Teachers’ Thoughts on Teaching Reading: An Investigation of Early Childhood Teachers’ Perceptions of Literacy Acquisition

Teachers’ assumptions about teaching and learning have a critical impact on pedagogical practices. This study was conducted to investigate the perceptions of early childhood educators regarding children’s acquisition of literacy in an attempt to gain a picture of current instructional practices. Prekindergarten through second grade teachers (n = 76) responded to the Literacy Acquisition Perception Profile. Responses on the reading readiness and emergent literacy subscales served as the dependent variables in a series of ANOVAs conducted with educational level, teaching assignment, and teaching experience as the independent variables. Results revealed a statistically significant difference [F(4, 65) = 3.31, p = .03, η2 = .17] between the teachers who had 6–10 years of experience and more than 21 years, with teachers who had 6–10 years clearly ascribing to reading readiness as the preferred way of teaching reading over teachers with 21+ years. This finding may be attributed to many teachers with more than 21 years experience having received initial teacher training during the late 1980s and early 1990s when an emergent literacy perspective, a departure from the traditional view of reading readiness, was the predominant view. It is posited that differentiated instruction rather than the application of a single instructional approach fully grounded in a particular perception may be the best approach to facilitating young children’s literacy acquisition.