A Phenomenology Study into How Parents Understand and Perceive the Effect of Reading Aloud on Children's Emergent Literacy Skill Development and Reading Readiness

Abstract

To address the void in scholarly literature, this study explored how parents approach and understand the read aloud experience and its effect on young children's emergent literacy development, reading readiness, and future reading success. Many children start school every year without the necessary skills to learn how to read, and it is virtually impossible to close the gap in this deficit. Choosing the most effective way of teaching emergent literacy skills to young children presents the current challenge for many early childhood educators and administrators. Much work has been done in the area of emergent literacy skills and their link to reading success. At a young age, children develop a desire to learn how to read as well as the self-confidence in their abilities to become readers. The problem addressed in this phenomenological study was a need to explore parental perceptions about emergent literacy and reading aloud to kindergarteners to understand the influence on children's literacy development, reading readiness, and future success. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore parents read aloud experiences with their children to understand how parents perceive children's emergent literacy skill development and the effects of their reading aloud approach on reading readiness. Research in the areas of emergent literacy skills and their links to reading success, best practices for delivering early literacy instruction, and the home literacy environment with the role parents play in developing emergent literacy skills, were examined to provide background germane to addressing the reading readiness issue. The study sought to answer the following research questions. 1. How do parents describe their perceptions about the effects of the read aloud experience on emergent literacy development for kindergarten learners in a south central Pennsylvania school? 2. How do parents of kindergartners experience and understand the read aloud approach to developing emergent literacy skills in a south central Pennsylvania school? 3. How does the prosody of parents reading aloud to their children affect kindergarteners' interest in reading in a south central Pennsylvania school? 4. How do parental reading aloud techniques inform or shape the reading experience of kindergarten learners in a south central Pennsylvania school? Parents of kindergarten students were surveyed with a demographic questionnaire and interviewed to gather qualitative data. Parents were also observed reading aloud with their children using observational notes and a reading observation checklist. Descriptive, structural, and in vivo coding were used to analyze the data. Keywords: Emergent Literacy, Fluency, Print Referencing, Prosody, Read Aloud, Reading Readiness, Text CodeEd.D., Educational Leadership and Management -- Drexel University, 202