the national early literacy panel: a research synthesis on early literacy development national...

The National Early Literacy Panel: A Research Synthesis on Early

Literacy Development

National Association of Early Childhood Specialists/SDE

Annual MeetingAnaheim CA

November 9, 2004

Family Partnership in ReadingCoordinated by:• National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL)

Funded by: • National Institute for Literacy (NIFL)

In consultation with:• National Institute for Child Health and Human

Development (NICHD)• U.S. Department of Education• Head Start Bureau, Department of Health and Human

Services

Coordinated by:

Family Partnership in Reading

Create and disseminate professional development materials for programs providing family literacy services that summarize the scientific reading research.

Instructional strategies will be identified based on the scientific research that will enable staff in Head Start, Even Start and other programs providing family literacy services to:

•Help young children develop the foundational skills they need to become good readers,

•Equip parents to support their children’s literacy development, and

•Improve reading instruction for parents in family literacy programs.


Task 1: Identify and support a panel of researchers to synthesize the findings of scientific research studies on early literacy development in children, ages 0-5, including parental and home effects on that development.

Task 2: Identify instructional strategies to help children, ages 0-5, and in kindergarten through grade three to learn to read.


Task 3: Create and provide professional development and materials on the findings of scientific literature about how adults learn to read and how parents and caregivers can help children learn to read.

Task 4: Develop a plan for piloting the professional development components and materials from Tasks 1, 2, and 3 that leads to full-scale implementation into NCFL’s family literacy training.

• Dr. Timothy Shanahan (Chair), University of Illinois at Chicago

• Dr. Anne Cunningham, University of California at Berkeley• Dr. Christopher J. Lonigan, Florida State University• Dr. Kathy Escamilla, University of Colorado at Boulder• Dr. Victoria Molfese, University of Louisville• Dr. Janet Fischel, State University of New York at Stony Brook• Dr. Chris Schatschneider, Florida State University• Dr. Susan H. Landry, University of Texas—Houston• Dr. Dorothy Strickland, Rutgers University

Background

• Increase the use of research as the basis for educational decision-making and debate

• Report of the National Reading Panel

• Need for comparable information on early literacy and family literacy

Benefits for Instruction

• Help children develop the foundational skills they need to become good readers

• Equip parents to support their children’s literacy development

Benefits of a Research Synthesis

The aggregation of research allows for an accounting and weighing of research evidence in support of a research question.

Multiple studies will employ different methods and different measures which should increase the robustness of a particular finding

Research syntheses can provide a rich source of ideas for needed research.

Limits to a Research Synthesis

Limited most by the availability and quality of research on a particular question. Generalizations made from a synthesis must stay within the bounds of the research.

Overview of the

Questions Addressed by the

Research Synthesis

Four Synthesis QuestionsFour Synthesis Questions

1. What are young children’s (ages birth through five years) skills and abilities that predict later reading, writing and spelling outcomes?

2. What environments and settings contribute to or inhibit gains in children’s skills and abilities and are linked to later outcomes in reading, writing and spelling?

3. What child characteristics contribute to or inhibit gains in children’s skills and abilities and are linked to later outcomes in reading, writing and spelling?

4. What programs and interventions contribute to or inhibit gains in children’s skills and abilities and are linked to later outcomes in reading, writing and spelling?

Synthesis QuestionsSynthesis Questions

• What programs and interventions contribute to or inhibit gains in children’s skills and abilities and are linked to later outcomes in reading, writing and spelling?

Synthesis QuestionsSynthesis Questions

• What are the skills and abilities that are linked to later outcomes in reading, writing and spelling?

Emergent Literacy

Emergent literacy involves the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that are developmental precursors to conventional forms of reading and writing (Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998).

Emergent LiteracyEmergent Literacy

Emergent literacy skills are the basic building blocks for learning to read and write.


Interventions in the preschool period need to focus on emergent literacy skills because children are not yet engaging in conventional forms of literacy.


Questions that need to be answered about emergent literacy interventions:

What skills constitute the domain of emergent literacy?

What are effective ways to intervene on those skills?

Are these skills necessary to develop conventional literacy skills (if not, why not just teach conventional literacy skills)?


What skills constitute the domain of conventional literacy skills?

Receptively Decoding (accuracy and fluency) Reading Comprehension



Although decoding is not all there is to skilled reading, it is a critical component. You can decode what you cannot

comprehend, but… you cannot comprehend what you

cannot decode.



Expressively Spelling Composition


How to define emergent literacy Two conditions need to be satisfied for

something to be considered an emergent literacy skill:

(a) Must come before conventional literacy skills.

(b) Must be related to (i.e., predictive of) conventional literacy skills.

Identifying Emergent Literacy Identifying Emergent Literacy SkillsSkills

Many candidate emergent literacy skills have been suggested, including oral language concepts about print environmental print alphabet knowledge phonological processing skills visual-perceptual skills emergent (pretend) reading emergent (pretend) writing


Identifying Emergent Literacy Skills: Identifying Emergent Literacy Skills:

The EvidenceThe Evidence

Identifying the Studies for RQ1Identifying the Studies for RQ1

• Using a list of search terms in nine categories, electronic searches in both PsychINFO and ERIC were conducted

• 6700 citations were generated

• These 6700 publications were screened against initial criteria

– Published in English

– Published in a refereed journal

– Empirical research

– Include children between the ages of 0 and 5 or kindergarten children

• 1825 studies passed this initial screening and abstracts were reviewed for relevance.

• 685 studies passed this second screen and full text articles reviewed for relevance.

• 275 passed the full text review.

• 41 of the 275 were later rejected because of insufficient information to code.

• All effect sizes in these 234 studies were coded and summarized.

• These 234 studies involved a predictive relation between a skill measured during preschool and a convention literacy outcome measured at some later point in time (i.e., from kindergarten forward).

Resulting in...Resulting in...

Predictors of Decoding

Predictor VariableAverage

CorrelationNumber of

StudiesNumber ofSubjects

Decoding NonWords .82 5 493Decoding Words .72 11 1,211Decoding NOS .65 3 460Reading Comprehension .63 4 492Reading NOS .57 3 1,739Invented Spelling .53 9 625Environmental Print .52 4 394Writing Name .50 8 1,388IQ .50 9 808

More Predictors of Decoding

Predictor VariableAverage

CorrelationNumber of

StudiesNumber ofSubjects

Concepts About Print .46 9 1,090Alphabet Knowledge .45 26 2,826Phonological Awareness .44 47 4,334RAN Graphological .41 8 1,029P-IQ .41 6 346Visual Perceptual .38 10 946Oral Language .38 12 1,578RAN NonGraphological .34 8 861Visual Motor .26 9 843Phonological STM .25 21 2,384

Average Correlations Predicting Decoding at School Age with Predictors Measured at Kindergarten and Pre-kindergarten

Average Correlation

0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9

Phonological STMVisual Motor

RAN NonGraphologicalVisual Perceptual

Oral LanguageRAN Graphological

P-IQPhonological Awareness

Alphabet KnowledgeConcepts About Print

Writing NameIQ

Environmental PrintInvented Spelling

Reading NOSReading Comprehension

Decoding NOSDecoding Words

Decoding NonWords

Predictors of Reading Comprehension

Predictor Variable AverageCorrelation

Number ofStudies

Number ofSubjects

Alphabet Knowledge .45 6 668Phonological Awareness .41 13 1,007Oral Language .39 10 1,024Phonological STM .38 8 1,260RAN NonGraphological .37 4 509Visual Perceptual .35 4 659Visual Motor .20 4 670

Average Correlations Predicting Reading Comprehension at School Age with Predictors Measured at Kindergarten and Pre-kindergarten

Average Correlation

0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6

Visual Motor

Visual Perceptual

RAN NonGraphological

Phonological STM

Oral Language

Phonological Awareness

Alphabet Knowledge

Predictors of Spelling

Predictor Variable AverageCorrelation

Number ofStudies

Number ofSubjects

Spelling .84 4 284Decoding Words .71 3 260IQ .55 3 129Decoding NonWords .54 3 246Alphabet Knowledge .54 9 873Concepts About Print .53 3 217Visual Perceptual .43 3 434Phonological Awareness .42 14 1,225Phonological STM .37 6 661Writing Name .36 3 397Oral Language .33 5 488

Average Correlations Predicting Spelling at School Age with Predictors Measured at Kindergarten and Pre-kindergarten

Average Correlation

0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0

Oral Language

Writing Name

Phonological STM

Phonological Awareness

Visual Perceptual

Concepts About Print

Decoding NonWords

Alphabet Knowledge

IQ

Decoding Words

Spelling

Identifying Emergent Literacy SkillsIdentifying Emergent Literacy Skills Within meta-analyses, there must be a

minimum of three studies contributing an effect size to allow interpretation.

Correlations of .30 or higher mean that at least 9 percent of the variance in a conventional literacy outcome can be predicted from the emergent literacy variable.

A number of variables have strong and consistent relations with later convention literacy outcomes in a relatively large number of studies with a relatively large number of children (meaning they are sizable, reliable, and stable):

Strong Predictors: Alphabet Knowledge Concepts About Print Phonological Awareness Invented Spelling Oral Language Writing Name RAN (Rapid Automatic Naming/Lexical

Access)

Other variables have a smaller effect or have been examined in fewer studies with fewer children: Phonological STM Visual Motor Skills Visual Perceptual Skills

• Variables that are not in the table have not yet been demonstrated to be predictive of later conventional literacy skills.

• A very important interpretive caution for these findings is that these values reflect zero-order correlations.– Correlations may reflect third variables.– Variables may share predictive variance.

• Greater confidence of the importance of a variable would be obtained if that variable contributed unique predictive variance to an outcome once other important variables were controlled.

• For example, does a variable predict a reading outcome above and beyond variance shared with IQ or language skill?

Examination of multivariate studies (i.e., studies in which the predictive utility of variables is examined in the context of other variables) indicates that several of these univariate predictors provide independent predictive information.

• Alphabet Knowledge• Phonological Sensitivity• Invented Spelling• Oral Language

Unique predictors from the multivariatestudies

Some Finer-Grained Questions:

• Does Age of Assessment Matter?

• Does Age of Outcome Matter?

• Does Type of PA Skill Matter?

• Does Type of Oral Language Skill Matter?

• Does Type of Memory Matter?

NELP RQ4 ProcessNELP RQ4 Process

Criteria for evaluating research studies The primary research studies set the limits

for what we can conclude in our research synthesis.

The primary studies can be evaluated on a number of criteria. One is in how much causal information that they carry.

What allows the determination of a cause and effect relationship?

The cause must precede the effect The cause must be related to the effect We can find no other plausible

alternative explanation for the effect other than the cause.

Cause and Effect Research studies vary in their ability to

address cause and effect relationships Studies can be placed in a general

hierarchy according to how much causal information they can provide Experiments Quasi-experiments Correlational studies

`

Panelists (in pairs) reviewed abstracts from the list of 1825 that resulted from the original screen of 6700 abstracts (original search). This review resulted in the retrieval of 651 articles for panelist review. Purpose was to retrieve any intervention studies that fit the original criteria for inclusion.

`

Using the results of RQ1 analyses, 13 predictors were used as search categories (with terms identified for each category) along with terms in age and intervention categories to conduct a search for interventions that tested the predictor variables. This search resulted in 840 abstracts that were reviewed by panelists. From this review 280 articles were retrieved.

`

As articles were retrieved they were categorized by intervention type.

Categories identified:

`

• Category 1: Helping Children Make Sense of Print--Cracking the Alphabetic Code and Teaching Letters and Words (PA, Letter Knowledge, Spelling, Phonics, Print Awareness, Visual Perceptual/Perceptual Motor)

`

• Category 2: Reading to and Sharing Books with Young Children

• Category 3: Parent and Home Programs for Improving Young Children’s Literacy

`

• Category 4: Preschool and Kindergarten Programs

• Category 5: Language Enhancement Studies

`

Studies were reviewed and coded according to the screening criteria and items related to research design.

Factors in RQ4 Study Review

• Intervention Research

• Group Design

• RCT versus Quasi-experimental

• Not Confounded

• Appropriate controls in quasi-experimental studies

`

Currently, number of studies (total = 168) included for RQ4 and their respective categories are:

• Category 1: 51 studies





Oral Language InterventionsOral Language Interventions

• Numerous studies on the efficacy of oral language interventions.

• However, few have followed children to the point where effects could be seen on reading outcome variables.


• Domain of studies that have examined the efficacy of various oral language interventions is large.

• This summary is restricted to those interventions that have focused on a literacy context.


• All forms of interactive shared reading interventions produce positive effects on children’s oral language skills as measured by standardized tests and more natural language samples.

• These interventions require children to respond and incorporate a scaffolding approach.


• Effective agents of intervention can be teachers, parents, community volunteers, or teacher aides.

• Effects are obtained with children selected for risk status and unselected children.


• Notably, the single study that followed children into the first grade did not find any impact of the successful oral language intervention on children’s decoding skills--highlighting the modularity of emergent literacy skills.

Phonological Awareness InterventionsPhonological Awareness Interventions

Phonological Awareness Phonological Awareness InterventionsInterventions

• There is a large literature on the effects of teaching phonological sensitivity to children and its impact on reading skills.

These data indicate that training phonological skills is effective and has a significant impact on decoding skills. Indeed, these data indicate that phonological skills are causally related to reading skills.


• The majority of these data, however, come from studies of children in the first grade or older.

A search of the published evidence yielded approximately 55 studies of phonological sensitivity interventions with children who were in kindergarten or preschool.

Of these, only 6 studies included primarily children who were preschool age.


• Byrne and Fielding-Barnsley have reported the most comprehensive examination of a preschool phonological sensitivity intervention.

• Their intervention involved teaching children to identify initial phonemes in words by matching words on the basis of initial sounds.


• Approximately 6 hours of exposure to this program, conducted by the experimenters, resulted in effects on reading skills that persisted for 6 years.

• A trial of the same program, but implemented by preschool teachers, also yielded positive immediate results; however, the overall size of the effect was not as large as that obtained in the experimenter implemented program.

Print Knowledge InterventionsPrint Knowledge Interventions


• There are relatively few studies examining the effect of training children in print knowledge.

In her review of the literature, Adams (1990) noted that there was little evidence that teaching children the alphabet had an impact on later reading.

Perhaps this conclusion has limited investigations of the impact of print knowledge interventions.


• The majority of studies involving the teaching of letters have been done in the context of training phonological sensitivity with older children (i.e., Kindergarten or above).

• Data from these studies provide evidence that training children in both phonological sensitivity and letter knowledge is more effective than training in phonological sensitivity alone


• One recent short-term study did find an effect on reading of training letter knowledge.

• Children trained to recognize letter names were more able to decode phonetically spelled words than children exposed to a comprehension training.

• However, the letter group also received PA training.

Implications for Early Childhood Education

• Provides evidence for building children’s language and literacy skills in the preschool period.

• Identifies early skills that give children the strongest foundation for learning to read.

• Informs decisions about developing or selecting the most appropriate curricula (e.g., content, intensity, sequence).

• Provides guidelines for professional development (e.g., read-aloud practices, PA activities).

• Supports the importance of assessment of early literacy skills.

• Helps to guide the development of goals and selection of content for parent programs.

• Provides strong direction about future research.

the national early literacy panel: a research synthesis on early literacy development national...

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