Effects of a professional development program on emergent literacy-promoting practices and environments in early childhood education and care

ABSTRACT

The years from birth to five are critical for building the emergent literacy skills that precede learning to read and write. Early childhood education and care services are in a unique position to support emergent literacy development, particularly for children in socio-economically disadvantaged communities. This article reports the findings of a small cluster randomised controlled trial of the Let’s Read professional development program involving 12 centres and 223 educators in Australia. Through eLearning and on-site coaching, the program of relatively short duration and intensity supported educators of children from birth to school age. While the small sample size means the results must be interpreted with caution, the findings were promising. Despite variation in the fidelity of implementation, educators and centres in the intervention group showed more positive scores after participating in Let’s Read than those who did not across all areas of educator practice and classroom quality. Changes were most encouraging for educators of infants and toddlers. These results suggest there is measurable value in professional development involving coaching for improving emergent literacy-promoting practices of early childhood educators, including those working within disadvantaged communities. Concurrent fidelity and impact research should be undertaken with any wider implementation.

KEYWORDS:

• Professional development
• emergent literacy
• coaching
• early childhood education and care
• cluster randomized controlled trial

Acknowledgments

Anneke Grobler (Murdoch Children’s Research Institute) provided support for the statistical analysis undertaken for this study.

Disclosure statement

This work was supported by funds from the managing organisation for the ECEC centres participating in the study and an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Practitioner Fellowship (Sharon Goldfeld, number: GNT1155290).

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09575146.2021.1898342.

Notes

1. Due to missing information about the centre in which one educator was employed, they could not be randomised, and so their data were excluded from analyses.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council [GNT1155290]; managing organisation for the ECEC centres participating in the study.