning of the
research project, few literacy routines were in place. Literacy routines refer to the
104

reading and writing activities that were available to students on a daily basis and were
embedded in the planned curricular activities. The first routine to be established and
used in both classrooms was a 5 - 10 minute block of time, dedicated to reading by
students, during which they could self-select and read books independently or with
other students or teachers. In a review of 322 fieldnotes, 96% of the observations
during circle time documented students participating in independent reading time
(IRT). IRT usually preceded the teacher-led circle time in both classrooms.
During the first two years of the intervention, although researchers noted that
IRT was scheduled every day in both classrooms, Pablo was not consistent in making
sure an adult sat on the rug with students as they read. During IRT in Pablo’s
classroom, the assistants were frequently involved in cleaning up after serving
breakfast to the students or prepping materials for the follow-up activities after circle
time. He never asked his teaching associates or assistants to sit and read with the
children. Therefore, sitting with students on the rug was not a high priority for Pablo
or his assistants. When no adult read with students during IRT, more disruptive
behavior was noted and less time was spent reading and looking at books.
When a teacher enjoyed books alongside the children, the quality of students’
interactions with books during IRT was notably better. In Susan’s (and later
Monica’s) classroom, the assistant Angela played an important role during IRT.
Angela consistently sat and enjoyed books with students. Many children often asked
her to read a book and crowded in close to her, while others sat and focused on their
own book. Susan and Monica both knew that an adult role-model during IRT was
105

important so they each helped facilitate this by spending additional time before
breakfast or circle time to prep materials, and asking the other assistant to help with
the clean up.
When Pablo left NEOS and Margarita became the lead teacher, one of her
struggles was trying to facilitate adult participation during IRT with her partner
teachers and assistants. They were already used to the routines of cleaning and
prepping, and felt that they needed the time to fulfill their required classroom
responsibilities. Several times, Margarita was observed saying to her partners,
“Amigas [Friends], come join me on the rug with the children to read.” She knew the
importance of adult reading role models, and insisted that others join in also, despite
their resistance.
Therefore, the quality of the time students spent reading books during IRT was
clearly related to the presence of a teacher or assistant sitting with the students.
Fieldnotes reflected students spending more time with books, demonstrating better
discipline, and focusing more carefully on the text and pictures when an adult was
present and reading alongside the students. Yet, even implementing a simple routine
such as IRT was not easy. Group dynamics and personal motivation impacted
implementation levels. These challenges are analyzed further in the implementation
section of this chapter.
Exposure to a print-rich environment. Another important opportunity to read
for young children is created when they are immersed in a classroom environment that
is filled with print, in addition to having access to many high quality and enjoyable
106

books in the classroom library. At the start of the emergent literacy research project,
very little print was visible in each classroom. Other than the limited supply of library
books, evidence of print was limited to text being used by the teachers and parents, for
example a sign-in sheet, informational flyers, and a posted schedule. The alphabet
was not posted in either classroom and no writing was posted on the bulletin boards.
Bulletin boards often lacked titles and usually displayed class art projects. Although
student names were written on their cubbies to store their items, the children were not
expected to read their names to find their box since it was also labeled with a picture
that they could quickly recognize, such as a truck, doll, or dinosaur.
One of the initial support activities by the researchers was to help teachers
increase the amount of print displayed in each classroom. Two members of the
research team worked with the teachers to label classroom tools, objects, and areas in
the room using both English and Spanish terms. Teachers developed students’
awareness of the labels when they referred to the words in their daily classroom
activities. An alphabet line was put up and referred to often as the teaching staff
began to introduce the alphabet and specific letters to the students through art, song,
and play. A word wall was started and placed below the alphabet line. This word wall
included the names of students in class. Students began to use the word wall as a
reference tool to find their names and the names of their friends in order to write them
down.
By the fourth year of the project, teachers also began displaying student
writing on the bulletin boards, and facilitating easy access to charted stories and
107

poems created by the researchers, teachers, or students on the shelves and easel. The
writing center became an integral part of the classroom and was used as an area that
invited students to write using a variety of paper supplies and writing tools. Thus, as
compared to the beginning of the project, print was clearly more prevalent in the
students’ classroom environment and used throughout the day during routines and
activities. In addition to helping to supply print resources, the researchers also
provided training and support to help develop an understanding of how these resources
served to create a literacy-rich world in which students were expected to interact as
well as to serve as informal teaching tools.

Writing Demonstrations
Prior to the emergent literacy project, teachers did not demonstrate writing in
front of their students. Therefore, teachers did not model “how to write” or use
writing to further develop the monthly themes they introduced to their students. In
addition, teachers did not have writing supplies, such as chart paper, pocket charts,
sentence strips, a large whiteboard, or an easel, to write in front of their classes. Just
as teachers had found it difficult to control students’ behavior when they listened to
stories being read, instead of being acted out, teachers rarely chose to write in front of
students during the initial year of the intervention project because it was difficult to
monitor students’ attention and participation while also managing to chart a sentence
or story. For example, in one of the initial writing lessons by a teacher, students left
the rug and went to activity areas when the teacher taped up a large piece of paper to
108

begin a writing lesson. Students were not being defiant; they did not know what their
teacher was doing and they had not yet established any writing routines.
By the third year, researchers helped teachers with a specific strand of writing
support activities that promoted the use of teacher-modeled writing about common
experiences or books shared with students, language experience stories, interactive
writing, and independent writing by students. Increased writing lessons by the
teachers paralleled the researchers’ increased efforts to develop this area through
modeling, positive feedback during teacher lessons and about student writing, and
training support at staff development meetings.
Incorporating more writing into circle time increased slowly over time.
Initially, most of the writing was in the form of writing words, especially writing
student names. For example, teachers would write a student’s name one letter at a
time on the white board so students would focus on each letter and try to connect letter
to sound as they tried to be the first to read the name correctly. Similarly, teachers in
both classrooms used interactive writing of selected words, more regularly during the
fourth year of the intervention. Teachers would select a word such as “casa [house]”
and segment the word into syllables and then into individual sounds, and invite
students to write the letter of the sound they heard. Thus, with the teacher’s guidance
students were developing phonemic awareness as they attempted to write words.
Another example of the increased use of writing lessons by the teachers
included the use of sentence frames, or sentences that were written on sentence strips
and had a blank space for an omitted word. Students would suggest a word to go in
109

the blank and the teacher would sound out the word, model how to write it on a card,
and then add it to the sentence. In one lesson, the teacher had been working on a
shared reading of a charted poem, “Me gusta sembrar [I Like to Plant],” for a week
during circle time. She used the poem as part of her unit on seeds and plants. By the
fourth reading, she invited students to help her write an innovation to the poem by
having students suggest other words to end the poem while she modeled sounding out
and writing the word. For example, instead of writing “Me gusta sembrar. Me gusta
sembrar. Todos los días me gusta sembrar. [I like to plant. I like to plant. Every day,
I like to plant.],” they made up sentences like “Me gusta cantar. Me gusta cantar.
Todos los días me gusta cantar [I like to sing. I like to sing. Every day, I like to
sing].”
During the fourth year of the research project, teachers were attempting to use
modeled writing of two to four sentences during circle time at least once a week, in
addition to the writing examples mentioned above. Teachers looked for opportunities
to write sentences about something that interested students so that it would be
purposeful and keep students engaged, such as writing about a field trip, an enjoyable
story, or a letter to Santa.
Opportunities to write – Writing activities. When classrooms were visited at
the beginning of the intervention, researchers did not observe students engaged in self-
initiated writing. Since teachers did not model writing in front of the students,
students were less likely to participate in self-selected writing activities. Furthermore,
as teachers read books to students, they often read simply to entertain, and lost
110

opportunities to develop emergent literacy concepts, such as phonemic awareness and
concepts about print, that would have helped the children develop important
understandings that serve as a foundation when learning to write. Although teachers
could find some writing paper and pencils for students to use, few writing supplies
were visible in either classroom or directly available to students. Neither classroom
had a writing area or center.
As the researchers provided training related to writing, teachers engaged in
more writing for students and with students. During the course of the intervention,
teachers incorporated more writing into the activities that followed the teacher-guided
lessons during circle time. For example, students often were given a letter to cut out,
decorate, and label with a word starting with the target sound. Also, students were
sometimes given a page or journal and asked to draw a picture and write about it.
Teachers often asked students what they wrote, and conventionally wrote their
response at the bottom or back of the page. Therefore, as teachers planned more
writing activities after circle time, students had more opportunities to participate in
both teacher-guided writing activities as well as self-initiated writing at the writing
center.
Opportunities to write – Writing center. As teachers and researchers began to
celebrate students’ attempts at writing, the children felt more motivated to visit the
writing center, and to try to write words on their own. Initially, students visited the
writing center on their own to experiment with the writing materials. During the first
year, teachers and researchers focused on modeling how to use and take care of the
111

materials, and struggled to keep the writing center organized and stocked with writing
materials.
During subsequent years, students took better care of the supplies and visited
the writing center to write and not to play around. More students visited the writing
center when an adult also sat in this area and supported their writing attempts. As
teachers began to model more writing, students were sometimes invited to go to the
writing center during activity time to illustrate the charted story or even to create a
page to be added to a class book that followed a repetitive sentence pattern.
For instance, as one class studied the weather, they read together a poem about
the weather, “What’s the weather?/ What’s the weather?/ What’s the weather
everyone?/ Is it cloudy?/ Is it rainy?/ Is there snow or/ Is there sun?” Then, they
chorally responded to complete a sentence frame, “___________ likes ________
weather “ or “A _________ le gusta ___________.” When students were given the
choice to go to the writing center to create a page to add to the class book about the
weather, several rushed over to the writing center during activity time. They decided
to follow the sentence frame they had just read, in order to write their own sentence.
For example, one student wrote, “Oscar likes sunny weather,” while another student
dictated in Spanish “A Jose le gusta el sol. [Jose enjoys the sun.]”
In summary, this section outlined how the design of the professional
development included (a) increasing the supply of literacy materials to both of the
classrooms, as well as (b) providing training and classroom support to promote the use
of instructional strategies that help teachers develop their students’ emergent literacy.
112

The materials included big books, classroom library books, environmental print,
sociodramatic play areas, writing center, and an emergent literacy curricular
framework. The training included (a) meetings to explain strategies that support the
selected emergent literacy concepts and to share observations of student behaviors that
were evidence of the developing concepts, and (b) support activities in the classroom
by the researchers. The increased use of literacy materials and participation in the
planned training activities helped to support teachers as they made changes in their
teaching practice to incorporate more early literacy activities into their classroom
routines. As summarized below, notable changes occurred between the start of the
intervention and the fourth year of the project.

113

Table 1
Changes in Literacy Teaching and Practice
_________________________________________________________________
Literacy Practice Prior Year 1 Year 4
_________________________________________________________________

Reading demonstrations

Teacher modeling / + +

Concept development - / +
_________________________________________________________________

Opportunities to read

Teacher-guided activities - / +

Independent reading time / + +
_________________________________________________________________

Writing demonstrations
Teacher modeling - - +
_________________________________________________________________

Opportunities to write

Teacher-guided activities - / +

Writing center - + +
_________________________________________________________________
Note. - = Not observed; / = present in one class or limited use; + = present in both
classes.

While results of the intervention demonstrated a steady increase in the amount of
literacy activities in each classroom as well as an increase of student scores on
Concepts about Print testing, the level of implementation of the reading and writing
instructional strategies and activities was not equivalent across both of the target
114

classrooms. The next section will describe some of the factors that influenced the
adoption of emergent literacy instructional practices by the teachers.

Implementation of Professional Development Activities
A variety of challenges affected the implementation of professional
development activities. While the design of the activities was carefully planned to
provide equivalent materials, support, and training to the staff in both classrooms, a
sociocultural perspective maintains that learning depends on the social dynamics
between the people involved. These social factors can explain why packaged
programs often do not have the intended promising results.
As detailed previously, fieldnotes were reviewed, a start list of codes was
generated, and then pattern codes were developed to describe categories of observed
behaviors. A prominent category was related to the interactions of the participants,
and, more specifically, to the social dynamics that affected implementation of the
instructional practices that were the focus of the staff development activities. Three
themes related to the social dynamics emerged: (a) communication, (b) collaboration,
and (c) celebration. Communication refers to the nature of the dialog that occurred
between the teachers, students, researchers, and others. Collaboration refers to the
willingness to work together to accomplish a goal. Celebration refers to positive
feedback in recognition of the team’s effort and accomplishments.
Each of these themes will be described by highlighting examples of how these
forms of social interaction affected the planned design of the professional
115

development that was described earlier in this chapter, including the (a) instructional
tools, (b) training and class support, and (c) literacy teaching. These themes help to
explain why using similar instructional tools, such as the curriculum framework and
literacy materials, and providing similar training and classroom support activities,
often does not lead to similar results.

Communication
Communication is critical for the success of any professional development
effort. What is communicated and how it is communicated shapes the social
interactional context for learning. By examining the interactions of the participants in
this study, talking “with” the participants facilitated the implementation of the staff
development activities more than talking “to” the participants.

Communication about Instructional Tools
The emergent literacy intervention provided various literacy materials to each
of the two classrooms as explained earlier in this chapter. Even though researchers
modeled the use of the materials and explained the importance of students having
direct and easy access to literacy materials in the library and writing center, the use of
the materials at the start of the project was inconsistent.
Communication about instructional tools – Writing center. When the writing
center was set up in each classroom, researchers stocked each center with various
types of paper, and writing materials, as well as modeled its use with the children. In
116

spite of this equivalent level of support by the researchers in the classroom, the use of
the writing center varied in each classroom. For example, Pablo slowed the
integration of the writing center into daily activities by not specifically inviting
students to go to the writing center when they had activity time, and by using the
materials and area for purposes other than to encourage writing. For instance, during a
circle time activity, he led a lesson about objects that float or sink. He dumped the
markers and pencils out of a small tub from the writing center onto the table in order
to use the tub for his floating experiment. Also, he frequently used the writing center
as an extra storage space; it was often covered with art projects that needed space for
the glue to dry, or that needed to be completed. Therefore, the teacher was not
modeling the importance of respecting and taking care of writing center materials.
So, in Pablo’s class, the researchers encouraged the initial use of the writing
center more often than the teacher. During each visit, one of the researchers would
restock supplies and often sit at the table to motivate students to visit the writing
center during choice activities and to motivate students during their early writing
attempts. With time, the teachers in this classroom began to keep the area clear and
better organized, and even invite students to go to the center and praise their writing.
As researchers, we learned a lesson about communication early in the project
with Pablo. Although we had invested time and money to purchase and set up the
writing center, Pablo did not incorporate its use into his program in spite of the
encouragement of the research team during the first two months. He used the
materials for art activities and used the table space as storage, but did not use the
117

writing center as an area to motivate students’ exploration and practice of their
emerging writing skills and understandings. So, our project manager met with him to
remind him of the intended use of the writing center and to ask for his help to keep it
neat and organized. He listened and made little comment. However, after this
meeting and during the next three site visits by the researchers, he asked the classroom
associate and assistant teachers to lead circle time, and he left the room for about 20
minutes. This atypical behavior seemed to indicate his irritation with the researchers
for telling him what he should be doing.
As an experienced early childhood teacher who took much pride in his work,
he was not eager to change his teaching routines. The research team was not on-site in
an evaluative or supervisory capacity. Therefore, we had to continue to communicate
the benefits of exposing students to a print rich environment and to teacher modeling
of reading and writing strategies, to model for the teachers and assistants in class the
behaviors we hoped to encourage, and to directly involve students in literacy activities
so that they would begin to incorporate more reading and writing in their daily
activities. By continuously reinforcing and encouraging emergent literacy activities
and behaviors, for example the use of the writing center, we observed slow, but steady
changes not only in Pablo’s teaching, but also with the other teachers and students in
his classroom.
In contrast, Susan was eager to “properly” use the writing center, and thus
asked researchers to work directly with small groups of students to model how to use
the writing center and care for the materials. While Pablo was ambivalent regarding
118

the use of the center, Susan was appreciative of the new resource, but wanted to keep
it organized and carefully monitor students’ use of the center in order to take care of it.
Although we had explained that the writing center should be a resource that students
could choose to use, she asked if the teacher needed to sit at the center when the
students used it.
Another example that demonstrates Susan’s concern with classroom
management of a writing center that was intended to be fun and exploratory, and not a
teacher-directed workstation, occurred when a student asked one of the researchers to
name some of the items at the center. The student had never seen a pencil sharpener
before. When he learned what it was, he called over a group of his friends to show off
what he had just discovered. Susan saw this and was worried that they would break
the sharpener and put it away in the cabinet. Therefore, the research team realized
they needed to continue to communicate the purpose of the center with the teachers
and help support its use in order to encourage students to engage in more self-initiated
writing explorations.
Communication about instructional tools – Books. Another example that
illustrates how communication by the teachers affected the level of use of literacy
materials involved access to classroom library books. Each year, the researchers
purchased the same set of books for each of the two classrooms. The books were
purchased to replace some of the books that were torn or were not age appropriate.
The goal was to increase the number of interesting books directly available to students
as they sat on the rug during activity time.
119

During one lesson, Pablo began to read a story. Since students were
accustomed to his animated story telling, several students were inattentive as he
started to read the text and ask questions. He warned them, “Voy empezar de nuevo.
Se van a aburrir. Cada vez lo voy a repetir hasta que escuchen bien. [I am going to
start again. You will get bored. Each time (you don’t listen) I will repeat (what I am
reading) until you listen carefully].” As he continued the story, he began to improvise
his version of the text by acting as different characters, using different voices, and
adding sound effects. Therefore, he reverted to entertaining students and minimized
students’ exposure to the academic language of children’s books.
In Pablo’s class, his assistant Maria spent the majority of her time supervising
students and trying to maintain discipline and order. She was aware that many
students came from homes without children’s books, yet instead of immersing the
students in the new books, she would put the new books away when she saw students
not handling the books carefully. She even checked in students’ cubbies to make sure
they were not stealing the new books.
During a visit in the first year of the intervention, Pablo asked Maria to read a
book. Before she began to read, she said, “Primero vamos hablar de este libro. ¡Mira
que pasó! [First, we will talk about this book. Look what happened!].” She showed
a book with the cover torn off and ripped pages, and asked, “¿Que pasa a los libros
cuando no los cuidan? [What happens to books when you don’t take care of them?]”
A student answered “Los libros lloran. [The books cry].” Maria smiled and agreed,
and compared it to pulling hair so that books say ouch. She told the students that it
120

was important to take care of books because they teach us how to read. However, she
warned that if they mistreated the books they would be benched for 10 minutes during
playtime outside, and they would not get to read a book later. So, although she
acknowledged that books were important tools for learning to read, she also associated
their misuse with a negative consequence; thus, reading books was not always
associated with fun and enjoyment.
As more books were purchased each year, Monica put some books away.
However, her purpose was to frequently rotate a set of books into classroom
circulation so that students would be motivated to read as she added a new supply of
books. She also reminded students to take care of books, but did so in a more
nurturing way. She praised students for putting books away nicely and even
purchased a set of “special” books with her own money so that students would
understand that the teacher trusted them to borrow her books when she put them out.
During one inventory of classroom books by the researchers, Pablo had 112
books on the shelves, which included 97 books in English, 10 books written in
Spanish, and 5 bilingual English/Spanish books. The research team had purchased
most of the books during the past 3 years; the other books included many books that
were too difficult even to be used as a read aloud book. Many of the books were torn.
In contrast, Monica displayed 59 books, including 39 written in English, 3 in Spanish,
2 in both English and Spanish, and 15 “special” books from her own collection.
Although she had fewer books on display than Pablo, her books were more age
appropriate and included books written by popular young children’s authors and books
121

that she had purchased or had donated. She had three more tubs of books that she
rotated into circulation.

Communication to Facilitate Training and Class Support

Communication between the researchers, teachers, and staff was critical to the
success of the staff development effort. The design of the professional development
included regularly scheduled teacher meetings and in-classroom support. In
recognition of the important role of the assistants in each classroom, the original
design also included them in the staff development activities. The positive nature of
the professional conversations that occurred during the training sessions, as well as
listening and responding to the needs of the participants in the study, supported the
implementation of the targeted reading and writing strategies and activities.
Communication to facilitate training and class support – Staffing. As part of a
4-year longitudinal study, the research team benefited from the relationships that were
established by being in each classroom on average once per week from September to
June each year. As we learned about the needs and beliefs of each participating staff
member, we adjusted our approach during in-class support activities.
Yet, as researchers we were interested in looking at the impact of our staff
development effort in increasing the amount of observed literacy activities and on
student achievement as measured by our selected literacy assessments. We examined
results both as a yearly cohort that included both classes, as well as comparisons
between the two classes of 4-year-olds. Thus, we understood that our individual
122

relationships with each participant could vary based on a number of factors such as
personality, teaching beliefs, gender, and culture, but we were committed to plan
equivalent levels of support through regularly scheduled meetings and class visits in
both classrooms.
During the study, the researchers worked with a total of four different lead
teachers, and 12 assistants or associate teachers. In terms of personnel, Susan’s class
experienced the least amount of change. Once Susan left NEOS, Monica replaced her
as the lead teacher. During the four years, Susan and Monica worked with only three
other assistants, including Angela, Janet, and Maria. Pablo participated in the study
for nearly three years. When he left, he was replaced by Margarita. Pablo and
Margarita worked with nine other assistants or associates. Thus, high staff turnover in
Pablo’s class impacted consistent communication and the progress of staff
development efforts.
Communication to facilitate training and class support – Schedules. In
response to the need to strengthen communication, the research project director
created and distributed a calendar of research activities. Initially, the schedule was
developed to communicate to administration and teachers when the researchers
planned to be on-site and in the classrooms. However, the monthly calendar of
activities was soon revised to include the researchers’ specific planned classroom
support activities such as observation, assessment, or modeling a strategy, like shared
reading. We also distributed the schedules to the assistants to make sure we
123

maintained open communication and conveyed the message that we recognized them
as teachers and that our classroom support was not only limited to the lead teachers.
Also, when another research assistant was added to the team to help with
classroom support and observations, the focus of classroom demonstrations became
more specific relative to the month’s curricular focus. Therefore, by the third year of
the project, the schedule of activities became much more detailed and included each of
the two researchers’ planned activities that supported both the monthly curricular
focus and each classroom’s selected theme. These planners were developed with input
by the teachers and then shared with all members of the research team and classroom.
Communication to facilitate training and class support – Bilingual staff.
Ensuring a bilingual research team who could dialog with each teacher and assistant in
her/his dominant language during training meetings and classroom support activities
also strengthened communication. While the lead teachers were clearly proficient in
English, many of the assistants and almost all the students were more dominant in
Spanish. Consequently, our training meetings at the start of the project were
conducted in English, but soon became bilingual meetings in which each participant
could share ideas in either English or Spanish. I began to lead the meetings in Spanish
and switched to English to respond to questions or ideas when they were shared in
English.
By making the effort to communicate with assistants in their primary language,
we reinforced their important role as teachers and the value of building upon a child’s
primary language as a foundation to enrich his/her English language and literacy
124

skills. The only two staff members who worked with the 4-year-olds throughout the
entire research project were the assistants, Angela and Maria. Thus, they had
enormous potential for shaping the literacy activities in the classroom and helping to
support the lead teachers in their efforts to increase the early literacy of their students.
During one training meeting, Angela shared how she appreciated the way we
respected and included assistants as equals to the teachers. She said, “Que siempre
tratan de tener en cuenta a todos [You always try to be mindful of everyone].”
Maria also shared a similar sentiment when she said that NEOS administration
seemed to be losing touch with the teachers and children; for example she said
administration no longer invited the teaching staff for treats whenever they had
meetings. She told the researchers that she appreciated the lunch we provided during
our meetings and the supportive climate we created to share ideas. She often eagerly
shared her ideas during the teacher meetings. As she felt more validated in her role as
a teacher of reading and writing, she also increased her efforts to communicate and
support the researchers in the classrooms. She looked for opportunities to share the
work samples she collected, and often tried to redirect students to work on reading or
writing with a researcher during free choice activities.

Communication to Support Literacy Teaching and Practice

Since each of the classes had a lead teacher and one or more assistants,
communication between the staff members affected the level of implementation of
emergent literacy practices. While our research team planned specific staff
125

development meeting times and classroom support schedules, communication within
teaching teams in each classroom was not consistent. For example, since teacher
Susan did not speak Spanish, she relied on her assistant, Angela, to frequently
translate what she said to the children. So, when Susan attempted to implement shared
reading of big books, Angela would translate the story into Spanish so students would
understand. Thus, it was more difficult for Susan to develop confidence in using this
strategy since students responded more to the assistant than to her. So, although Susan
made the attempt to implement the strategies the research team suggested, such as
supporting a more print rich environment by labeling items in the classroom and
increasing children’s access to books and the writing materials at the writing center,
she struggled to implement the modeled teaching strategies.
Coordinating planning time was another issue that affected communication
within the teaching staff and the consistent implementation of the emergent literacy
strategies suggested by the research team. When Monica joined NEOS as Susan’s
assistant, they developed clear guidelines for their morning literacy block of time.
They planned for ten minutes of independent reading time that always included at least
one adult, usually the assistant Angela, who modeled reading with the children. Then
they planned for 20 to 30 minutes of structured circle time that reinforced a monthly
theme and included shared reading of a big book, poem, or song, a read-aloud in either
English or Spanish, as well as explanation of other activities such as an art project.
During the four years of the research project, they steadily increased the amount of
literacy activities included during circle time and during students’ activity time.
126

Susan and Monica had developed a schedule and routines that facilitated their
planning and communication. If either Susan or Monica were on a break or out of the
classroom when the researchers brought a new set of books or a schedule of
professional development and research activities, the other teacher would make sure
she shared a copy with the teacher who was not present. They allocated some time
each week to discuss general plans and responsibilities for leading circle time.
Therefore, they knew what materials they needed for a lesson, and made the effort to
prepare all materials prior to independent reading time.
In contrast, consistent implementation of the strategies and activities that were
shared during the intervention’s staff development was more difficult in Pablo’s class.
Communication between his staff members was more limited. Administration had
placed an extra group of children in Pablo’s class while a new child development
center was being completed. With 32 students, Pablo had to work with an associate
teacher, and one or two assistants. Pablo took the lead during circle time in
approximately 85% of the lessons observed in his classroom by the researchers.
In regards to following a lesson plan, he told us that it was important to him to
“go with the flow.” Therefore, he did not depend on planning with his classroom
peers. The two assistants helped him with the activities he scheduled and with
discipline. The associate teacher occasionally taught a short segment of the circle
time, or led an activity with the extra group of students who were assigned to her.
Even with an additional associate teacher, Pablo did not communicate to his assistants
the value and need to sit with students during independent reading time. Instead, the
127

assistants’ priority was to clean up after breakfast or prepare materials for the follow-
up activities.
Evelyn, one of the associate teachers who worked with Pablo, was eager to
learn how to incorporate more early literacy activities, including more book reading,
and not just storytelling. She observed and asked for input from the researchers as we
modeled how to develop various literacy concepts during book reading. She tried to
implement the strategies when she worked with students. However, due to the lack of
specific communication about daily instructional plans with Pablo, finding
opportunities to teach concepts during reading activities was difficult.
For example, during two different visits, we observed Evelyn as she planned to
share a book that she had checked out from the library and that connected to the class’
monthly theme. Yet even though it was “her turn” to lead circle time, Pablo still led
the morning activities. Evelyn had to wait until he finished before she could read her
story to the students. Students were more fidgety and less attentive by the time she
was able to read the book she had selected. During another observation, she used her
break time to prepare name cards to take attendance and to play a game to help
students develop more automatic name recognition. Yet, Evelyn had to remind Pablo
to give her ten minutes at the end of his lesson to do the name activity they had
discussed previously, since he was getting ready to dismiss the children to the activity
areas.
Ironically, although Evelyn was motivated to learn and implemented more
literacy activities than Pablo, he told researchers that he was trying to show Evelyn
128

how to be more flexible and not be so structured. He said, “she wants to see things in
certain ways, but you need to see what the kids want.” Overall, observations of both
Pablo’s and Susan’s classes demonstrated that the level of communication affected the
consistency of literacy activities planned in each classroom.

Collaboration
In addition to the communication between staff members, researchers, and
students, the level of collaboration, or the willingness to work together to accomplish
a goal, also affected the implementation of the strategies learned during teacher
meetings and during classroom support activities.

Collaboration to Develop Instructional Tools
Collaboration to develop instructional tools – Shared reading materials. The
main instructional strategy included in the design of the emergent literacy research
project was shared reading of big books. At the start of the project, neither class had
any big books. Each year, part of the project funding was devoted to purchasing some
big books. We tried to purchase big books that were related to class themes, written
(not translated) in Spanish; or engaging, repetitive, simple-to-understand texts in
English. Due to the high cost of big books, the research team purchased one copy of
various titles and gave a list of titles to the teachers in each of the classes, and divided
the books between the two rooms. However, the research team noticed that storage of
the large books presented a problem in each class, and that the teachers tended to use
129

only the books being kept in their own class. In addition, Pablo rarely used the big
books. The big books seemed too bulky for him to hold, read, and act out at the same
time. In contrast, Susan and Monica were observed to use the big books more
consistently and frequently.
Therefore, I began to collaborate with Pablo to develop “teacher-made” books
that could be used for shared reading. I had closely observed Pablo and noticed that
he usually dramatized the books he shared with students, and frequently did not read
the text. Consequently, he was not developing students’ concepts about print, or
developing their understanding of sound-symbol relationships. Yet, during one
observed lesson, he read the text of Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Bill Martin, Jr., and
students were attentive as he read. Therefore, he did not revert to retelling or
dramatization of this book.
I began to work with Pablo to develop books that used a pattern similar to
Brown Bear, Brown Bear with simple, repetitive, and predictable text; and that were
also aligned to his monthly themes. These books were written in English and had text
that was large enough for students to see, but the book was small enough for the
teacher to hold with one hand. I also developed a smaller version that could be
photocopied for students so that they could “read” on their own and take a copy home.
Copies were also shared with Susan. The research team documented Pablo reading
these books to his class each month. He also placed a copy on the bookshelves for
students to read during activity or independent reading time. Some of the books
included: Counting Shapes, Feelings, Five Little Pumpkins, Five Senses, My
130

Halloween Book, My Body, Little Seed, Our Book About Shapes, Our Classroom
Friends, My Santa Book, My Ocean Book, My Farm Book, Weather, and My
Thanksgiving Book.
In addition, I began to collaborate with both teachers to develop other shared
reading materials. For example, we charted some of the songs the teachers were
already using with their students, as well as simple, rhyming poems in English or
Spanish that connected with each teacher’s theme. These texts could be used to
develop phonemic awareness and to help children begin to understand the alphabetic
principle by drawing attention to sound-symbol relationships such as beginning letters,
etc. Some of the poems and songs included: The ABC Song, Pin-uno [Pin-one],
Santa, Santa; Pescaditos saltan [Jump Little Fish], Summer, Una mosca parada en la
pared [A Fly Standing on the Wall], Los sapitos [The Little Frogs], I am Special,
Days of the Week; Bate, bate chocolate [Stir, Stir the Chocolate]; AAA Mi abuelita me
dará [A, A, A, My Grandmother Will Give Me…], and Five Little Pumpkins. These
poems were charted on poster paper and added to a big book of poems for each
classroom.
The teachers appreciated the collaboration with the researchers to create these
sets of customized books and poems. In addition, we cooperated to develop a
collection of poems that the students’ parents were taught by their own parents, and
wanted to share with their children. In October 1999, the research team planned a
parent information meeting and invited parents to work with their child to write or
dictate a favorite poem or song they wanted to share. When the poems were combined
131

to make a class book, students were eager to share “their” page with their peers. The
children frequently selected this special collection of poems during independent
reading time, or asked their teacher to read it during circle time.
Another example of the collaborative effort between the researchers and
teachers to develop instructional materials was the production of an ABC book that
included students’ pictures and their handwritten names. The ABC book reinforced
the teachers’ efforts to make sure students could write their names. Copies of the
ABC book were presented to students when they graduated at the end of the year.
During the final year of the project, we modified the ABC book to include students’
self-written names, pictures, and a wish for their future written by each child’s parent.
Overall, the collaboration between researchers and teachers to develop these
customized texts facilitated the implementation of shared reading and the teaching of
concepts that were included in the emergent literacy curriculum and that were
discussed at our monthly staff development meetings.
Collaboration to develop instructional tools – Emergent literacy curriculum
framework. During a focus group during the final year of the project, the teaching
staff was asked about the value of using the emergent literacy curriculum framework
and about suggestions to make it better. Overall, they thought it was helpful and
suggested ways to make it more useful and practical for others. They suggested that
we should continue to include (a) the definition of each concept, (b) a description of
observable student behaviors that would demonstrate learning the concept, (c)
132

examples of how to develop the concept through modeling and guidance of the teacher
and (d) self-initiated explorations by the student.
In addition, they proposed including (a) pictures that show “what it looks like,”
for example pictures of the classroom environment, a teacher using the strategy, and
student work samples; (b) comments from teachers and parents as a type of testimonial
to the positive impact of the program; and (c) more detailed information on the
strategies they felt were most effective, including shared reading of big books, songs,
and poems; storytelling, retelling, rereading, read-aloud, teacher-modeled writing,
interactive writing, language experience stories, book making, word walls, and flash
cards.
Initially, teachers had expected the curriculum to be a teacher’s manual that
had specific lessons, but as the project progressed they understood that the framework
was designed to provide guiding concepts, strategies, and ideas in order to allow
flexibility. Thus, teachers could build on their own strengths and adjust their teaching
based on the knowledge of the needs of their students. We believed that the strength
of this program was that it was not a generic one-size-fits-all literacy program, but
instead a research-based scaffold used to build a learning community.

Collaboration to Strengthen Training and Class Support

Collaboration to strengthen training and class support – Administration. The
role of administration in facilitating training was crucial. Although NEOS
administrators were supportive of the project in general, several examples illustrate
133

some of the difficulties we encountered as we tried to establish a strong staff
development program.
As the principal investigator and our project manager met with the CEO of
NEOS to discuss the start up of the emergent literacy intervention project, the CEO
expressed an interest in supporting our research effort with the hope of promoting
what is best for the highly at-risk children who attended NEOS, as well as helping
NEOS to be recognized as a national model. However, she wanted to avoid negative
publicity, for example to use our research to highlight controversial issues such as the
politics of bilingual education. In order to help NEOS students to be more successful
in elementary school, she also favored more direct instruction to help the children
develop skills that would help them as they started kindergarten.
Her views differed from the point of view of the Children’s Services Director
who wanted a more exploratory, developmental curriculum with limited teacher
modeling and instruction. The director expressed some hesitancy in working with the
research team and told the principal investigator “not to let any of those graduate
students to begin fiddling with it [her proposal for the curriculum].” She also was
bothered when she was asked if she was planning to attend a teacher focus group since
it could influence what teachers said. The director replied, “Yes, I need to be there. I
need to know what’s going on with my staff. I have to make sure they are going to
cooperate with you.” She added that some teachers “just have units, some just 6, some
up to 24, I’m not putting them down, that’s good and all, but they don’t necessarily
know as much as they think they know…like maybe they want to order some
134

materials, and they’re not developmentally appropriate; they may think they’re
developmentally appropriate, but they’re not.” Although she expressed a willingness
to cooperate and facilitate the research project, she seemed reluctant to truly
collaborate and build on the ideas of the teachers and researchers.
Scheduling the training meetings depended on the collaboration of
administration and the research team. During the initial year of the project, the Child
Services Director facilitated some of the research activities, such as arranging meeting
rooms or planning for classroom coverage for the teachers to attend the meetings. We
had decided to plan monthly meetings separate from the regular NEOS staff meetings
since we were targeting our staff development efforts with the 4-year-olds’ teachers
and we wanted to focus the conversation around early literacy concepts and strategies.
However, the project director cancelled nearly 50% of our meetings during the first
year of the project; she often advised us that she was not able to provide coverage for
the teachers to attend since they were short staffed.
When this director left NEOS, the researchers began to collaborate with a new
director. She demonstrated the role of administration in facilitating our research
activities by showing greater effort to arrange coverage for the staff of the 4-year-olds
to attend training. Fewer meetings were cancelled. If there was insufficient staff to
provide coverage to release the teaching staff of the 4-year-olds, she allowed the
researchers and teaching staff to meet in the classroom as the children took their
afternoon nap, or, in some cases, she allowed the assistants from both classrooms to
join the meeting for at least the first half-hour before returning to class to supervise the
135

children. Once, she even helped to supervise a classroom in order to allow an
assistant to attend. She showed more interest in the project and attended a couple of
meetings, at least for a few minutes. Therefore, a stronger commitment by
administrators to help facilitate training made a positive difference.
Collaboration to strengthen training and class support – Training meetings.
An example of how collaboration between the researchers and teachers strengthened
the implementation of the staff development activities was the process of developing
and using the emergent literacy curriculum as part of training meetings. During the
teacher’s first focus group meeting, the research team communicated the importance
of building on the teachers’ experience and knowledge about the students and
community. The curriculum would not be a manual of scripted lessons; instead it
would provide a scaffold that highlighted some important concepts related to emergent
literacy including, environmental print awareness, concepts of print, story sense,
phonemic awareness, speech-print match, and control of reading and writing. We
agreed to model some activities, but would often ask for teacher input to make the
curriculum more user-friendly and helpful.
Initially, the first few meetings were focused on explaining the components of
the project and developing an understanding about emergent literacy theory.
However, teacher input suggested the need to make the training meetings more
practical. We shifted from presenters who informed and taught the teachers, to
facilitators and collaborators who presented an emergent literacy topic, explained a
strategy, but also invited teacher input and discussion of examples they witnessed in
136

their classrooms. We discussed how teachers could model reading and writing to
highlight different emergent literacy concepts, as we selected one as a focus each
month. We explained the concept, discussed a reading and writing strategy that could
be used to teach the concept, and focused the lessons we modeled in the classroom and
our feedback on deepening the teachers’ understanding of the concept.
In order to actively involve all of the teachers and assistants during meetings as
well as to develop their ability to observe the developmental literacy growth of their
students, they were asked to select a target student. Each month they were asked to
observe and collect a work sample that demonstrated the student’s developing
understanding of the concept. For example, when we discussed the concept of story
sense, one assistant shared that she saw her student open up a big book on the rug and
make up a story using the pictures. She also shared an example of scribbled letters
that the student wrote while he made up a story that started, “Había una vez… [Once
upon a time…].”
When we surveyed the teaching staff and asked if it was helpful to focus
during the year on a specific child to share his/her progress and work, they agreed it
was beneficial. Each teacher and assistant was able to share a specific example of
what her focus child was able to accomplish that year. Monica said she wished she
could closely observe all students, not just one child, because each child is different
and it was important to build on their individual strengths. She continued, “As
teachers we have developed also. We have the ability to see their development. We
137

present activities to the children when we know they are ready. We can see their
progress.”
Collaboration between the teaching staff and the researchers was needed to
ensure implementation of the strategies and ideas that were shared during training
meetings. Teacher input was valued and collected informally during meetings, and
formally with questionnaires and interviews. When asked what changes the teaching
staff had observed in their interactions with the research team after the first year of the
project, comments from each of the participants were positive:
• “Hay mejor comunicación y se trabaja mas en equipo [There is better
communication and there is more work done as a team].”

• “We are a team following the same purpose. There seems to be a
commitment on both USCiera team and NEOS staff.”

• “I have viewed a change in our relationship. We are now working closer
together in making this project a success.”

• “I got to know them. I was more open-minded to discuss issues. We became
closer. Not separate research team - teachers. We became more integrated like
friends.”

• “The most valuable thing to my students and myself has been the interaction
with the research team members.”

The positive comments reflect positive interactions with the research team during
training and classroom support activities, which helped to promote further
collaborations during literacy teaching.

138

Collaboration to Enhance Literacy Teaching and Practice
Unlike an elementary classroom in which the classroom teacher is clearly more
responsible for the planning, delivery, and outcomes of instruction with her students,
even if she works with an assistant; an early childhood classroom relies much more on
the close collaboration of the teacher and assistants. Since ECE regulations often set
the maximum ratio of children to adults, and funding often limits the number of
certified teachers in each classroom, a teacher will most likely work with one or two
assistants. Therefore, the level of their collaboration affects the implementation of the
strategies and ideas shared during staff development activities.
Collaboration between teachers and assistants to enhance literacy teaching
and practice. The research team observed differences in the level of collaboration
between the teaching staff in each of the two classrooms of 4-year-olds, which
impacted the level of implementation of strategies to promote early literacy. As the
lead teacher, Monica worked closely with her assistants, Angela and Janet. She
demonstrated an eagerness to try new strategies and skill in planning lessons that
developed emergent literacy skills. Her assistants respected her hard work and
dedication to the children.
The level of their collaboration and communication was evident, even when
Monica was out of the classroom. Angela could easily lead the lesson because she
knew what Monica had planned, and was familiar with the opening routines Monica
used during circle time. Monica considered leaving NEOS as she worked on her
teaching credential and her bachelor’s degree during the third year of the intervention.
139

Yet, she decided to stay one more year so she could complete her bachelor’s degree
and continue to work with Angela. She said that if administration moved Angela to
another room, she would probably leave.
Another example that illustrates the importance of collaboration between
teacher and assistants is the difficulties Margarita faced when she replaced Pablo as
the lead teacher of one of the 4-year-olds classes. In spite of her own eagerness to
learn and apply what she learned from the training meetings and classroom support
activities, Margarita had difficulties collaborating with the other associate teacher and
assistant working in her classroom. Since 32 students were still assigned to the room,
8-10 students were formally assigned to the associate teacher. Due to space
limitations, the two teachers had made plans to work with all the students, rather then
splitting them into two groups for circle time.
Differences in teaching style and implementation of the emergent literacy
practices affected the level of collaboration. For example, Margarita tried rotating
responsibility for leading circle time with the associate teacher and assistant, but
noticed that the others rarely planned or prepared carefully for the lesson. She was
worried that her students would fall behind and not learn the literacy concepts she was
trying to develop. She even asked one of the researchers to develop a planner that she
could use with her peers to ensure more collaboration and lesson planning.
Collaboration between teachers to enhance literacy teaching and practice.
The collaboration between Monica and Margarita is an example of how collaboration
between teachers supported the level of implementation of the emergent literacy
140

activities proposed by the research team. Before becoming the lead 4-year-old teacher
in one of the classrooms, Margarita taught the 3-year-olds. Since her students were
included in the book loan component of the project and showed eagerness in checking
out books at NEOS, she was interested in learning more about the research project.
She often had lunch with Monica to learn about what she was doing. In addition,
Margarita was observed several times using her break time to sit and observe Monica
teach for a few minutes.
When Pablo left NEOS, Margarita replaced him as the lead teacher with the 4-
year-olds. She worked closely with Monica to develop a list of monthly themes, and
to learn several of the literacy routines used in Monica’s classroom. So, although
Margarita worked with the research team for only one year, she had previously
collaborated with Monica to learn some of the strategies to implement with her class
of 3-year-olds. Thus, many of the students who were now in her class of 4-year-olds
were exposed to early literacy-focused activities for 2 years. This could explain why,
in spite of the lack of collaboration between the staff in Margarita’s class, her class
scored slightly higher on the Concepts of Print testing than Monica’s class during
initial testing for the fourth cohort in the intervention. Therefore, collaboration
between teachers in different classrooms had a positive impact on the implementation
of early literacy activities.
Overall, both the level of collaboration between the teaching staff and
researchers, as well as between staff members in a classroom impacted the
implementation of early literacy strategies. Both Monica and Margarita were
141

committed and dedicated to promoting early literacy, but the level of collaboration
with their teammates influenced their work.

Celebration
The support and recognition of the teachers’ effort to put into practice the early
literacy strategies and activities demonstrated by the research team also influenced the
level of implementation of those activities. While celebration of teachers’
accomplishments reinforced our professional development activities, lack of
acknowledgement hindered the efforts. Several examples of how the level of support
and recognition given to the teaching staff enhanced or hindered the impact of staff
development activities highlight the importance and need for an instructional support
system.

Celebrating the Use of Instructional Tools
Celebrating the use of literacy materials. Enthusiastic use of instructional
materials motivated students. As the researchers purchased new books for each
classroom, they often led a lesson to introduce some of the titles to the children. The
students showed their excitement by being very attentive, clapping and cheering for
favorite books, and crowding the book area to find one of the new books during
activity time. Fieldnotes consistently documented students rushing toward researchers
as they entered the classroom during independent reading time, and urging them to
read a favorite book.
142

Similarly, when teachers showed excitement about using literacy materials,
students often were eager to use the materials on their own without being prompted.
For example, when I collaborated with the teachers to make big and little books that
supported the teachers’ monthly themes, teachers were motivated to share the books
with their students, made copies of the little books for students to take home, and left a
copy on the book shelf for students to read. Although the books consisted of simple
rhyming text and black and white line drawings, the teachers’ enthusiasm motivated
students to reread the teacher-made books.
Celebrating teacher input about literacy materials. Teachers shared their
appreciation of being asked by the researchers for their input about the selection of
instructional materials to be purchased for their classrooms and for the Book Loan
program. With input from the teachers and assistants, we developed three wish lists
with a total of over 85 titles and topics they wanted for their classrooms. While the
researchers wanted to purchase books that were culturally sensitive and written in
Spanish, teachers also suggested the purchase of books they wanted to support their
monthly themes, such as books about families, plants, and colors; and books about the
favorite characters students enjoyed.
Unfortunately, the teachers’ input was not frequently sought to guide
classroom purchases by administration at NEOS. Teachers had limited supply
accounts so that they rarely had input in the purchase of books for the classroom.
Other than the books provided by the researchers, most of the other books in the
classroom were donated by individuals or outside organizations, and thus were not
143

selected by the teachers. When the principal investigator of our research project
shared the importance of flooding each classroom with children’s books and the
limited funds of the project to continue to purchase large quantities of books each
year, one administrator promised to help purchase books for each classroom. Even
though we shared the list we had developed with the teachers, only a handful of books
were purchased by NEOS due to limited funds and the paperwork involved.
Celebrating teacher input about the emergent literacy curriculum framework.
Teachers also felt validated and respected when asked to provide input to shape the
emergent literacy curricular framework that was initially developed by the research
team. In response to a questionnaire, all four of the teachers and assistants who were
present at the meeting responded that they “strongly agreed” that the emergent literacy
curriculum was very helpful, and three “agreed” that curriculum would be more useful
if more time was spent to discuss specific strategies and examples of student work. As
a result, the early literacy curriculum framework was modified to include examples of
both teacher behaviors that promoted a specific concept, such as phonemic awareness,
and student behaviors that indicated development of the concept, such as making up a
rhyming word.
As each cohort of students who participated in the research project
demonstrated stronger literacy achievement as measured on Concepts of Print testing
and writing assessments, the results were celebrated by the researchers in various
publications (e.g., Yaden et al., 2000; Yaden & Tam, 2000; Yaden, Madrigal, & Tam,
2003; Yaden & Brassell, 2002), and by administration in NEOS newsletters and
144

publications. While the teaching staff felt validated in their efforts to promote early
literacy by the research team, they felt that administration was not really aware of
what they were doing. For example, Margarita, who had been with the NEOS
organization for 10 years, said,
“Having experienced past philosophies at our agency at NEOS, I remember
very clearly that we were not allowed to teach children, but simply encourage
children’s development in general. I’ve always known in my heart that
children can learn more. And I remember doing some of these teaching
strategies even with toddlers…the [research] project has simply helped me
confirm and given me the okay to teach and enjoy it. Children can actually
learn important concepts of reading and writing and enjoy it as well.”

During the fourth year of the research project, both of the lead teachers expressed
concern about the lack of support for their work to promote early literacy from the on-
site administrators.
Another supervisor joined NEOS during the last year and a half of the project.
She had strong expectations of what a developmental curriculum should look like, and
quickly began to suggest changes at the child development center. Although she met
with the principal investigator of the emergent literacy intervention to learn about the
project, she did not investigate how the emergent literacy curricular framework that
the research team had developed in collaboration with the teaching staff during the
past 3 years, was being used.
The teachers asked one of the researchers to explain the project and curriculum
framework in more detail to the new site supervisor after she asked the teachers to
complete lesson plans that required a more detailed focus on various domains such as
art, music, health/nutrition, and movement, and less focus on reading and writing. In
145

contrast, our project acknowledged the importance of other curricular areas, but
emphasized the centrality of early literacy as a scaffold upon which the other areas
would extend, especially for students who are highly at-risk of failing school. The site
supervisor also required teachers to complete very time-consuming observations in
each of these domains for all of their students. In comparison, the research team had
asked teachers to closely observe the reading and writing development of one student
in order to promote and deepen teachers’ observational skills and to look for examples
to be shared during training meetings.
In response to the mandates of this supervisor, teachers expressed their
dissatisfaction with administration. They felt that administration really did not know
what they did in the classroom and therefore did not acknowledge or celebrate their
work. After sharing the lesson plans and the student developmental profile she was
expected to complete, one teacher said, “Ya me voy con ustedes cuando termine el
proyecto [I am leaving with you when the project ends],” and asked for a letter of
recommendation.
Ironically, the research team often celebrated Monica’s work in using the
strategies and concepts included in the curriculum framework to promote the early
literacy skills of all her students; yet, she shared that the site supervisor had told her
that she “wasn’t too happy with the organization of her circle time, etc., but said ‘It’s
OK, I won’t change it now.’” Monica said that the supervisor is very developmental
and wanted to see a more Montessori-like program. Monica also stated, “the problem
is that when a supervisor changes things, they eventually leave and then people don’t
146

know what is expected.” Therefore, instead of feeling supported in their use of
literacy materials and curriculum by administration, the teaching staff felt ignored or
misunderstood. In fact, during 207 site visits over the course of 4 years, I
documented only two 5-10 minute observations of the morning literacy block; more
specifically, two different supervisors each conducted one observation. Thus, site
supervisors could easily have played a larger role in supporting a shift at NEOS to
include more literacy activities.

Celebrating the Impact of Training and Class Support
Providing on-going training in an early childhood setting is difficult. So,
although teachers did not feel like the supervisors were directly celebrating their work,
the support of administration was essential to implementing on-going training
meetings. The training meetings were an integral part of the intervention project. The
meetings allowed the researchers to share emergent literacy research and strategies, as
well as to learn from the teaching staff and benefit from their experiences as ECEC
educators working in this community with children from high poverty, limited
English-speaking families.
The meetings became an important celebration of our collaborative work. The
first few meetings were more formal with the researchers presenting an overview of
the project and theory. Information flowed mostly from researcher to teacher. Over
time, the meetings became less formal and encouraged more discussion and sharing.
Since we met during lunch, NEOS occasionally provided food for the meetings, but
147

the research team soon committed to bringing the food. We saw it as a way to
celebrate and thank the teachers for their hard work and to encourage friendlier, and
less formal conversations than might be associated with a federally funded university
research project. With primary responsibility for leading the training meetings, I often
drove home after observing in a classroom in the morning to pick up some homemade
food for the meetings. We even took Monica and Angela to a local restaurant to eat
and have our meeting when the staff from the other class could not attend.
During the meetings, one emergent literacy concept was discussed. The
researchers would provide an overview of the strategy we would be modeling in class,
and a schedule of activities. As stated earlier in this chapter, teachers and assistants
were expected to bring a sample of one target student’s reading and writing that
demonstrated the concept we had discussed at the last meeting. The researchers
celebrated and praised the teachers’ work samples, and also often shared additional
examples of how the teachers modeled the targeted emergent literacy concept during
lessons observed by the researchers.
Our research team also tried to reinforce the teaching staff’s role as “kid
watchers” who could recognize signs of students’ early reading and writing
development. For example, at one meeting, Margarita and the associate teacher, Amy,
shared writing samples. As the lead teacher, Margarita was consciously trying to
incorporate frequent opportunities for students to write. She encouraged students to
write their ideas in a journal. Amy had a daughter in kindergarten and often wanted to
share a writing worksheet similar to what her daughter would do in kindergarten.
148

Without providing negative feedback, I tried to guide the discussion to reflect on what
the teachers could learn about the student’s writing development from the samples.
Margarita’s open-ended writing sample showed that the student was writing left to
write, top to bottom; and could write beginning consonants and some ending sounds.
Amy’s sample showed that her student was able to copy a word within the provided
lines. While Margarita’s example seemed more messy, the discussion about the
sample served to celebrate the accomplishments of the child and indirectly praise the
teacher’s efforts to promote writing, not just copying.
Another example that illustrates how “celebrations” helped to promote and
sustain the training effort was the invitation of two lead teachers, Monica and
Margarita, to participate in the National Reading Conference in Austin, Texas in
November 2000. Based on the experience of working with the teaching staff during
the 4 years of the emergent literacy intervention, the research team recognized that the
impact of the staff development activities strongly depended on teacher buy-in and
collaboration to follow-through with the activities. For example, although Margarita
only participated in the staff development activities during the final year of the project
and had the fewest number of formal college credits as compared to the other three
lead teachers, she demonstrated stronger buy-in and eagerness to work with the
research team, and implemented more emergent literacy activities than did the first
two lead teachers, Pablo and Susan. Therefore, given the importance of teacher
support and buy-in, the research team decided that it was crucial to share the voice and
insight of the teachers at the research conference.
149

Both Monica and Margarita were excited and proud to represent the project at
the conference. Ironically, Margarita first learned about the possibility of presenting
at the conference through a site administrator, and not the research team. Margarita
asked one of the research assistants if it was true that she and Monica were going to be
invited to a conference. Our principal investigator had mentioned it to administration,
but he had not yet asked the teachers since he needed to make sure that there was
sufficient money in our project budget to cover the expenses as well as to make sure
that the teachers would not lose wages or be charged with personal necessity time off
in order to attend. So, when the research assistant confirmed the possibility of the
teachers attending the conference, but explained the issues of the budget and the time
off, Margarita responded, “Well we shouldn’t [lose pay] because administration is
always going on conferences and they don’t lose wages, why should we? But they are
not fair.” Therefore, although higher-level administrators encouraged the teachers to
attend in order to represent the research project and NEOS, and saw the opportunity
for positive publicity, the teachers recognized that their daily classroom efforts were
often not celebrated by administration.
At the conference, the research team lead the presentation by explaining the
components of the overall emergent literacy project, including the Book Loan program
and parent involvement, assessment, and the classroom support and staff development.
The teachers then shared their experience teaching more early literacy skills with the
support provided by the research team, and observing the progress made by the
students, which was confirmed with the assessment results. Both teachers explained
150

that they each believed that young children had the capacity to learn more about
reading and writing in fun and developmentally appropriate ways, than is typically
allowed in early childhood programs. As Margarita stated, working with the research
team helped them learn some strategies, and validated their efforts to help children
“learn important concepts of reading and writing and enjoy it as well!”

Celebrating Literacy Teaching and Practice
Celebration of the teachers’ work to develop students’ literacy was provided
more often from outside of the classroom support systems. In other words, teachers’
efforts to improve students’ reading and writing development were recognized more
from “outsiders” such as the research team, parents, and upper administration than
from classroom supervisors who had an established role to provide direct classroom
support.
Celebrating literacy teaching and practice – Administrative challenges.
Administrators from the NEOS organization spoke to the principal investigator of the
research project several times about the possibility of scaling up the intervention.
They recognized that the partnership with the University of Southern California
research team to promote research-based literacy strategies would strengthen their
curriculum and help in their fund-raising efforts to support their early childhood
programs. They collaborated with researchers to write follow-up grants to seek further
funding of the research activities and to extend the emergent literacy program to other
sites. Administrators praised the intervention efforts and included articles about the
151

project in NEOS newsletters sent to staff, contributors, and members of the
community. Yet, the teachers realized that although these administrators supported
the project, they really were not aware of the strategies being implemented in the
classrooms. Several teachers and assistants commented that as NEOS grew as an
organization, administrators were losing contact with the classrooms and families.
Unfortunately, one large obstacle that interfered with maintaining and
celebrating teachers’ work to develop students’ early literacy was the lack of support
structures needed to provide positive feedback over time. The research team
documented the importance of collaboration between the lead teachers and assistants
to provide a consistent and enriching program for the children. Yet, administration
had adopted a policy to frequently change classroom assignments in order to promote
more equity in response to teachers’ requests to work with a preferred age group and
allow for more flexibility in meeting staffing needs. For example, Susan told one of
the researchers that administration was planning to reassign her to work with the infant
group during the second year of the intervention. At the time, she was the only
teacher at NEOS who had her bachelor’s degree. Nonetheless, she left NEOS after
completing her first year.
During the final year of the project, the site supervisor told the assistant Angela
that she would be moved to work with the toddlers’ class. Our principal investigator
had to ask administration to not reassign Angela to another classroom since her role in
supporting Monica’s teaching and the intervention project was crucial. Monica had
stated that she would leave NEOS if she was not allowed to work with Angela since
152

she would not be able to continue doing the literacy activities she had worked so hard
to implement without her support.
In addition to the issue of staffing practices, NEOS also struggled with the
same problem related to teacher turnover that haunts most early childhood programs.
By the end of the fourth year of the intervention, three of the four lead teachers had
left NEOS as they pursued or completed their bachelor’s degree and looked for a
higher paying position. The highest salary for a teacher at NEOS, even with a
bachelor’s degree, was $12/hour, which was less than one-third of what a novice
kindergarten teacher could earn in a public school setting. So, even though the
teachers knew they were having a large impact in helping to socially and academically
prepare highly at-risk students for elementary school, the low pay discouraged them
from staying at NEOS. Therefore, maintaining the momentum of the intervention
efforts was difficult, and highlights the importance of also including the assistants in
the staff development efforts since they impacted the implementation of early literacy
activities.
Celebrating literacy teaching and practice – Parents. Parents often expressed
their thanks to the teachers for helping their children. Many parents had low literacy
skills in both Spanish and English so they supported the shift in the program to focus
more on early literacy. As the teachers helped promote the enjoyment of books,
parents noticed the difference in their children. They eagerly checked out books from
the Book Loan program. During one observation, a parent rushed into the classroom
in order to return a book. Although her daughter was sick and did not come to school,
153

her daughter insisted that her mother come to school to return her book since she
wanted to be able to check out another book when the Book Loan was open. Even
when the brand new NEOS site was opened a few blocks away, many parents
expressed their preference to have their child at this site since “Aqui aprenden más de
la lectura y escritura y eso es muy importante [Here they learn more about reading
and writing which is so important].”
Celebrating literacy teaching and practice – Researchers. The researchers
also celebrated the efforts of the teaching staff to implement strategies from the
training sessions. During the regularly scheduled classroom observations, the
researchers looked for evidence of implementation of the literacy activities and the
strategies they had modeled for the teachers. As researchers, we had to carefully
balance our role as observers and as active participants modeling strategies and
providing resources. Also, we needed to be careful not to step into a supervisory or
evaluative role. Informal specific feedback was provided such as, “nice job referring
to the poster, you were developing students’ awareness of reading from left to right,
top to bottom which is an important understanding about concepts of print,” or “It was
neat to see how you are helping so many of your students to learn their letters. Your
daily routine during circle time when you sing the ABC song and ‘Found the Letter’
song seems to help,” or “You did a nice job in that lesson previewing the story in
Spanish and then reading the story in English. This helps avoid frequent language
switching which is confusing for many students with limited English skills and helps
promote language acquisition.”
154

Also, researchers tried to involve teachers in celebrating their own work by
asking them to bring their own work samples and observational anecdotes about a
selected student to the monthly training meetings. While researchers shared some of
the observations they made during classroom observations of students demonstrating a
specific literacy concept such as story sense or phonemic awareness, teachers also
began to look for examples that demonstrated a concept they helped a student develop.
The discussion about these samples that the teachers and assistants brought to the
meeting helped promote teachers’ observational skills but also pride in their own
work. These little celebrations fostered a positive and enthusiastic tone at the meeting
by increasing participation and reinforcing their accomplishments. As one teacher
said during a focus group, “It helps contribute to higher self-esteem which is cool. It
feels good. Teachers too. Makes you feel good as a teacher. Students learn from the
teacher while the teacher learns from the student…No tienen pena [They are not shy].”

Summary
This chapter presented an analysis of 4 years of project data in order to address
the research question: What are the attributes of professional development, in terms of
design and implementation, which contributed to the success of an early childhood
emergent literacy program? The first section described the planned design of staff
development to promote early literacy at the NEOS site. The second section described
the interactions between the participants that influenced the level of implementation of
the staff development activities.
155

By examining the critical attributes of the data, I categorized the design
elements into (a) instructional tools, (b) professional development, and (c) literacy
teaching and practice. The design categories refer to the tools and actions the
researchers planned as part of the staff development effort to help the teachers
strengthen the emerging literacy skills of their students.
Instructional tools included the literacy materials we provided to each of the
two classrooms, including big books, classroom library books, a writing center, and
written displays and materials to increase environmental print and enhance
sociodramatic play areas. I also classified the emergent literacy curriculum
framework as an instructional tool that was used to guide and keep focused our
professional development effort. Six concepts formed the core of this curriculum
framework: Environmental print and functions of print, concepts of book print, story
sense, phonemic awareness, speech-print match, and control of reading and writing.
The instructional tools were the essential materials required to implement the
practices we promoted during our staff development efforts. Therefore, the emergent
literacy intervention was successful, in part, due to the increased availability of
literacy tools in each classroom. Yet, simply increasing the number of books in a
classroom is not sufficient to accelerate the reading and writing development of young
children, especially children who are experiencing factors such as poverty, limited
English language development, and single parent homes, that place them more at-risk
to fail in school; knowledgeable and committed teachers are also necessary.
156

While professional development refers to both education and training, I
described the linkage between the emergent literacy concepts and the strategies we
explained at training meetings, and the instructional support provided by the
researchers in the classroom. Our training support in the classroom included
observations, modeled lessons, and positive feedback related to teachers’ attempts to
implement the reading and writing strategies we had discussed. Although our initial
focus was shared reading, we promoted an emergent literacy view that supports
children’s early attempts at reading and writing prior to their ability to read and write
conventionally. We planned consistent support and training by scheduling training
meetings once a month, and weekly assistance in each classroom. Therefore, the on-
going professional development effort and the consistency of the classroom support
during the 4 years of the project contributed to its successful design.
Furthermore, I clustered evidence of the use of the instructional tools and the
application of the knowledge gained from professional development as literacy
teaching and practice. I documented changes in literacy teaching and practice in both
teacher-led and student-initiated activities: (a) reading demonstrations by the teacher
to model reading for her students, to encourage their participation, and to introduce
emergent literacy concepts from the curriculum framework, such as phonemic
awareness, (b) opportunities for student-initiated reading during activity time and
independent reading time, and through exposure to a print-rich environment, (c)
writing demonstrations such as modeled writing, interactive writing, and language
experience stories, and (d) opportunities to write during activity time and at the
157

writing center. Each cohort of students was exposed to increased levels of literacy
teaching and practice with each year of the project. With the increased exposure to
literacy teaching and practice, each cohort also demonstrated higher scores on the
reading and writing assessments we administered to the children.
In spite of the research team’s efforts to design a strong professional program
that could be “equally” implemented in both of the selected classrooms, a
sociocultural view expects that the interactions between the participants will
unavoidably affect their level of the learning and implementation of instructional
strategies. After examining fieldnotes, questionnaires, surveys, and focus group notes,
I categorized the social interactions that affected the level of implementation and the
impact of our planned staff development as (a) communication, (b) collaboration, and
(c) celebration. Communication refers to the nature of the dialog that occurred
between the teachers, students, researchers, and others. Collaboration refers to the
willingness to work together to accomplish a goal. Celebration refers to positive
feedback to recognize effort and accomplishments.
Throughout the 4 years of the intervention, as the level of positive
communication, collaboration, and celebration increased between the teachers and
researchers, and between the teaching staff members, so did the level of
implementation of strategies that promoted the development of the students’ early
literacy skills and dispositions. Unfortunately, administrators were observed to
interact infrequently with the teachers or researchers, and consequently did not
participate in the positive communication, collaboration, and celebration that would
158

have helped to further strengthen and sustain a strong literacy-learning environment.
Therefore, while the planned staff development activities were grounded in research
and best practices, the impact of the activities depended on the interaction of the
participants.
Especially in an ECEC setting with specific student to teacher ratios, teamwork
is critical. Each person in the classroom impacted efforts to improve students’ early
literacy either through supportive, resistant, or neutral social interactions with others.
So although the personal characteristics of each participant, such as her experience,
educational beliefs, or motivation; influenced her actions, the 4 year-olds interacted
and learned from every adult in their classroom. Therefore, students benefited most
from the synergy created by staff members who communicated frequently,
collaborated, and celebrated the students’ literacy learning and their own teaching
efforts. The design and implementation of our staff development effort helped to
develop this synergy.
159

CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS
The Complexities of Designing and Implementing Professional Development that
is Responsive to the Needs of the Participants and the Context in which
They Interact
As more early childhood programs begin to actively promote early literacy
teaching and learning, the need for effective staff development will increase. In the
previous chapter, I outlined the design and implementation aspects of the professional
development effort that contributed to the success of an emergent literacy intervention.
The lessons learned from this case study are relevant and have theoretical,
pedagogical, and policy implications for other ECEC programs.

Sociocultural Theoretical Implications
Sociocultural Theoretical Model of Professional Development
Designing and implementing professional development that is responsive to
the needs of the participants and the context in which they interact is complex.
Implementing professional development in an early childhood setting that requires the
interaction of various adults to deliver a cohesive program of care and education to
groups of 3 and 4-year olds is even more complex when considering the issues of
frequent staff turnover and wide-ranging educational levels, background experiences,
and beliefs and preconceptions about teaching young children. Therefore, the
synergy created through the social interaction of the participants can greatly enhance
the effective and purposeful use of reading and writing materials, and of increased
160

training opportunities in the area of early literacy. Without greater attention to
building, at each ECEC site, a professional community that values and promotes the
development of early reading and writing skills in young children, the effectiveness of
any training effort will be limited to the individual abilities and commitment of
teachers, who, unfortunately, frequently leave for higher paying jobs.
Based on a sociocultural theoretical framework, this study recognizes the
critical influence of the social world in which an individual learns. Learning is a
social process in which the “external” becomes “internal” through social mediation
and sign mediation (Vygotsky, 1997). In other words, what we learn is a product of
both the tools we use to learn, and people who help to extend our learning. A
sociocultural perspective is reflected in the following theoretical frame that I
developed to represent the interactions that contributed to the success of the
professional development activities in this research project (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. A sociocultural theoretical view of professional development in an emergent literacy intervention.
161
SOCIAL
INTERACTIONS
Communication
Collaboration
Celebration
INSTRUCTIONAL TOOLS
Literacy Materials
Curriculum Framework
ON-GOING TRAINING
Meetings
Classroom Support
ENHANCED
LITERACY
TEACHING
AND PRACTICE
Reading
Demonstrations

Opportunities to
Read

Writing
Demonstrations

Opportunities to
Write

ENHANCED
STUDENT
LITERACY
LEARNING
Sociopolitical Context
INDIVIDUAL
TEACHER
TRAITS
Beliefs
Experiences
Education
162

This theoretical view of professional development in an ECEC setting explains
how an individual’s actions and thoughts are influenced both by her own personal
traits, such as her beliefs, experience, and level of education, as well as by the people
she interacts with in the context of teaching early literacy. As shown in Figure 3, an
individual’s traits are not static. As an educator works with peers, parents,
administrators, students, researchers or staff developers, she is either encouraged or
hampered from strengthening her use of literacy materials to implement an emergent
literacy curriculum framework. Through positive communication, collaboration, and
celebration of the teachers’ use of literacy materials and strategies learned during
training, she develops more expertise and experience, which then shapes her personal
beliefs about literacy teaching and young students’ abilities to read and write.
Figure 3 also depicts the important role of on-going training to promote
enhanced student learning. On-going training and classroom support helps to develop
an individual’s knowledge base and adds accountability to apply the strategies and
ideas shared during professional development activities. As an educator deepens her
understanding of early literacy teaching and learning, she also interacts with others
differently. She encourages others to use literacy tools in a manner more consistent
with an emergent literacy view, which, in turn, influences their personal beliefs and
experiences. As a result, a community of learners begins to develop.
Given high teacher turnover and the important role of the paraeducators,
effective literacy teaching needs to be promoted systemically, and not be limited to
developing the skills and knowledge of individuals. As staff members work together,
163

synergy is created in which the sum of the effort of the group is more powerful than
the talents of any single teacher. Therefore, students will experience a stronger early
literacy program delivered by knowledgeable teachers working together to accomplish
similar goals.
Accordingly, enhanced literacy teaching is not only the product of the tools
and training that administrators, researchers, and others plan as part of professional
development, but also the social interactions between the participants facilitate or
hinder the implementation process. With positive communication, collaboration, and
celebration to encourage an educator’s efforts to improve literacy teaching and
practice, the outcome is enhanced student literacy learning.
While the social interactions that shape the professional development effort at
an ECEC facility depend on the unique characteristics of each individual, the process
occurs within a sociopolitical context. This context includes the “big” issues that
affect the lives of children, and that impact early childhood programs in general. For
example, in this study, some of these issues included poverty, immigration status,
limited English proficiency, single parent households, and parents’ literacy levels.
These large issues impact the way people interact with each other, the selection of
literacy tools, and an individual’s beliefs.
For example, Pablo knew that many of his students came from high poverty
and non-English speaking, single parent homes. Therefore, he viewed himself as a
father figure and role model for his students. Pablo drew heavily upon his individual
traits as he planned lessons. He told researchers that as a young child in El Salvador,
164

he did not attend a preschool program in the United States, “Informally, I had the best
preschool - playing with mud, catching insects, climbing trees. No teacher around. I
never got hurt. I was always going on ‘field trips.’ I went to kindergarten for 3 days
and then quit going.” He was also a boy scout for eight years and enjoyed exploring
nature. Therefore, he believed that early childhood programs should be fun and
experience-based. He felt that books should be an adventure that widens students’
experiences, not tools for learning early reading skills.
Hence, his individual traits and personal beliefs of what he felt was best for his
students influenced how he chose to use the literacy materials the researchers
provided. He used some of the instructional strategies when they matched his
purposes, such as reading the large print texts we created collaboratively with him. He
attended the training meetings and learned about the emergent literacy concepts we
had included in the curriculum, and allowed the researchers to model lessons and
assessment the literacy growth of his students.
Yet, because he did not use the literacy tools consistently, his beliefs,
experiences, and individual traits changed less than the other teachers who participated
in the intervention. As a consequence, the literacy actions and interactions with
students, colleagues, and others also did not significantly change. Therefore, although
his students experienced more literacy experiences than they had prior to the
intervention, Pablo did not facilitate the social interactions with his teaching staff that
would have accelerated and deepened his students’ exposure to purposeful reading and
165

writing demonstrations and opportunities to practice, which would have strengthened
their learning about literacy.
In contrast, Monica held a different view about early literacy teaching. She
went to school in the United States as a young child. Although, she did not speak
English, her teachers encouraged her to participate and learn alongside the other
English-speaking students in her class. Therefore, she believed that ECEC programs
could provide the needed academic foundation to help students, who are most at-risk
of school failure, to not fall farther behind more advantaged peers. She expected her
class to be both a fun and motivating learning environment. She eagerly used the
literacy materials provided by the researchers and the instructional strategies she
learned during on-site training meetings and classroom support activities. She worked
collaboratively with her colleagues and instilled the importance of promoting students’
emerging literacy. Therefore, her individual traits initially affected how she used the
literacy tools provided by the research team, which then impacted the literacy actions
and interactions with her students, colleagues, and researchers.
Monica’s development as an effective ECEC early literacy teacher provides a
strong, positive example of the sociocultural theoretical model of professional
development outlined in Figure 3. As Monica engaged in more professional
development, and implemented more instructional practices aligned with the emergent
literacy curriculum, she developed more expertise in developing her students’ early
literacy skills. As a result of the training and corresponding changes in her
instructional practice, Monica’s personal beliefs and experiences also changed. These
166

individual traits impacted her literacy teaching and interactions with colleagues and
researchers as she sought to constantly improve the literacy-learning environment for
her students. So, the more she learned, the more she improved her use of literacy
tools; the more she improved, the more she affected others; the more others learned
and collaborated, the more effective the emergent literacy program. The synergy she
created strengthened the impact of the emergent literacy intervention during the three
years she taught at NEOS.
In summary, Figure 3 illustrates the complex dynamics of establishing and
sustaining professional development focused on early literacy in an ECEC setting.
The success of the professional development effort not only depends on providing
needed literacy tools (including reading and writing materials, and a curriculum), and
training; but also depends on the personal traits of each individual and the social
interactions between teachers, assistants, and researchers. Professional development
can influence an individual’s traits, including a teacher’s experience, level of training,
and personal beliefs; however, a sustained and cohesive staff development program is
needed.
As described in Chapter 4, stronger implementation of professional
development activities enhanced the level of literacy teaching and learning.
Implementation was facilitated through the integrated efforts of teaching and support
personnel. The social dynamics of this integrated effort was nurtured by strong
communication, collaboration, and celebration of accomplishments.

167

Reflection Questions
In terms of implications for other ECEC programs, the developers of
professional development programs should consider three questions: (a) What are the
key concepts and strategies participants should know?, (b) How do we support
implementation?, and (c) How do we encourage and sustain continuous learning?
These questions should be considered from both an “inside-out” and “outside-in”
perspective, or, in other words, developers should consider what is already in place
that can support the professional development effort, and what needs to be brought in
or established.

What are the key concepts and strategies participants should know?
Our research project provided an emergent literacy curriculum that outlined
specific concepts and strategies. Few teachers at NEOS had any previous training
related to emergent literacy. Prior to the intervention, most drew upon personal beliefs
and experiences to guide their use of literacy activities. Clearly stating the essential
understandings we wanted the teaching staff to know was a key to effectively
designing our professional development activities. Yet, the research team learned that
these important concepts needed to be practical and doable. So, although the emergent
literacy curriculum framework described key ideas about early reading and writing,
and relevant instructional strategies, we knew we had to work together to “socially
construct” the knowledge and translate it into meaningful practice.

168

How do we support implementation?
Our project design included monthly training meetings, and weekly on-going
classroom support that consisted of modeling, observations, and feedback. We also
provided the materials needed to implement the suggested instructional strategies.
NEOS also helped to support the scheduling of on-going training meetings each
month. As a research team, we documented the importance of providing on-going
support since time was needed to learn about the needs of the participants as
determined by their beliefs and current practices. By learning about the staff, we
could adjust the planned training to fit their needs, yet still promote the concepts we
felt would strengthen the reading and writing development of their students. Also,
time was needed to build trust and rapport in order to establish a collaborative
relationship between the research team and staff that allowed the teachers and
paraeducators to take more ownership of the literacy practices and materials.

How do we encourage and sustain continuous learning?
How do we motivate and encourage the teaching staff to continue to
implement what they learn during professional development activities? What on-
going support structures are in place? How do we affect the professional culture of an
ECEC site? The social interactions within the teaching staff, and with the researchers
helped to develop a focus on early literacy. Positive communication, collaboration,
and celebration of their efforts encouraged stronger implementation of early literacy
strategies and use of materials. The research team was on-site at least twice a week
169

for 4 years, and thus was able to build relationships with the staff. We collaborated
with the teachers and actively sought their opinions and input. Our interactions
demonstrated trust, and an eagerness to celebrate their successes in promoting early
literacy development. By maintaining a strong focus on emergent literacy, we were
able to provide specific, positive feedback on their accomplishments and successes.
Thus, we helped foster on-going training and more reflection on teaching practices,
which is an important characteristic of high quality early childhood programs
(Espinosa, 2002; Frede, 1995; NAEYC, 1993). Therefore, more attention is needed to
specifically address how to sustain successful site-based professional development
programs in early childhood programs that are not dependent on outside consultants or
short term funding.

Pedagogical Implications
This descriptive case study also highlights some important lessons about
teaching early literacy in an ECEC program. Research has demonstrated a link
between high quality early childhood programs and academic achievement, reduced
retention, and high school graduation (e.g. Barnett, 1995; Campbell, et al., 2002,
Schweinhart, et al., 2005). As awareness of the impact of high quality early childhood
programs increases, and the push for universal access to preschool programs grows
stronger, more attention is being focused on how to teach beginning literacy skills.
Based on the results of this study, other professional development program should
170

encourage (a) the use of research-based practices, (b) sensitivity to individual needs
and contextual factors, (c) skillful and caring teaching, and (d) collaborative teaching.

Instructional Practices Based on Research
Since the 1980s, researchers have been developing a strong body of knowledge
about emergent literacy that demonstrates that even before they enter kindergarten,
young children are very capable of developing skills and concepts that form a solid
foundation for conventional reading and writing. As previously outlined in Chapter 2,
the National Early Literacy Panel is conducting a synthesis of research on the
development of early literacy skills in young children. Preliminary findings suggest
that five categories of intervention influence early literacy skills, such as alphabet
knowledge, phonological awareness, and concepts of print, that are predictors of later
reading achievement. These intervention categories include: alphabetics and making
sense of print, reading to and sharing books with children, parent/home programs for
improving young children’s literacy, preschool and kindergarten programs, and
language enhancement (National Institute for Learning, 2007).
Our intervention project featured professional development that supported an
emergent literacy curriculum that included concepts, such as phonemic awareness,
speech to print match, and control of reading and writing, that coincided with abilities
the National Early Literacy Panel found to be predictors of later reading skills. We
were careful to avoid promoting teaching skills in isolation, such as repetitive drills to
name letters and sounds, or practicing writing the alphabet. Instead, we maintained a
171

focus on teaching emergent literacy concepts in the context of authentic reading and
writing models by the teacher.
We also included several skills that we felt were important for students who
may have limited access to reading materials at home due to limited financial
resources or low literacy levels of their caregivers. These concepts included
awareness of environmental print and different functions of print, concepts of print,
and story sense.
Our professional development effort also included classroom support activities
that encouraged a variety of reading opportunities, including reading to students,
shared reading, and independent reading. We consciously supported language
development by reinforcing the need to dialog and engage students in conversations in
their primary language, and in different activity settings such as sociodramatic play
areas and during independent reading time. In addition, we included a home reading
program to encourage dialog and sharing books at home. Thus, our emergent literacy
research project incorporated elements from each of the categories of intervention that
the National Early Literacy Panel found to impact early literacy skills (National
Institute for Literacy, 2007). By focusing on instructional practices that are supported
by research, professional development will be more effective in supporting teachers as
they help students to demonstrate stronger literacy and language outcomes (National
Staff Development Council, 2001; Title I, 2002a)

172

Sensitivity to Individual Needs and Contextual Factors
The targeted population for this study was the teaching staff who worked with
the 4-year-old children at NEOS. With the exception of one or two students, the
children were from Hispanic families who were living in poverty. Over 95% of the
children had limited English skills and spoke Spanish as their primary language.
Therefore, it is valuable to reflect on how the professional development successfully
addressed the needs of the teaching staff working with this particular student
population.

Addressing Language Needs
The largest accommodation facilitated by the research team was integrating the
use of Spanish to address the needs of the teaching staff and students. Even though
most of the students would begin kindergarten in an English-only setting, we knew
that strong instruction in a child’s primary language would help promote academic
achievement by presenting concepts in the child’s dominant language, while also
supporting second language learning. Various studies have demonstrated the benefits
of providing support and instruction through a students’ primary language as a means
to strengthen long-term academic achievement in English (e.g. Collier, 1992; Ramirez,
Pasta, Yuen, Ramey & Billings, 1991; Thomas & Collier, 2002).
In addition, a recent study of 345 Spanish-speaking pre-kindergarteners in a
various early childhood programs showed the benefits in terms of language
interactions, social skills, and teacher-child relationships when Spanish-speaking
173

students interacted with teachers who spoke Spanish (Chang, Crawford, Early, &
Bryant, 2007). The researchers found that the amount of Spanish spoken by teachers
did not affect children’s English proficiency. Therefore, this study supports the role
that primary language development and support can play to facilitate the development
of English proficiency.
In spite of the political turbulence that often surrounds the issue of bilingual
education in the United States and the push for English-only instruction, our intent as
researchers was to establish an early literacy program that built on the primary
language strengths of both the teachers and students, and that provided
“comprehensible input” (Krashen, 1994) through English in a positive learning
environment. By not limiting our focus to simply teaching letters and sounds, we
promoted broader concepts of literacy that would transfer from one language to
another, such as story sense, concepts of print, environmental print, and an awareness
of speech to print match. This view of learning is consistent with Cummin’s (1994)
“Linguistic Interdependence Principle” which affirms a common underlying language
proficiency that helps bilingual children draw upon their primary language strengths to
build second language proficiency.
Dual language use in the classroom. As described in Chapter 4, the research
team incorporated the use of Spanish in each of the three design components of the
professional development: instructional tools, training and classroom support, and
literacy teaching and practice. We purchased both English and Spanish books,
174

conducted training meetings that flexibly used both English and Spanish, and
encouraged teachers to use students’ primary language during circle time activities.
Our data reflects the use of both languages by all the lead teachers, except for
Susan who did not speak Spanish. The assistants who were more dominant in Spanish
tended to use Spanish throughout the day. Teachers typically introduced letters in
English, read stories in either language, and usually explained concepts or new
vocabulary in Spanish. As the children became more familiar with instructional
routines, teachers increased the use of English during more activities. Overall,
classroom observations showed that students were better behaved, more motivated,
and produced more elaborated responses when they were spoken to and read to in their
dominant primary language, which in this setting was Spanish.
Although the students were more attentive and responsive when books were
read in Spanish, the majority of the books in the classroom were English. As
described in Chapter 4, the research team observed many examples in which Pablo
dramatized stories that were written in English by retelling the stories in Spanish for
his students. While the researchers acknowledged the benefit of motivating students
to enjoy books, we also knew the benefit of exposing young children to the rich
language and vocabulary captured through the text of children’s books. Therefore, we
promoted reading children’s books in the languages in which they were written.
Since the research team did not notice any specific model guiding teachers as
they switched back and forth between the two languages, we suggested the use of a
dual language, or preview-review, model of instruction. This model encourages the
175

use of the dominant language to preview the content of the lesson, followed by the
core instruction in the target language, and then review in the dominant language. The
preview-review technique helps to promote second language development by
providing comprehensible input to students through the second language, so that they
do not depend on concurrent translation throughout the day (see Ulanoff & Pucci,
1993, 1999).
We did not emphasize a strict adherence to the preview-review model, in
which the primary language is used to preview and review what is taught in the second
language. Instead, we wanted teachers to be aware of the benefit of previewing
concepts or stories in either English or Spanish to build background knowledge,
followed by instruction in the other language in order to avoid excessive language
switching and translation during teacher-guided activities in circle time. More
specifically, if a teacher wanted to read a book that was written in English, she would
provide an overview in Spanish and then tell the children that she was going to read
the book in English. She might stop after reading a few pages to review what
happened or ask questions in Spanish to check for understanding. Accordingly, the
teacher would not feel compelled to simplify the text and retell the story in Spanish,
which consequently reduced the students’ exposure to rich English vocabulary.
So, although we wanted to strengthen students’ English proficiency, we
validated the importance of using the children’s primary language to help them
develop a strong understanding of the project’s selected literacy concepts, as well as to
enrich their vocabulary and love of books through the language they understood best
176

(Cummins, 1994, Krashen, 1994). While most of the instruction provided by the
teachers was in Spanish, follow-up data indicated that, as a cohort, second grade
students who had been in the intervention performed at grade level and outscored the
majority of English learners in the school district on standardized test measures in
Reading, Language, and Math. They also demonstrated stronger growth in English
proficiency as compared to the mean score of other English learners in the district (see
Yaden, 2002). Therefore, the use of students’ primary language contributed to their
achievement in elementary school and did not slow their English language
development.
Dual language use to support professional development. We also recognized
the importance of including all teaching staff, including assistants, in professional
development activities. In a full day program, children participate in a limited amount
of teacher-guided instruction. However, many opportunities for literacy activities
exist throughout the day beyond the block of time dedicated to teacher-led lessons.
Therefore, assistants and associate teachers must also have a solid knowledge of
emergent literacy and instructional strategies in order to support the teacher’s efforts.
Most of the assistants were Latina who spoke Spanish as their dominant primary
language. Therefore, the value of a bilingual research team helped to establish
stronger communication with each member of the teaching staff during classroom
support activities and our monthly training meetings.
Planning how to address language needs. Thus, one important lesson for other
ECEC programs is to look for opportunities to build on students’ background
177

knowledge and experiences, and use their primary language when possible. Using
Spanish in our interactions with the staff members who were more fluent in Spanish
also facilitated communication and collaboration, and validated their important role in
shaping students’ reading and writing development regardless of whether they used
English or Spanish as they interacted with the children.
Other programs should also consider adding a strand focusing on bilingual
language development into planned professional development meetings. Because our
research team included bilingual graduate students who were familiar with bilingual
research, we were able to informally address language development questions with the
teachers and staff within the context of our planned activities.
For example, many parents were concerned about the transition of their child
from NEOS to the neighborhood elementary school. Several parents asked teacher
Pablo about his advice about signing a waiver to allow their child to participate in a
bilingual program or to allow them to be placed in an English-only program. Pablo
had been sharing his advice based on what he knew about the program at the school,
but he was not familiar with research about bilingual education. After he talked to
members of the research team, he better understood the role of primary language
instruction, but also understood the powerful influence of the sociopolitical context on
the implementation a strong, systemic bilingual program. As a result of these
conversations, the research team designed a parent meeting in which we talked about
important information they should know when enrolling their child in kindergarten,
including more information about bilingual programs and parent rights.
178

Addressing Cultural Sensitivity
Validating the importance of a child’s heritage language helped to promote
cultural sensitivity at NEOS. Yet, with the growing diversity of children attending
ECEC programs, not all teachers will be able to communicate in a child’s primary
language. Therefore, promoting culturally responsive teaching in early childhood
programs will help to support a positive learning climate that affirms students’
diversity and motivates students to engage in literacy activities that are sensitive to
their cultural backgrounds. Gay (as cited in Bazron, Osher, & Fleishman, 2005)
defines culturally responsive teachers as capable of “using the cultural knowledge,
prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse
students to make learning more relevant and effective for them.” Villegas and Lucas
(2002) add that culturally responsive teachers not only are “socioculturally conscious,”
and affirm students’ diversity and individual life experiences, but also these teachers
see themselves as responsible for bringing about change to make schools more
equitable. Professional development activities should foster teachers’ awareness of
how they can promote cultural sensitivity, for example through choice of materials,
knowledge of students’ culture, questioning and feedback techniques, building trust,
use of different instructional strategies, and positive home-school relations (see
Jackson, 1998).
For example, Susan did not feel comfortable in leading shared reading
activities or modeling writing since she was Korean and could not speak Spanish.
Yet, she would have benefited from showing an eagerness to learn from students’
179

about their traditions, holidays, language, and preferences. Her assistant was a great
resource who could have been used to help review in Spanish concepts that Susan
taught in English. Instead, her assistant often took the lead in lessons and took the
primary role in classroom discipline so that the children were more responsive to her
and less responsive to Susan. Therefore helping teachers to be more culturally
sensitive to the needs of their students will help to create a positive learning
environment that nurtures literacy learning.

Ensuring Greater Access to Literacy Materials
Providing greater access to literacy materials is critical especially for students
who live in poverty. As described in Chapter 2, students from more advantaged
homes have more opportunities to be read to, have more books in their homes, and are
exposed to larger quantities of language and vocabulary. Unfortunately, the
achievement gap between students from disadvantaged and advantaged homes often
stems from this lack of opportunity to develop the language and literacy concepts that
are validated in elementary school (e.g. Hart & Risley, 1995; Heath, 1983).
Therefore, children who may not have access to children’s books or writing
materials at home, benefit from a strong ECEC program that provides opportunities to
enjoy and use a rich supply of literacy materials, and that consciously develops
literacy concepts that other, more advantaged children may develop in the context of
story time and conversations about books with their parents at home. By reading a
variety of books about different topics, teachers at NEOS helped to provide valuable
180

background experiences for students who may have limited prior knowledge in
various content areas due to lack of financial resources to buy books, access internet,
travel, etc. Building background knowledge and vocabulary can help improve
students’ comprehension as they begin to read independently, and are exposed to more
difficult texts.

Caring and Skillful Teaching
The effectiveness of any instructional program depends on skillful and caring
teachers. Effective teachers are energetic, positive, and stimulate the development and
progress of their students. All the teachers in the project genuinely cared for their
students and demonstrated a commitment to helping them succeed. They knew that
the children who attended NEOS needed to overcome many obstacles to their
academic success, in large part due to their poverty and life circumstances. The
teachers knew that they could have a large impact on the lives of their students.
Yet, in addition to caring for students, we found that skillful literacy teaching
was needed in order to accelerate students’ literacy learning. For example, Pablo
sincerely felt that he was a father figure for many of his students and wanted to create
a fun and motivating learning environment that served as a contrast to the harshness
and challenges of students’ home experiences. However, he did not consistently
implement early literacy instructional strategies, nor did he place daily emphasis on
the emergent literacy concepts we included in the curriculum. As a result, his class
scored lower on early literacy assessments than the 4-year-olds in Monica’s room.
181

As accountability increases for ECEC programs, more focus is being placed on
literacy development since it is correlated with later school achievement.
Unfortunately, children with limited English proficiency and from low-income homes
are at greater risk to begin school already behind their more advantaged peers. ECEC
programs with strong literacy components hold the promise of accelerating the early
learning of these students. Yet, this will depend on direct, skillful, and caring
teaching.
As an intervention, it was not sufficient for teachers at NEOS to simply guide
and prompt students to freely explore literacy materials. We helped teachers to plan
lessons that promoted specific early reading and writing concepts during a more
structured circle time. Following the circle time, teachers provided some guided
activities to practice the concepts or skills they had taught. In addition, they also
included a variety of activity areas that students could freely choose, for example the
writing center, the book reading area, and different play areas.
While teachers directly led lessons, they still tried to make the lessons
developmentally appropriate and fun. For example, students learned the alphabet
through songs and poems, instead of through drill and practice worksheets. Teachers
tried to teach literacy concepts in the context of big books as well as by using other
interesting texts. Therefore, professional development is needed to help teachers
understand how to plan lessons that directly teach early reading and writing skills in a
developmentally appropriate manner for 4–year-olds.

182

Collaborative Teaching – Use of Assistants
One final pedagogical implication for other ECEC professional development
programs is to foster collaborative teaching. Although research has demonstrated the
benefit of hiring teachers with higher levels of education, low pay often results in few
highly qualified candidates, or teachers who soon leave for higher paying jobs (e.g.
Center for the Child Care Workforce, 2004; Whitebook, 2003b). Recently, some
researchers have questioned the push to require a bachelor’s degree for teachers in
preschool programs as it could impact the supply of bilingual and culturally sensitive
teachers. In addition, they suggest that teachers who have specialized training in early
childhood education contribute more to child outcomes than a teacher with a
bachelor’s degree and no special training (Jacobson, 2007).
Therefore, professional development programs can help to promote the skills
of each member of the teaching staff, including assistants. Early childhood
professionals, including both teachers and assistants, should be expected to
demonstrate key understandings of early literacy and be provided with on-going
support to develop their instructional skills and understanding of emergent literacy.
As described earlier, the synergy of teachers and assistants working collaboratively,
provided the best learning environment for students and maximized their opportunities
to learn throughout the day, not just during teacher directed lessons.
We found that the assistants had less frequent turnover than the teachers at
NEOS. Similar to the description of paraeducators provided by French (1999), most
of the assistants who participated in the emergent literacy project came from the same
183

communities as the children and tended to share similar cultural and linguistic
backgrounds. Thus, paraeducators are important resources, who can draw upon their
close connection to students’ cultural, linguistic, and economic backgrounds to
promote a positive literacy learning environment. Supporting the work of assistants
in early childhood programs is an important area that should be addressed more
specifically, and has been largely ignored in reviews of early literacy interventions.

Policy Implications
Viewed through a sociocultural lens, the interactions between the teachers,
assistants, students, and researchers in the classroom influenced the effectiveness of
both the design and implementation of professional development activities. As
detailed in Figure 3, on page 161, these social interactions impacted the level of use of
the instructional tools provided by the research project, and the strategies taught
during staff development meetings and modeled in the classroom. As individuals
gained experience and achieved greater success with their students, they, in turn,
influenced the overall literacy-learning environment at the center, which resulted in
stronger literacy achievement for the students. Thus, an upward spiral of teaching and
learning emerged.
So, while the individuals involved in this research project benefited from the
planned professional development activities, several lessons, from an organizational
standpoint, also apply to NEOS and other ECEC programs seeking to establish
literacy-focused staff development. Based on the analysis of data from the present
184

study, two overall policy recommendations are suggested: (a) The need to build and
sustain a professional community focused on learning about literacy, and (b) the need
for site-level accountability.

Current Policy Recommendations
Current policy recommendations related to professional development often
focus on developing an individual’s skills and knowledge instead of promoting
school-wide professional development. For example, recent policy briefs from the
National Institute for Early Education Research provide examples of how to promote
teachers’ professional development, including raising teacher qualifications, adopting
learning standards, funding master teachers (1 per 10-20 classrooms), supporting
learning activities related to accreditation, pursuing professional development through
college coursework, and working with literacy coaches (Ackerman & Barnett, 2006;
Strickland & Riley-Ayers, 2006). While these suggested activities address large
systemic issues related to ensuring overall teacher quality, our work at NEOS
emphasizes the need for site-based bottom-up support, not just top-down policies that
may not translate into improved practice. Darling-Hammond (1990) explains that,
Top-down policies can “constrain but not construct” practice; that local
leadership and motivation for change are critical to policy success; that local
ideas and circumstances always vary (therefore local agencies must adapt
policies rather than adopting them); and that teachers’ and administrators’
opportunities for continual learning, experimentation, and decision making
during implementation determine whether policies will come alive in schools
or fade away when the money or enforcement pressures end (p. 341).

185

Increased state and federal funding for early childhood programs is often
accompanied by an increase of policies intended to promote large-scale change. How
these policies are translated into the context of individual sites and with individual
teachers vary greatly. As Elmore (2004) suggests, “The closer an innovation gets to
the core of schooling, the less likely it is that it will influence teaching and learning on
a large scale. The corollary…is that innovations that are distant from the core will be
more readily adopted on a large scale” (p. 11). Therefore, the present case study of the
design and implementation of literacy-focused professional development at NEOS
provides an in-depth example of the process of promoting change in teaching practices
that is context-sensitive and reflects the needs of the teachers and students.

Need to Build and Sustain Professional Communities
Focused on Learning about Literacy
A large dilemma that confronts early childhood programs is staff turnover that
is often due to low pay. While early childhood teachers in state-funded or Title I
funded preschool programs often have higher minimum credential requirements and
consequently have higher pay comparable to elementary school teachers, educators in
other early childhood programs often get paid much less. With this group of lower-
paid educators in mind, providing on-site support for their professional development is
even more critical.
This case study reinforced the value of shaping a “community of practice,”
which is a social theory of learning that recognizes the sense of identity and belonging,
186

and learning through practice, that occur in a social setting (Wenger, 1998). This
community of practice develops over time and maintains a common pursuit, such as
strengthening students’ literacy skills in a way that will help them have a better chance
for school success. By trying to promote a community of professionals who were
committed to developing students’ literacy through a common set of general beliefs
and practices, we were trying to establish a pedagogical scaffold that would help
“acculturate” new staff members into practices that were valued at this ECEC site, and
thus help to sustain our efforts to strengthen students’ early literacy.
As explained in Chapter 2 of this study, promoting professional development
that primarily focuses on emergent literacy for early childhood educators represents a
new area of research. Research is limited in how ECEC programs can best foster a
center-based professional learning community focused on developing early literacy.
Louis & Kruse (1995) suggest that a professional community can increase a
sense of efficacy and motivation, increase a sense of satisfaction with the personal
dignity of work, and promote a collective responsibility for student learning. They
characterize a professional community as a group of practitioners who have a set of
shared values, engage in reflective dialog and sharing of best practices, focus on
student learning, and collaborate (Louis & Kruse, 1995, p. 25). Based on their
research with urban schools, they recognized several structural conditions, and social
and human resources, such as communication structures, teacher empowerment, trust
and respect, and supportive leadership, that helped to support school-based
professional communities.
187

Lessons learned from this case study are consistent with Louis and Kruse’s
(1995) professional community framework. In terms of the need to build and sustain a
professional community focused on learning about literacy, I clustered the suggestions
that emerged from the present study as (a) developing a shared vision of early literacy,
(b) providing on-going, site-based training, and (c) mentoring.

Developing a Shared Vision of Early Literacy
While current policy recommendations from various early childhood
researchers suggest the need to hire teachers with bachelor’s degrees, we documented
the benefit of building the collective knowledge of the teaching staff regardless of
their level of pre-service training. As illustrated in Figure 3, the educational level of a
teacher affects her individual traits. However those traits can be shaped in the context
of interaction with colleagues and students. By planning meetings that included both
teachers and assistants, we were trying to facilitate a common understanding about
emergent literacy and some instructional strategies so that teachers and assistants
could work more collaboratively to strengthen students’ reading and writing
development. In early childhood settings with frequent staff turnover, developing a
sense of collective responsibility to help students develop their emerging reading and
writing skills is essential.
Only one of the lead teachers had a bachelor’s degree when she began to teach
at NEOS. Yet, she struggled to implement the shared reading strategies we
emphasized, due in part to not speaking Spanish and having limited experience
188

working with students from a different cultural background than her own. In contrast,
we observed her assistant, who lacked sufficient coursework units to even be an
associate teacher, implement shared reading strategies more successfully. Therefore,
we found that by providing on-going training and support, we helped to build the
skills and knowledge of each member of the teaching staff in each of the two
classrooms. In this study, higher levels of teacher education did not necessarily ensure
the highest level of implementation of early literacy practices.
By focusing our training effort around the emergent literacy curriculum, we
were promoting research-based practices and were slowly developing a shared vision
of early literacy at NEOS. Prior to the intervention, the teaching staff at NEOS had
limited literacy materials and no guidelines or expectations for teaching early reading
or writing development. Therefore, they often relied on their personal beliefs and their
own educational experiences as children. For example, one assistant initially believed
that children needed to play with clay and practice drawing rows of circles and lines in
order to build strength in their hands before they could write successfully. She told
researchers that this is how she was taught in her native country, Nicaragua. By the
end of the project, this assistant was frequently sharing more authentic open-ended
work samples from students in order to share their writing development.

Providing Ongoing, Site-based Training
A strength of our professional development intervention was that it was site-
based and on-going. Our research team worked alongside the teaching staff for 4
189

years. Therefore, we were able to provide long-term support for classroom
implementation of the strategies we discussed during monthly training meetings, as
well as monitor the impact on student learning. By providing a regular time to meet
and talk, we helped to support the development of a professional community. We
built the learning into work routines and involved both teachers and assistants. In
contrast, other professional development efforts often depend on individual teachers
finding and attending workshops or coursework outside of their work hours.
As we introduced different concepts from the emergent literacy curriculum and
discussed strategies to promote a given concept, we also modeled the strategy in class,
observed the teachers’ use of the strategy, and looked for examples of the impact of
the strategies on student learning. This helped to create a feedback loop that
reinforced use of the strategies. We also reviewed concepts and strategies previously
taught so that we tried to build in-depth as well as cumulative knowledge about
emergent literacy.

Mentoring
Collaboration with the teaching staff was essential to the success of the
intervention. As detailed in Chapter 4, our fieldnotes reflected stronger
implementation of strategies and use of literacy materials to promote reading and
writing development when the teaching staff worked together and worked
collaboratively with the researchers. By working together over several years, we
developed mutual trust and respect. We respected the teachers as experts who knew
190

the most about their students and the community. The research team represented a
group of literacy experts with knowledge to share about emergent literacy.
Yet, when the research project concluded, we were confronted with the reality
of how to continue to provide access to expertise in the area of early literacy.
Although the curriculum was a helpful reference tool, we found it to be helpful only
when it was “socially constructed” and translated into concrete practice through
discussions, demonstrations, and feedback. As a result, the staff members with whom
we worked became the next level of experts, and, unfortunately, as they leave NEOS,
so do their accumulated knowledge and their ability to serve as mentors for new staff
members. Thus, ongoing support and mentoring helped to deepen implementation,
and are needed to foster continued implementation efforts.

The Need for Site-level Accountability
An important lesson from this case study was the need to establish more site-
level accountability to maintain the professional development effort. Based on a
sociocultural view of learning, we focused on the interactions between the participants
in the study. However, we failed to invest equal effort into establishing structural
changes in the organization that would ensure continuation of the literacy-focused
professional development within a community of practice. In retrospect, we failed to
promote the literacy interactions, i.e. communication, collaboration, and celebration,
which we found to enhance teachers’ implementation of literacy practices, with
administration. Based on the lessons learned from the current study, other ECEC
191

programs would benefit by addressing accountability issues, including (a) ensuring
administrative support, (b) structuring time for learning and sharing, and (c) linking
the focus of professional development with supervision, evaluation, and assessment.

Ensuring Administrative Support
We focused our intervention effort with the teaching staff and students.
Administration was instrumental in helping to get the research project started and in
facilitating time and places for our meetings. However, site supervisors and higher-
level administrators did not participate in our staff development meetings and thus
were not fully aware of the curriculum we were implementing. By not participating in
the social construction of the early literacy knowledge base and practices we were
advocating, administrators depended on occasional updates from our principal
investigator and project director. Thus, administration had no personal investment in
really knowing what we were doing in the classroom.
Unfortunately, this detachment between teachers’ practice and administrative
support caused frustrations. For example, when a new childcare supervisor joined
NEOS and required different lesson plans that emphasized more exploratory activities,
and who was concerned about the emphasis on teacher-guided lessons that included a
focus on learning letters and concepts about reading and writing, both teachers
expressed their discontent with administration for not supporting all their effort and
accomplishments in promoting the literacy learning of their students. Therefore,
without administrative support, changes in teaching practices would not be embedded
192

and extended into a community of practice that the research team was trying to
establish.

Structuring Time for Learning and Sharing
In order to promote on-going professional development, we needed to work
with administration to provide monthly release time for the teaching staff to meet with
researchers to learn about emergent literacy concepts, to discuss effective practices
and learn instructional strategies, and to examine student work. Initially, we had
trouble meeting each month due to scheduling difficulties encountered by the
childcare supervisor. However, when a new administrator joined NEOS, she tried to
be more accommodating. Consistency in meeting regularly impacted the momentum
of the intervention.
We looked for creative solutions in order to meet more regularly. With
staggered start and ending times for the staff, we scheduled our meetings during
students’ naptime. Some staff members could only stay for a portion of the meeting
since they had to return to help supervise the students, but at least they could
participate in some of the structured discussions and feel part of the group. We also
met several times in one of the classrooms and spoke in a quiet voice as the children
slept. While these solutions were not ideal, they did allow us to meet more regularly.
In order to structure time in full day programs for learning and sharing as
professionals, ECEC programs need to explore ways to embed this needed staff
development time within the workday.
193

Linking Professional Development with Supervision, Evaluation, and Assessment
One of the challenges our research team faced was how to ensure teacher
implementation of the strategies we promoted. While some teachers, such as Monica
and Margarita were eager to learn and try out different strategies, others like Pablo
were more resistant to change current teaching styles. Through on-going support,
meetings, and presence in the classrooms, we were able to collaborate with the
teachers to promote better implementation. But without teacher buy-in,
implementation was more difficult. As outside facilitators, we could only suggest
implementation, but we could not require it.
Therefore, a lesson we learned was the need to establish a strand of the
intervention specifically dedicated to developing administrative support and structural
changes to embed the emergent literacy practices that we were developing, into
organizational practices. Without the needed administrative support and
organizational changes, the intervention lost momentum once the research team
concluded its study. We could have worked with administration to deepen their level
of understanding of emergent literacy and develop specific program expectations of
what teachers should be required to do as part of this community of practice that was
focused not only on developing the “whole child,” but also developing literacy skills
that would give the child a better chance to succeed in school. With specific teaching
expectations in place, administrators could enhance instructional practice by
committing to regular supervision and evaluation guided by the expectations.
194

In addition, teachers’ professional development was enhanced when we began
to ask teachers to observe for specific reading and writing behaviors demonstrated by
selected students. Teachers were guided in their observations of reading and writing
development through an emergent literacy perspective. So although a student might
not be reading the words on a page, the teacher learned to observe for other early
reading behaviors, such as whether students tried to track the print, if they were aware
of words on a page, or if they retold stories with a beginning, middle, and end.
Teachers were also interested in knowing the assessment results that documented the
reading and writing development of their students. Therefore, these informal and
formal assessment results encouraged teachers to continue to implement strategies that
would help their students demonstrate more progress.
Unfortunately, these assessments were “add-ons” to the checklists,
observational notes, and assessments the teachers were already required to do.
Therefore, a suggestion for ECEC programs is to reexamine what assessments are
required and how to integrate assessments that provide information on the literacy
development of their students. By drawing upon current research, assessments should
include skills that are predictors of reading achievement. However, as accountability
for outcomes increases in ECEC programs and early learning standards are adopted,
developing teachers’ skills in observing young children’s literacy development should
not be ignored. Our research team found that as teachers’ developed skills in carefully
observing and interpreting students’ reading and writing attempts in terms of emergent
195

literacy, teachers were more aware of their instructional practices that enhanced their
students’ reading development.

Summary
By reflecting on the findings of this case study of the professional development
activities which contributed to the success of an early childhood emergent literacy
program, several valuable lessons emerge that could help other professional
development efforts. In addition to the larger issues that affect many ECEC programs
such as teacher turnover, funding levels, and program quality, policies related to the
professional development of early childhood educators often require teachers to
pursue higher levels of education through additional coursework or training outside of
their workplace. Some programs such as Head Start often seek to train a cadre of
“specialists” who then have the responsibility of bringing back the training for several
centers. Transferring these large-scale training efforts into meaningful practice in
wide-ranging contexts is difficult.
Research is lacking to describe the process of initiating and constructing a site-
based training effort in a setting with children from high poverty homes and with
limited English skills. Therefore, this case study contributes to the field of early
childhood professional development by describing the complexities of establishing
and sustaining training that was based on research about promoting early literacy, but
also was context-sensitive and responsive to the needs of the participants.
196

As described in Chapter 4, both design and implementation attributes
contributed to the successful professional development effort and consequently to
enhancing teaching practices that improved students’ reading and writing
development. The design attributes included (a) providing needed instructional tools,
such as big books, classroom library books, and an emergent literacy curriculum
framework; (b) planning training meetings and classroom support activities, and (c)
preparing reading and writing demonstrations, and frequent opportunities for students
to practice. Implementation of professional development activities depended on the
social interaction of the participants, including teachers, researchers, administrators,
and students. The interactions that best supported implementation were categorized
into (a) positive communication, (b) purposeful collaboration, and (c) celebration of
accomplishments.
The theoretical implications of this study reinforce the importance of
developing professional development opportunities that take into account the social
nature of learning. Individuals, with their own distinct beliefs, experiences, training,
and education, interacted with others in a social setting focused on developing early
literacy. These social interactions then influenced the effective and consistent use of
the literacy tools introduced by the research team. Over time, use of the literacy tools
and participation in on-going training helped to change individuals’ beliefs and
experiences with emergent literacy. This synergistic connection between individual
traits, social interactions revolving around literacy learning and teaching, and the use
of literacy tools contributed to a spiral of learning that helped to build both individual
197

expertise and a professional learning community, which then contributed to enhanced
student literacy learning. Yet, in order to promote a professional learning community
centered on early literacy, this case study highlights the importance of (a) defining the
key concepts and strategies participants should know, (b) planning how to support
implementation, and (c) reflecting on how to encourage and nourish continuous
learning.
Pedagogical implications drawn from this study suggest (a) the use of research-
based practices, (b) sensitivity to individual needs and contextual factors, (c) the need
for skillful and caring teachers, and (d) the need to foster collaborative teaching,
especially by developing the skills of the assistants. We found that the assistants
played an important role in shaping students’ learning. Teachers with the highest level
of education were not necessarily the most successful in promoting early literacy.
A variety of factors affected a teacher’s effectiveness, including her ability to
collaborate with peers, her ability to communicate with students to promote language
and literacy development, and her sensitivity to the culture and background
experiences of the students. In this setting, use of the students’ primary language
allowed teachers to model and explain reading and writing concepts in a way students
would understand and then could transfer later into English.
Knowing that the children at NEOS had very limited economic resources to
purchase reading materials for home use, we stressed the importance of immersing
children with reading and writing materials, and the important role of teachers to
explicitly guide students’ learning about literacy. As an intervention, we could not
198

depend on children learning about literacy simply through discovery-oriented
explorations of reading and writing materials in different play settings. Instead, we
reinforced the inclusion of teacher-guided literacy lessons that were sensitive to the
developmental levels of the children as well as encouraged opportunities to practice
throughout the day. We tried to accelerate the literacy learning that other, more
advantaged, students often experience within the context of home reading activities.
As a result of this in-depth case study, I recommended two general policy
considerations, (a) the need to promote professional learning communities focused on
teaching and learning about early literacy, and (b) the need for site-level accountability
to ensure long term implementation of professional development activities related to
emergent literacy. I suggested that fostering a professional learning community
promotes a shared vision of early literacy, on-going training, and site-level mentoring.
An area that was not specifically addressed in this study was planning how to
sustain the professional development effort without depending on researchers or
outside facilitators. Therefore, other intervention projects need to consider how to
ensure site-level accountability for continuing the staff development effort and focus
on early literacy. I suggested the need for (a) administrative support, (b) structuring
time for learning and sharing by the teaching staff, and (c) linking professional
development with supervision, evaluation, and assessment.
In conclusion, young children are very capable of developing emergent literacy
skills. For many children, this foundation for conventional reading and writing occur
in the context of interactions with literate adults at home. Unfortunately, for children
199

who are most at-risk to struggle in school, these interactions may not take place
frequently at home. Therefore, they are especially dependent on the quality of literacy
experiences provided by knowledgeable and caring teachers in an ECEC program.
Providing effective and continuous professional development in the area of
emergent literacy for early childhood educators is a growing need. Ironically, young
children learn about literacy in a social context, yet teachers are frequently expected to
learn about literacy teaching as an individual pursuit through coursework and off-site
training opportunities. Since children develop knowledge about reading and writing
through the interactions with more literate others, strengthening the skills of all of the
adults who work with the children at an ECEC center will have a positive impact on
the children’s learning. Especially in a full day program, children interact with
numerous of adults. Therefore, providing site-based early literacy training and
classroom support helps to strengthen and establish consistency of instructional
practices.
This case study outlines the design and implementation of professional
development activities that helped to strengthen the beginning reading and writing
skills of the 4-year-olds at NEOS. This research analyzes the complexities of
developing professional development that is site-based and responsive to the needs of
the participants in a particularly challenging setting. Developing the complex
knowledge needed by teachers to promote early literacy in a developmentally
appropriate manner is a challenge and takes time. However, this study demonstrates
that a long-term collaborative professional development effort that includes teachers,
200

researchers, administrators, and students helps to establish a professional learning
community that takes collective responsibility for increased student learning.
201

REFERENCES
Ackerman, D.J., and Barnett, W.S. (2006). Increasing the effectiveness of preschool programs.
Retrieved September 20, 2006 from http://nieer.org/resources/research/
IncreasingEffectiveness.pdf.

Administration for Children and Families. (2005). Head Start program fact sheet. Washington, DC:
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Retrieved December 29, 2005, from
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/hsb/research/2005.htm

Administration for Children and Families. (2003). Head Start FACES 2000: A whole-child perspective
on program performance. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Arnold, D. H., Lonigan, C. J., Whitehurst, G. J., & Epstein, J. N. (1994). Accelerating language
development through picture book reading: Replication and extension to a videotape training
format. Journal of Educational Psychology, 86(2), 235-243.

Barnett, W. S. (1995). Long-term effects on early childhood programs on cognitive and school
outcomes. The Future of Children, 5(3), 25-50.

Barnett, W.S., Hustedt, J.T., Hawkinson, L.E., & Robin, K.B. (2006). The state of preschool: 2006
state preschool yearbook. New Brunswick, NJ: National Institute for Early Education
Research.

Barnett, W.S., Hustedt, J.T., Robin, K.B., Schulman, K.L. (2005). The state of preschool: 2005 state
preschool yearbook. New Brunswick, NJ: National Institute for Early Education Research.

Barnett, W. S., & Kelley, P.J. (2006). A framework for cost-benefit analysis of professional
development in early care and education. In M. Zaslow & I. Martinez-Beck (Eds.), Critical
issues in early childhood professional development. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.

Barton, P. (2003). Parsing the achievement gap: Baselines for tracking progress. Princeton, NJ:
Educational Testing Service.

Bazron, B., Osher, D., & Fleischman, S. (2005). Creating culturally responsive schools. Educational
Leadership, 63(1), 83-84.

Beatty, B. (1995). Preschool education in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University.

Bowman, B. T., Donovan, M. S., & Burns, M. S. (Eds.). (2001). Eager to learn: Educating our
preschoolers. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Bredekamp, S., & Copple, C. (Eds.). (1997). Developmentally appropriate practice in early childhood
programs: Revised edition. Washington, DC: NAEYC.

Byrne, B., & Fielding-Barnsley, R. (1991). Evaluation of a program to teach phonemic awareness to
young children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 84(4), 451-455.

Campbell, F. A., Helms, R., Sparling, J. J., & Ramey, C. T. (1998). Early childhood programs and
success in school: The Abecedarian Study. In W. S. Barnett & S. S. Boocock (Eds.), Early
care and education for children in poverty: Promises, programs, and long-term results. New
York: State University of New York Press.
202

Campbell, F. A., Ramey, C. T., Pungello, E. P., Sparling, J., & Miller-Johnson, S. (2002). Early
childhood education: Young adult outcomes from the Abecedarian Project. Applied
Developmental Science, 6, 42-57.

Center for the Child Care Workforce. (2004). Current data on the salaries and benefits of the U.S.
early childhood education workforce. Washington, DC: Center for the Child Care Workforce.

Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning. (2005). The status of the teaching profession 2005.
Santa Cruz, CA: Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning.

Chang, F., Crawford, G., Early, D., & Bryant, D. (2007). Spanish speaking children's social and
language development in pre-kindergarten classrooms. Journal of early education and
development, 18(2).

Chopra, R.V., Sandoval-Lucero, E., Aragon, L., Bernal, C., Berg De Balderas, H., & Carroll, D. (2004).
The paraprofessional role of connector. Remedial and special education, 25(4), 219-231.

Clay, M. M. (1993). An observation survey of early literacy achievement. Auckland, New Zealand:
Heinemann Education.

Cole, M. (1990). Cognitive development and formal schooling: The evidence from cross-cultural
research. In L. C. Moll (Ed.), Vygotsky and education: Instructional implications and
applications of sociohistorical psychology. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Collier, V. (1992). A synthesis of studies examining long-term language minority student data on
academic achievement. Bilingual Research Journal, 16 (1). 187-212.

Committee on Education and Labor. (2007). Improving Head Start Act of 2007. Retrieved May 20.
2007 from http://edworkforce.house.gov/issues/headstart.shtml

Cooter, R. B. (2003). Teacher "capacity-building" helps urban children succeed in reading. Reading
Teacher, 57(2), 198-205.

Corey, K. (2004). The real value of teachers: Using new information about teacher effectiveness to
close the achievement gap. Washington, DC: The Education Trust.

Cost Quality and Child Outcomes Study Team. (1995). Cost, quality, and child outcomes in child care
centers (Public Report). Denver: University of Colorado at Denver.

Council of Economic Advisers. (2000). Educational attainment and success in the new economy: An
analysis of challenges for improving Hispanic students' achievement. The Council of
Economic Advisers.

Cummins, J. (1994). Primary language instruction and the education of language minority students. In
C.F. Leyba (Ed.), (2
nd
ed., pp. 3-46). Schooling and language minority students : A
theoretical framework. Los Angeles: Evaluation, Dissemination and Assessment Center,
California State University, Los Angeles.

Cunningham, A. E., & Stanovich, K. E. (1997). Early reading acquisition and its relation to reading
experience and ability 10 years later. Developmental Psychology, 33, 934-945.

203

Darling-Hammond, L. (1990). Instructional policy into practice: "The power of the bottom over the
top." Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 12(3), 339-347.

Darling-Hammond, L. (1995). Quality teaching: The critical key to learning. Principal, 77(1), 5 - 11.

Darling-Hammond, L. (1996). What matters most: A competent teacher for every child. Phi Delta
Kappan, 78(3), 193 - 200.

Denzin, N.K., & Lincoln, Y.S. (1998). Collecting and interpreting qualitative materials. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage.

Department of Education. (2004). Fact sheet: New No Child Left Behind flexibility: Highly qualified
teachers. Retrieved August 27, 2006, from http://www.ed.gov/nclb/methods/teachers/
hqtflexibility.pdf

Dickinson, D. K., & Brady, J. P. (2006). Toward effective support for language and literacy through
professional development. In M. Zaslow & I. Martinez-Beck (Eds.), Critical issues in early
childhood professional development. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.

Dickinson, D. K., & Smith, M. W. (1994). Long-term effects of preschool teachers' book readings on
low-income children's vocabulary and story comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly,
29(2), 105-122.

Dixon-Krauss, L. (1996). Vygotsky's sociohistorical perspective on learning and its application to
western literacy instruction. In L. Dixon-Krauss (Ed.), Vygotsky in the classroom: Mediated
literacy instruction and assessment. White Plains, NY: Longman.

Douglas-Hall, A., Koball, H. (2005). Basic facts about low-income children in the United States.
National Center for Children in Poverty. Retrieved February 18, 2005, from
http://www.nccp.org/pub_lic05.html.

Dunn, L., Beach, S. A., & Kontos, S. (1994). Quality of the literacy environment in day care and
children's development. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 9(1), 24-34.

Ed Source. (2005). Achievement gap is a big issue for California. Ed Source. Retrieved February 20,
2005, from http://ww.edsource.org/edu_stu.cfm.

Education Commission of the States (2002). State-funded Pre-Kindergarten Programs:
Student eligibility requirements. Retrieved September 20, 2006 from
http://www.ecs.org/dbsearches/Search_Info/EarlyLearningReports.asp?tbl=table3.

Education Commission of the States (2006a). 50-State scan of professional development for
instructional paraprofessionals. Retrieved September 20, 2006, from
http://mb2.ecs.org/reports/Report.aspx?id=670.

Education Commission of the States (2006b). State-funded pre-kindergarten programs: Staff
qualification requirements. Retrieved September 20, 2006, from
http://ecs.org/dbsearches/Search_Info/EarlyLearningReports.asp?tbl=table10.

Elmore, R.F. (2004). School reform from the inside out: Policy, practice, and performance.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

204

Emerson, R.M., Fretz, R.I., & Shaw, L.L. (1995). Writing ethnographic fieldnotes. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.

Entwisle, D. R. (1995). The role of schools in sustaining early childhood program benefits. The Future
of Children, 5(3), 133-144.

Espinosa, L. M. (2002). High-quality preschool: Why we need it and what it looks like. New
Brunswick, NJ: National Institute for Early Education Research.

Forum on Child and Family Statistics. (2004). America's children in brief: Key national indicators of
well-being, 2004. Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Retrieved February 14, 2005, from
http://childstats.gov.

Frede, E. C. (1995). The role of program quality in producing early childhood program benefits. The
Future of Children, 5(3), 115-132.

Frede, E. C. (1998). Preschool quality in programs for children in poverty. In W. S. Barnett & S. S.
Boocock (Eds.), Early care and education for children in poverty: Promises, programs, and
long-term results. New York: State University of New York Press.

French, N.K. (1999). Paraeducators: Who are they and what do they do? Teaching Exceptional
Children, 32(1), 65-69.

Gall, M. D., Borg, W. R., & Gall, J. P. (1996). Educational research: An introduction (6th ed.).
White Plains, NY: Longman.

Gallimore, R., & Tharp, R. (1990). Teaching mind in society: Teaching, schooling, and literate
discourse. In L. C. Moll (Ed.), Vygotsky and education: Instructional implications and
applications of sociohistorical psychology. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Genzuk, M. & Baca, R. (1998). The paraeducator-to-teacher pipeline: A 5-year retrospective on
innovative teacher preparation programs for Latinas(os). Education and Urban Society,
31(1), 73-88.

Genzuk, M., & French, N.K. (2002). Recruiting paraeducators into teacher preparation programs: A
remedy for the shortage of teachers. Washington, DC: American Association of Colleges for
Teacher Education, Paraeducator Special Study Group.

Goals 2000. (1994). Goals 2000: Educate America Act, H.R. 1804. Washington, DC.

Good Start, Grow Smart. (2003). Good start, grow smart: Meeting early childhood needs. The White
House. Retrieved February 20, 2005, from http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/earlychildhood/
earlychildhood.html.

Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American
children. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.

Haskelkorn, D., & Fideler, E. (1996). Breaking the class ceiling: Paraeducator pathways to teaching.
Belmont, MA: Recruiting New Teachers, Inc.

205

Head Start. (2006). Head Start National Reporting System: Trainer's Script for Conducting the Direct
Child Assessment Local Training, Year 2006-2007 Baseline. Retrieved May 20, 2007 from
http://www.headstartinfo.org/NRS/Training_Script_fall2006.pdf

Heath, S.B. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life, and work in communities and classrooms.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Helburn, S. W., & Howes, C. (1996). Child care cost and quality. The Future of Children: Financing
Child Care, 6(2), 62-82.

Holdaway, D. (1979). The foundations of literacy. Sydney, Australia: Ashton Scholastic.

Howes, C., Phillips, D. A., & Whitebook, M. (1992). Teacher characteristics and effective teaching in
child care: Findings from the National Child Care Staffing Study. Child and Youth Care
Forum, 21(6), 399-414.

Illig, D. C. (1998). Birth to kindergarten: The importance of the early years: A comprehensive review
of the literature and a series of policy option for early childhood intervention in response to a
request by Senator Dede Alpert. Sacramento: California Research Bureau.

International Reading Association, & National Association for the Education of Young Children.
(1998). Learning to read and write: Developmentally appropriate practices for young
children. Reading Teacher, 52(2), 193-216.

Jackson, F. R. (1998). Seven strategies to support a culturally responsive pedagogy. In M.F. Optiz
(Ed.), Literacy instruction for culturally and linguistically diverse students. Newark, DE:
International Reading Association.

Jackson, N., Bolden, W.S., & Fenwick, L.T. (Eds.). (2001). Patterns of excellence: Promoting quality
in teaching through diversity. Atlanta, GA: Southern Education Foundation.

Jacobson, L. (2007, March 28). Scholars split on pre-K teachers with B.A.s [Electronic version].
Education Week, 26(29), 1, 13.

Juel, C. (1988). Learning to read and write: A longitudinal study of fifty-four children from first
through fourth grade. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80, 437-447.

Kertoy, M. K. (1994). Adult interactive strategies and the spontaneous comments of preschoolers
during joint storybook readings. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 9(1), 58 - 67.

Krashen, S.D. (1994). Bilingual education and second language acquisition theory. In C.F. Leyba
(Ed.), (2
nd
ed., pp. 47-75). Schooling and language minority students : A theoretical
framework. Los Angeles: Evaluation, Dissemination and Assessment Center, California State
University, Los Angeles.

Krashen, S.D. (1999). Three arguments against whole language & why they are wrong. Portsmouth,
NH: Heinemann.

Lee, V.E., Burkham, D.T. (2002). Inequity at the starting gate: Social background differences in
achievement as children begin school. Economic Policy Institute. Retrieved February 18,
2005, from www.epinet.org/content.cfm/books_starting_gate#exec.

206

Lemke, M., Calsyn, C., Lippman, L., Jocelyn, L., Kastberg, D., Liu, Y., et al. (2001). Outcomes of
learning: Results from the 2000 program for international assessment of 15-year-olds in
reading, mathematics, and science literacy (Report No. NCES 2002-115). Washington, DC:
National Center for Education Statistics.

Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Lipson, M. Y., & Wixson, K. K. (1997). Assessment and instruction of reading and writing disability:
An interactive approach. New York: Longman.

Lonigan, C. J. (2005). Development and promotion of early literacy skills: Using data to help children
succeed. Florida: Florida Center for Reading Research.

Lonigan, C. J., Anthony, J. L., Bloomfield, B. G., Dyer, S. M., & Samwel, C. S. (1999). Effects of two
preschool shared reading interventions on the emergent literacy skills of children from low-
income families. Journal of Early Intervention, 22, 306-322.

Louis, K.S., & Kruse, S.D. (1995). Professionalism and community: Perspectives on reforming urban
schools. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Madrigal, P. (2005). The impact of access to books: Developing partnerships with Latino immigrant
families through a preschool literacy program in an urban community. Unpublished doctoral
dissertation, University of Southern California.

Marshall, C., & Rossman, G. B. (1995). Designing qualitative research (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage.

Martinez-Beck, I., & Zaslow, M. (2006). Introduction: The context for critical issues in early
childhood professional development. In M. Zaslow & I. Martinez-Beck (Eds.), Critical issues
in early childhood professional development. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.

Mason, J. M., Kerr, B. M., Sinha, S., & McCormick, C. (1990). Shared book reading in an Early Start
program for at-risk children. In J. Zutell & S. McCormick (Eds.), Literacy theory and
research: Analyses from multiple paradigms. Chicago: National Reading Conference.

Maxwell, K. L., Feild, C. C., & Clifford, R. M. (2006). Defining and measuring professional
development in early childhood research. In M. Zaslow & I. Martinez-Beck (Eds.), Critical
issues in early childhood professional development. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.

McGill-Franzen, A., & Lanford, C. (1994). Exposing the edge of the preschool curriculum: Teachers'
talk about text and children's literary understandings. Language Arts, 71(4), 264 - 272.

McGill-Franzen, A., Lanford, C., & Adams, E. (1997). Learning to be literate: A comparison of five
urban early childhood programs (Report No. 2.28). Albany, NY: National Research Center
on English Learning and Achievement.

Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis: An expanded sourcebook (2nd
ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Monzo, L. & Rueda, R. (2001). Sociocultural factors in social relationships: Examining Latino
teachers' and paraeducators' interactions with Latino students (Report no. #9). Santa Cruz,
CA: Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence. (ERIC Document
Reproduction Service No. ED451724).
207

Morrow, L. M. (1988). Young children's responses to one-to-one story readings in school settings.
Reading Research Quarterly, 23 (1), 89-107.

Morrow, L. M., Casey, H., & Haworth, C. (2003). Staff development for early literacy teachers. In D.
M. Barone & L. M. Morrow (Eds.), Literacy and young children: Research-based practices
(Vol. 38, pp. 101-114). New York: Guilford Press.

National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). (1993). A conceptual framework
for early childhood professional development: A position statement f the NAEYC.
Washington, DC: NAEYC. Retrieved May 25, 2007, from http://www.naeyc.org/about/
positions/pdf/psconf98.pdf

National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). (1999). Early learning, later
success: The Abecedarian Study. Washington, DC: NAEYC. Retrieved November 19, 2005,
from http://www.naeyc.org/ece/research/abecedarian.asp

National Center for Education Statistics. (1994). Access to early childhood programs for children at
risk (Report No. NCES 93-372). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.

National Center for Education Statistics. (2004). The nation's report card: Reading highlights 2003
(Report No. NCES 2004-452). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.

National Center for Family Literacy. (2004, November 9). The National Early Literacy Panel: A
research synthesis on early literacy development. Paper presented at the National Association
of Early Childhood Specialists Annual Meeting, Anaheim, CA.

National Institute for Literacy. (2007). National Early Literacy Panel: Synthesizing the scientific
research on development of early literacy in young children. Retrieved February 10, 2007,
from http://www.nifl.gov/partnershipforreading/family/ncfl/NELP2006Conference.pdf.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: An
evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implication
for reading instruction. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

National Staff Development Council. (2001). NSDC's standards for staff development. Retrieved May
28, 2007, from http://www.nsdc.org/standards/index.cfm?printPage=1&

Neuman, S. B. (1999). Books make a difference: A study of access to literacy. Reading Research
Quarterly, 34(3), 286 - 311.

Neuman, S. B., & Celano, D. (2001). Access to print in low-income and middle-income communities:
An ecological study of four neighborhoods. Reading Research Quarterly, 36(1), 8-26.

Neuman, S. B., & Roskos, K. (1993). Access to print for children of poverty: Differential effects of
adult mediation and literacy-enriched play settings on environmental and functional print
tasks. American Education Research Journal, 30(1), 95-122.

Nuestra Escuelita (2005). Nuestra escuelita means "Our Little School." Nuestra Escuelita. Retrieved
February 6, 2005, from http://www.nuestraescuelita.org/home.html. (Nuestra escuelita is a
pseudonym)

208

Pellegrini, A.D., & Galda, L. (1993). Ten years after: A reexamination of symbolic play and literacy
research. Reading Research Quarterly, 28(2), 162-175.

Pickett, A.L., Likins, M., & Wallace, T. (2003). The employment and preparation of paraeducators:
The state-of-the-art 2003. New York: Center for Advanced Study in Education.

Pressley, M. (2001). Effective beginning reading instruction: Executive summary and paper
commissioned by the National Reading Conference. Chicago, IL: National Reading
Conference.

Raden, A. (1999). Universal prekindergarten in Georgia: A case study of Georgia's lottery-funded
pre-K program. New York: Foundation for Child Development.

Railsback, J., Reed, B., Schmidt, K. (2002). Working together for successful paraeducator services: A
guide for paraeducators, teachers, and principals. Portland, OR: Northwest Regional
Educational Lab.

Ramírez, J., Pasta, D., Yuen, S., Ramey, D. & Billings, D. (1991). Final report: Longitudinal study of
structured English immersion strategy, early-exit and late-exit bilingual education programs
for language-minority children. (Vol. II). (Prepared for U.S. Department of Education). San
Mateo, CA: Aguirre International. No. 300-87- 0156.

Reynolds, A. J. (2001). The long-term effects of an early childhood intervention on educational
achievement and juvenile arrest. American Youth Policy Forum. Retrieved November 29,
2005, from http://www.aypf.org/forumbriefs/2001/fb061801.html.

Roskos, K., & Neuman, S.B. (2001). Environment and its influences for early literacy teaching and
learning. In S.B. Neuman & D.K. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook of early literacy research (pp.
281 – 292). NewYork: Guilford Press.

Rueda, R., & DeNeve, C. (1999). How paraeducators build cultural bridges in diverse classrooms.
Reaching Today's Youth: The Community Circle of Caring Journal, 3(2), 53-55.

Russell, A. (1990). The effects of child-staff ratio on staff and child behavior in preschools: An
experimental study. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 4(2), 77-89.

Scarborough, H. S., Dobrich, W., & Hager, M. (1991). Preschool literacy experience and later reading
achievement. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 27(8), 508 - 511.

Schweinhart, L. J., Barnes, H. V., & Weikart, D. P. (1993). Significant benefits: The High/Scope Perry
Preschool study through age 27. Monograph of the High/Scope Educational Research
Foundation, 10. Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope Press.

Schweinhart, L. J., Montie, J., Xiang, Z., Barnett, W. S., Belfield, C. R., & Nores, M. (2005). Lifetime
effects: The High/Scope Perry Preschool study through age 40. Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope
Press.

Shin, H. B. (2005). School enrollment - Social and economic characteristics of students: October
2003. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau.

Shonkoff, J. P., & Phillips, D. A. (Eds.). (2000). From neurons to neighborhoods: The science of early
childhood development. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
209

Smith, E. J., Pellin, B. J., & Agruso, S. (2003). Bright Beginnings: An effective literacy-focused
program for educational disadvantaged four-year-old children. Arlington, VA: Educational
Research Service.

Smith, S. S., & Dixon, R. G. (1995). Literacy concepts of low- and middle-class four-year-olds
entering preschool. Journal of Educational Research, 88(4), 243 - 253.

Snow, C. E., Burns, M. S., & Griffin, P. (Eds.). (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young
children. Washington DC: National Academy Press.

SPeNSE (2001). The role of paraprofessionals in special education. Rockville, MD: Westat.
Retrieved on May 26, 2007, from http://ferdig.coe.ufl.edu/spense/parasFinal.pdf

Stauffer, R.G. (1970). The language-experience approach to the teaching of reading. New York:
Harper & Row.

Strickland, D.S. & Riley-Ayers, S. (2006). Early literacy: Policy and practice in the preschool years.
New Brunswick, NJ: National Institute for Early Education Research.

Tafoya, S.M. (2002). The linguistic landscape of California schools. California Counts: Population
Trends and Profiles, 3(4), 15.

Tam, A. (2000). Building an emergent literacy preschool program: A collaborative effort between
Nuestra escuelita, University of Southern California, and Center for the Improvement of Early
Reading Achievement. Unpublished manuscript, University of Southern California.

Teale, W.H. (1995). Emergent literacy. In T.L. Harris & R.E. Hodges (eds.), The literacy dictionary:
The vocabulary of reading and writing. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Teale, W. H., & Sulzby, E. (1994). Emergent literacy: Writing and reading. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Thomas, W.P., & Collier, V.P. (2002). A national study of school effectiveness for language minority
students' long-term academic achievement: Final report. Santa Cruz, CA: University of
California at Santa Cruz. Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence.

Title I. (2002a). Title I - Improving the academic achievement of the disadvantaged (Vol. U.S.C.,
Section 1222, d2). Washington, DC.

Title I. (2002b). Title I - Improving the academic achievement of the disadvantaged (Vol. U.S.C.,
Section 1001). Washington, DC.

Tout, K., Zaslow, M., & Berry, D. (2006). Quality and qualifications: Links between professional
development and quality in early care and education settings. In M. Zaslow & I. Martinez-
Beck (Eds.), Critical issues in early childhood professional development. Baltimore, MD:
Paul H. Brookes.

Ulanoff, S., & Pucci, S. (1993, April). Is concurrent-translation or preview-review more effective in
promoting second language vocabulary acquisition? Paper presented at the annual meeting of
the American Educational Research Association, Atlanta, GA.

Ulanoff, S., & Pucci, S. (1999). Learning words from books: The effects of read aloud on second
language vocabulary acquisition. Bilingual Research Journal, 23(4), 319-332.
210

U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs. (2003, Winter). Paraeducators:
Providing support to students with disabilities and their teachers. Research Connections in
Special Education, 12, 1-8. Arlington, VA: The ERIC Clearinghouse on Disabilities and
Gifted Education. Retrieved May 26, 2007 from http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/eric/osep/
recon12/rc12.pdf

Valdez-Menchaca, M. C., & Whitehurst, G. J. (1992). Accelerating language development through
picture book reading: A systematic extension to Mexican day care. Developmental
Psychology, 28(6), 1106-1114.

Villegas, A., & Lucas, T. (2002). Preparing culturally responsive teachers: Rethinking the curriculum.
Journal of Teacher Education, 53 (20), 20-32.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky: Problems of general psychology. (Vol.
1) (N. Minick, Trans.). New York: Plenum Press.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1997). The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky: The history of the development of higher
mental functions. (Vol. 4) (M.J. Hall, Trans.). New York: Plenum Press.

Welch-Ross, M., Wolf, A., Moorehouse, M., & Rathgeb, C. (2006). Improving connections between
professional development research and early childhood policies. In M. Zaslow & I. Martinez-
Beck (Eds.), Critical issues in early childhood professional development. Baltimore, MD:
Paul H. Brookes.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.

Whitebook, M. (2003a). Bachelor's degrees are best: Higher qualifications for pre-kindergarten
enviroments for children. Washington, DC: Trust for Early Education.

Whitebook, M. (2003b). Early education quality: Higher teacher qualification for better learning
environments - A review of the literature. Berkeley, CA: Center for the Study of Child Care
Employment.

Whitebook, M., Sakai, L., Gerber, E., & Howes, C. (2001). Then and now: Changes in child care and
staffing, 1994-2000. Washington, DC: Center for the Child Care Workforce.

Whitehurst, G. J., Epstein, J. N., Angell, A. L., Payne, A. C., Crone, D. A., & Fischel, J. E. (1994).
Outcomes of an emergent literacy intervention in Head Start. Journal of Educational
Psychology, 86(4), 542 - 555.

Whitehurst, G. J., & Lonigan, C. J. (1998). Child development and emergent literacy. Child
Development, 69(3), 848 - 872.

Whitehurst, G. J., & Lonigan, C. J. (2001). Emergent literacy: Development from prereaders to
readers. In S. B. Neuman & D. K. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook of early literacy research.
New York: Guilford Press.

Whitten, C. (2002). Head Start Bureau invests in early childhood literacy. Child Care Bulletin, 27.

211

Wirt, J., Choy, S., Rooney, P., Provasnik, S., Sen, A., Tobin, R. (2004). The condition of education
2004 (Report No. NCES 2004-077). Washington, DC: National Center for Education
Statistics.

Yaden, D.B. (2002). The effects of an emergent literacy preschool program in a community center
upon primarily Spanish-speaking preschoolers' acquisition of English literacy (CIERA study
2.3.a). Los Angeles: University of Southern California.

Yaden, D.B., & Brassell, D. (2002). Enhancing emergent literacy with Spanish-speaking preschoolers
in the inner city: Overcoming the odds. In C.M. (Ed.), Comprehensive reading instruction
across the grade levels. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Yaden, D.B., Madrigal, P., & Tam, A. (2003). Access to books and beyond: Creating and learning
from a book-lending program for Latino families in the inner city. In G. Garcia (Ed.), English
learners: Reaching the highest level of English literacy (pp. 357-386). Newark, DE:
International Reading Association.

Yaden, D.B., Rowe, D.W., & MacGillivray, L. (2000). Emergent literacy: A matter (polyphony) of
perspectives. In M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, & P. D. Pearson (Eds.), Handbook of reading
research (Vol. III, pp. 719-742). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Yaden, D.B., & Tam, A. (2000). Enhancing emergent literacy in a preschool program through
teacher-researcher collaboration (CIERA Technical Report #2-011). Ann Arbor, MI:
CIERA.

Yaden, D.B., Tam, A., Madrigal, P., Brassell, D., Massa, J., Altamirano, S., Almendariz, J. (2000).
Early literacy for inner-city children: The effects of reading and writing interventions in
English and Spanish during the preschool years. The Reading Teacher, 52(2), 186-189.

Young, S. A., & Romeo, L. (1999). University and urban school district collaboration: Preschoolers
and preservice teachers gain literacy skills. Reading Research and Instruction, 38(2), 101-114.

Zill, N., & West, J. (2001). Entering kindergarten: A portrait of American children when they begin
school: Findings from the condition of education 2000 (Report No. NCES 2001-035).
Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This qualitative case study describes and analyzes the process of establishing and supporting ongoing professional development that was context-sensitive, based on research about promoting early literacy, and responsive to the needs of a group of early childhood teachers who worked with children from high poverty homes and with limited English skills. The present study is a secondary analysis of data from a 4-year emergent literacy intervention research project that was originally conducted with the support of the Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement.

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

Outsourcing for school outcomes: a multi-case study examination of outsourced and in-house literacy coaching models

PDF

Early literacy intervention

PDF

Emergent literacy skills and home literacy environment of Latino children who live in poverty

PDF

What is the relationship between early childhood teachers' training on the development of their teaching self-efficacy?

PDF

Sustained mentoring of early childhood education teachers: an innovation study

PDF

School to Work Program as a contributor to adult literacy skill development

PDF

Culturally responsive coaching and professional development for teachers working with English learners: a case study in early childhood education

PDF

The effects of a multi-linguistic diagnostic spelling intervention on the writing achievement and writing self-perception beliefs of secondary students: phonology, orthography, and morphology

PDF

The effectiveness of the literacy for success intervention at Wilson Middle School

PDF

Reimagining professional learning for early childhood educators of color

PDF

The home environment and Latino preschoolers' emergent literacy skills

PDF

Positive behavior intervention support plan: a gap analysis

PDF

A professional development program evaluation: teacher efficacy, learning, and transfer

PDF

Perceptions of early childhood educators on how reflective supervision influences instructional effectiveness and teacher wellbeing

PDF

Media literacy education: a qualitative inquiry into the perspectives teachers hold about teaching media literacy

PDF

The adolescent learner's perspective on intensive literacy intervention curriculum

PDF

Professional development and its impact on teacher practice

PDF

Literacy across the disciplines

PDF

An examination of professional development in algebra for fifth-grade teachers

PDF

Factors that promote or inhibit the involvement of African American parents in a community college early childhood education program

Asset Metadata

Creator Tam, Anamarie (author)

Core Title Supporting the professional development of early childhood educators: a case study of an emergent literacy intervention project

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Education (Leadership)

Publication Date 07/24/2007

Defense Date 04/05/2007

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag early childhood educators,emergent literacy,OAI-PMH Harvest,professional development

Language English

Advisor Yaden, David B., Jr. (committee chair), Genzuk, Michael (committee member), Wohlstetter, Priscilla (committee member)

Creator Email anamarietam@yahoo.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m658

Unique identifier UC176608

Identifier etd-Tam-20070724 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-526418 (legacy record id),usctheses-m658 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Tam-20070724.pdf

Dmrecord 526418

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Tam, Anamarie

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu