Development and Feasibility of a Preschool Literacy Skills Curriculum Enhancement

High quality early childhood instruction can be a powerful lever for promoting equity in educational success. However, researchers are still working to determine which elements of the preschool experience are most impactful for which children to maximize the sustaining preschool benefit. Preschool literacy instruction is one domain often examined. Recognizing the critical role of language and literacy skills in children's reading, writing, and academic achievement, researchers have sought ways to help teachers implement developmentally appropriate instruction in these areas across preschool settings. Instruction in this space can be challenging as teachers need to address multiple literacy skills across both word reading and linguistic comprehension domains. Moreover, supporting teachers across the varied contexts of preschool spaces presents challenges.
One proposed method of support is the use of curriculum materials. When developing a new curriculum, understanding barriers and facilitators to the implementation is an important first step to improve outcomes and ensure sustainability of a program. This study examined the development, implementation, and teacher perception of feasibility, acceptability, and appropriateness of a novel curriculum supplement, Val’s Alphabet House. Val’s Alphabet House is a brief instructional routine designed to explicitly and systematically teach alphabet knowledge and phonological awareness skills within a student-centered oral narrative. The current study had two primary aims: (a) to determine the extent to which Val’s Alphabet House was implemented as designed, (b) to evaluate teachers’ perceptions of feasibility, acceptability, and appropriateness as it relates to the program, and (c) to identify barriers and facilitators to implementation. This mixed method study used data from classroom observations, interviews, and surveys from 8 preschool classrooms and 13 participants. Overall, teachers’ qualitative and quantitative results indicated that teachers reported high levels of feasibility, acceptability, and appropriateness. Implementation fidelity was widely varied with a few patterns emerging related to preschool setting, age of students in the class, and content or structure of the task. The results suggest that Val’s Alphabet House has evidence of being a feasible low cost, relatively resource-conservative program, that could be implemented in various settings with preschool students with the goal of improving early literacy skills in multiple domains.