Assessing the early literacy skills of toddlers: the development of four foundational measures^†

† A version of this paper was presented at the National Council on Family Relations Conference, 2014.

ABSTRACT

Several challenges arise when researchers or practitioners attempt to assess the literacy skills of toddlers, including a lack of developmentally appropriate measures, toddlers' more limited communication ability, and how literacy is defined in the years before age three. This paper describes four new measures of early literacy development and provides preliminary evidence of their reliability and validity. Results show that the measures of Representational Knowledge, Concepts About Symbols, Book Handling Skills, and Environmental Symbols all performed well in a sample of 148 toddlers. The findings hold several implications for the study of the literacy development of toddlers.

KEYWORDS:

• Book handling skills
• concepts about symbols
• environmental symbols
• literacy development
• representational knowledge
• toddlers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Daniel J. Weigel is a Professor, Extension Human Development and Family Life Specialist, Human Development and Family Studies/Cooperative Extension.

Sally S. Martin is a Professor Emeritus, Human Development and Family Studies.

Jennifer L. Lowman is the Coordinator for Student Persistence Research.

Notes

† A version of this paper was presented at the National Council on Family Relations Conference, 2014.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the Nevada Agricultural Experiment Station.