New Zealand Educators’ PhonologicalAwareness Knowledge

Jane Carroll, Gail Gillon

PhD

& Brigid McNeill

PhD

Educators involved in supporting children’s literacy development are expectedto facilitate children’s phonological awareness development andprovide explicit feedback as part of the learning journey.

Study Aim:

To investigate the phonological awareness skills ofNew Zealand teachers and those training to be teacherswithin primary classrooms

Participants:

Speech-language Therapists (SLT; n=34)

Employed by the Ministry of Education andexperienced in working in New Zealand schools.

Resource Teachers of Literacy

(RTLit; n=19)

Experienced teachers with a Post GraduateDiploma in Literacy Education.

Resource Teachers of Learning and Behaviour (RTLB;n=23)

Experienced teachers with aPost Graduate Diploma in Special Needs Resource Teaching

Primary Teachers (n=134)

Experienced junior school teachers working in mainstreamNew Zealand schools in a range of socio-economic areas.

Teachers’ Aides (T.Aide; n=48)

Employed by schools to assist teachers in oral and writtenlanguage instruction in junior school classrooms. Most of the teachers’ aides indicatedthat they had no formal qualification and “learnt skills as they worked”.

Early Childhood Educators (ECE; n=20)

Experienced early childhood educators workingin mainstream New Zealand Early Childhood facilities in a range of socio-economicareas.

Third Year Bachelor of Teaching and Learning Students (3YrBT; n=99)

In the third year of their undergraduate degree in teacher training.

First Year Bachelor of Teaching and Learning Students (1stYrBT; n=153)

In the first year of their undergraduate degree in teacher training.The test takes 20-25 minutes to administer and has six subtests:Three phonemic awareness Three phonological awareness- identification of how many - syllablesounds - alliteration- the second sound - rhyme- the last sound

Assessment Measure: The Love and Reilly (1995) Phonological Awareness TestAll participants were recruited during their participation in an oral language /literacy workshop with the exception of the Bachelor Of Teaching and Learningstudents who participated as part of a lecture on phonological awarenesswithin their usual university programme

This test is designed to be administered to adults prior to in-service training in phonologicalawareness. All participants sat the test under the same test conditions.Participants were required to write down responses on a scoresheet. They self marked their responses and recorded their totalscore correct. Test forms were checked independently by twospeech-language therapists to ensure the accuracy of themarking and total scores recorded. There was 98% agreementbetween the two examiners’ scores.