Early Childhood Education

Promoting early childhood education using ICTs

Mary Wilson, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Problem

A group of kindergarten teachers were surveyed and half reported the lack of school readiness caused the first year of school to be challenging milestone for young children to overcome (Gill, Winters and Friedman, 2006). As argued by Auleear Owodally (2014), preschool students are inadequately prepared to face the challenges of the literacy programs in their first year of school. School readiness assessments go against the “uneven nature of development” and demand all children to be at the same academic level as they enter school (Gill et al., 2006). Lennox (2013) also supported this idea by claiming by the time children enter their first year of school, achievements gaps are already in place (Lennox, 2013). When children struggle with initial literacy skills during early childhood, they will continue to struggle in reading and writing throughout their schooling (Auleear Owodally, 2014). Lennox (2013) furthers this concern by claiming, “in the early years of school many young readers face difficulties with text level comprehension” (p. 386).

Teachers are pressured to close the learning gaps and as a result, early literacy instruction has taken a narrow approach of focusing on code-related reading skills, which in isolation, are not sufficient skills for achieving success in literacy (Lennox, 2013). To add to this problem, teachers are not given sufficient resources in the preschool programs to implement developmentally appropriate strategies to teach new words and encourage oral language development. Young students have limited knowledge of necessary literary skills, such as alphabet knowledge and print-related activities (Auleear Owodally, 2014). Children should be learning through play but the early childhood education curriculum is laden with learning projects and activities (Turja, Endepohls-Ulpe & Chatoney, 2009). Preschool classrooms are presented as a warm and welcoming place but do not inherit strong literacy support (Lennox, 2013).