Rhymes and Relatability: How Storybook Style and Content Relate to Home-Based Educators’ Extra-Textual Talk

ABSTRACT

Research Findings

Home-based early childhood education and care (ECEC) is a popular form of small-group ECEC, with potential to facilitate high-quality conversations during shared book reading. To investigate how home-based early childhood educators (ECEs) take advantage of learning opportunities, educators read two storybooks with children (35.5–50.8 months old) in their ECEC. Because types of extra-textual talk used differ depending on book style, one book rhymed and its setting was local (New Zealand), so more personally relevant to the children. The other did not rhyme, and its setting was international (Africa), so less personally relevant. Home-based ECEs frequently made comments encouraging children to think beyond book content, although these varied between books. In the NZ/Rhyming book, educators talked more about print concepts and sounds, which may nourish emergent language and literacy skills, and used more talk relating the book to real experiences, potentially facilitating children’s engagement. In the African/non-rhyming book, educators used more descriptions and inferences. This variation in comprehension-related talk may support children’s cognitive and linguistic development. Practice or Policy: Home-based educators use a variety of shared reading strategies, which differed across books in ways that afford different learning opportunities. We recommend diversity in the types of books read with pre-schoolers to nurture emergent language and literacy skills.

Acknowledgments

This study was conducted as part of the doctoral research of Sarah Timperley and undergraduate research of Ruby-Rose McDonald. Dr Timperley is now a Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Teacher Education and Wellbeing Institute, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. Portions of these data were included in student poster presentations at the New Zealand Association for Research in Education Annual Conference 2017 and the National Science Challenge – A Better Start: E Tipu e Rea Literacy and Learning Research Symposium 2017. We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of the participating educators and children as well as wider research team and early childhood community to this work.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In this paper, we use the term educator to refer to adults who are responsible for the education and care of children in any registered early childhood setting. This terminology is consistent with that of the New Zealand Ministry of Education (New Zealand Ministry of Education, 2018).

2. Achieving either former NZ school certification or current National Certification of Educational Achievement levels 1 or 2 (New Zealand Qualifications Authority, 2011).

3. Either they qualified for former University funding or they completed the final year of high-school (level of NCEA).

4. This usually occurred when educators with knowledge of the larger project thought these children were developmentally ready to participate in project activities.

5. The nearest zoo to participating children’s homes is a five-hour drive away, meaning direct experiences with African animals may have been limited for children in our sample, reflected in little discussion of trips to a zoo during shared reading interactions. There was also very little extra-textual talk about media-related experiences with African animals (TV, movies or other books).

6. Some of the birds in the New Zealand book are very common in New Zealand, meaning that most (if not all) children had direct experiences with at least some of the “local” animals in the New Zealand book, as reflected in children’s comments during shared reading interactions.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative under Grant 9163 (2017 – 2018) and a Westpac Research Award through the University of Otago (2016) to Elizabeth Schaughency and Elaine Reese; and a University of Otago Doctoral Scholarship to Sarah [Rouse] Timperley.