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This column traces the journey of theory and research that has allowed our field to fundamentally reimagine the very beginnings of early childhood writing.
My goal in this column is to trace the journey of theory and research that has allowed our field to fundamentally reimagine the very beginnings of writing. In the span of my own educational career, researchers have moved from almost total disregard of preschoolers' earliest marks to a deep appreciation of the literacy learning that underlies them. I first outline the theoretical shift from readiness perspectives to emergent literacy theories that revolutionized the way we think about young writers. Then, using both seminal and contemporary research, I sketch out a research-based portrait of young writers and what they learn in the preschool years.
It is tempting to end the journey here, where young children are portrayed as powerful literacy learners and where the value of early childhood writing is clear. Instead, we continue our journey out into preschool classrooms, where we find an unexpected disconnect between research and practice. Despite a half century of research affirming the power of early writing experiences, many preschool classrooms currently offer limited opportunities for emergent writing (e.g., Pelatti, Piasta, Justice, & O'Connell, 2014; Zhang, Hur, Diamond, & Powell, 2015). I argue that there is an urgent need to reimagine the place of writing in preschool classrooms. To this end, I outline five research-based recommendations for the design of preschool writing experiences. I conclude with a call to researchers, policymakers, curriculum designers, and early childhood educators to work together to address the unfulfilled promise of early writing.
Theory Matters!
Standing in the midst of a classroom full of active preschoolers, educational theory can seem far away. But the practical importance of theory is nowhere more evident than in our past and current understandings of the beginnings of writing. Historical analysis of beginning reading instruction (Teale & Sulzby, 1986) shows that starting in the 1920s and continuing through the 1970s, most researchers in Western nations approached learning to read and write from a "readiness" perspective. The preschool years were seen as an important time for developing general skills prerequisite to learning to read, including auditory discrimination, auditory memory, visual discrimination, visual memory, letternames and sounds.
While...