thesis
Age and schooling effects on the development of early literacy and related skills
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Abstract
There is evidence to suggest that age (natural maturation and informal
experience) and schooling (formal instruction at school) have differing effects on the
development of cognitive skills between the ages of 5 and 7. There is also evidence that
children who start learning how to read later in childhood make faster progress than
those who start earlier in childhood. However, previous studies on reading development
have typically confounded age with length of schooling. The current thesis investigates
the separate role of each on the development of early literacy and related skills by
comparing matched groups of children differing in either exposure to formal reading
instruction or chronological age. Two longitudinal studies are presented, with seven key
findings.
Chapter 2 presents a cross-sectional study (n = 93) comparing a group of later-schooled
7 year olds with two control groups at the beginning of their first year of
reading instruction (earlier-schooled ‘reading controls’ and earlier-schooled ‘age
controls’). First, it was shown that vocabulary and short-term verbal memory skills
developed with age, not schooling. Second, it was found that phoneme awareness can
develop in the absence of formal reading instruction, and that this was more likely to
happen in older than younger children.
Chapter 3 presents a longitudinal study (n = 61) following the progress of the
first two groups from chapter 2; a group of Steiner-educated 7 years olds (later-schooled
group) and a group of standard-educated 4 year olds (earlier-schooled group) during
their first two years of formal literacy instruction. Results showed that the older age and
superior reading-related skills of the first group did not lead to faster progress in
reading, and in fact this group showed worse progress in spelling. The good progress of
the earlier-schooled group was attributed to more consistent and high quality phonics
instruction.
By comparing the predictors of reading and spelling in the two groups presented
in chapter 3, chapter 4 showed that the skills underlying literacy development were
similar in older and younger beginning readers, but that instructional emphasis on letter-sound
knowledge in the earlier-schooled group reduced its power as a predictor.
Chapter 5 used mediation analyses to show that letter-sound knowledge led to
phonological awareness, which in turn led to reading in the earlier-schooled children, an
effect which was attributed to the method of synthetic phonics instruction administered
to these children. No significant mediation was shown in the later-schooled group.
Chapter 6 presents a longitudinal study (n = 45) of the first two years of
schooling in a standard school using the cut-off design. Results revealed that a dynamic
measure was more effective than a static measure for measuring phoneme awareness in
young children. Finally, there was an effect of both age and schooling on the
development of phoneme awareness and early reading and spelling skills.
These studies demonstrate that age-related factors in addition to schooling play a
significant role in the development of reading-related skills. However, although there
was evidence of an age effect on literacy skills during the first year of standard
schooling (chapter 6), there was only limited evidence of such an effect over a larger age
range (chapter 3). In conclusion, it is suggested that concerns that age 4-5 is too early to
learn to read are unfounded, and that a delay in school entry age will not necessarily
lead to benefits in the acquisition of reading