Research and Dissemination to Support Early Literacy Development in Young Children

March 2008

Research Synthesis

The National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL), with funding from the National Institute for Literacy (NIFL), identified and convened the National Early Literacy Panel (NELP) to conduct a synthesis of scientific research on the development of early literacy in young children. The objective for convening the NELP was to identify interventions and practices that promote positive outcomes in literacy for preschool children. The panel formulated four research questions.

• What are the skills and abilities of young children ages birth to five years that predict later reading outcomes?
• What programs and interventions contribute to or inhibit gains in children’s skills and abilities that are linked to later reading outcomes?
• What environments and settings contribute to or inhibit gains in children’s skills and abilities that are linked to later reading outcomes?
• What child characteristics contribute to or inhibit gains in children’s skills and abilities that are linked to later reading outcomes?

The results reported here are preliminary. Final results will be available in a report to be released at a later date.

Identifying Early Literacy Predictors

Because it was unlikely that there would be interventions that directly targeted conventional literacy skills (decoding, reading comprehension, spelling) prior to formal instruction in kindergarten and beyond, the first research question was primary in identifying the preschool and kindergarten predictors of conventional literacy skills. The NELP identified, coded and analyzed 300 peer-reviewed research articles to identify the predictors.

Overall, across the three different outcome domains for conventional literacy, a consistent set of variables with moderate to strong relationships emerged. Based on these findings, there was strong evidence for the importance of alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, rapid naming tasks involving either naming of letters and digits or naming of objects and colors, writing/writing name, and phonological short-term memory as predictors of later reading and writing skills. Less consistent evidence existed for the importance of global oral language skills and concepts about print as predictors of later reading and writing skills, mainly because these variables did not always continue to predict literacy outcomes once other variables like alphabet knowledge or phonological awareness were controlled.

Identifying Effective Interventions

The NELP examined a total of 191 articles across five categories of interventions to determine the impact of various approaches on the identified early literacy predictors and conventional literacy skills. The five categories were:

• Code-related interventions (e.g., phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge, and making sense of print )
• Shared-reading interventions
• Parent and home programs for improving young children’s literacy
• Preschool and kindergarten programs
• Language enhancement interventions

All categories of interventions had statistically significant positive effects for at least some outcome domains (i.e., outcomes identified by the NELP predictive analysis). Not every category had equal numbers of studies, and many categories did not have sufficient studies to determine effects on particular outcomes. Impacts of various approaches were not measured on all possible outcomes. Nonetheless, it is apparent that explicit attempts to build code-related skills; to share books with young children; to enhance oral language; and to use home, preschool, and kindergarten interventions all can be valuable paths to at least some literacy and language outcomes.

Further analyses have been conducted to gauge effects of demographic characteristics and a variety of other potential moderators directly related to the interventions in each category. The results are too extensive to share here but will be included in the final report of the panel. Overall, however, there were limited numbers of studies to allow for many moderator analyses, and there was limited evidence of large effects of the moderators that could be examined.

Dissemination of Findings

With generous support from the Dollar General Literacy Foundation, NCFL is launching a national dissemination campaign that will translate findings from the NELP into practical guidance for early literacy practitioners and parents. This campaign includes:

• Development of parent workshops piloted at three to five early childhood programs selected through an RFP process
• Distribution of parent products designed by NCFL to support literacy activities at home and in the community
• Teacher guides and video demonstrations that distill research into practice, available free in print and through NCFL’s Web site
• Video examples of parents and children engaged in learning activities that both parents and teachers can use to encourage literacy play

NCFL and the Dollar General Literacy Foundation believe strongly that the findings of the NELP have tremendous potential to influence the literacy learning of young children in order to improve future reading achievement.

Participating programs in the Dollar General Early Literacy Initiative will be announced this summer.