Making the transfer: preservice teachers’ technical and pedagogical knowledge of phonics instruction

ABSTRACT

The decades-long and contentious debate over how students are taught to read centers around the role that phonics and alphabetic code-related skills have in reading instruction. Some claim that these skills are not prioritized in most elementary classrooms because teacher education programs do not adequately prepare preservice teachers (PSTs) to teach children how to read. Although scholars do not yet agree on the knowledge and skills needed to effectively teach children to read, the current body of research around teacher education of phonics instruction is minimal and overrepresents PSTs’ acquisition of technical knowledge. As such, in this study we drew on theories of practice-based teaching practices to employ a series of three instructor-created assessments to better understand the connection between the technical and pedagogical knowledge required to teach phonics and code-related skills. Findings indicate that assessments of technical knowledge alone did not accurately illuminate PSTs’ misunderstandings. Further, results show that PSTs who were successful on technical measurements of phonics instruction were not always successful on the pedagogical assessments.

KEYWORDS:

• Emergent literacy
• phonics
• teacher education
• pedagogical knowledge

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethics Approval

Ethical approval for this study was granted by the Institutional Review Board at St. Norbert College (FWA #00015576) and was assigned project number IRB: IRB 21–03-02b.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.