Educational Researcher

This special issue was a joint effort of two Educational Researcher (ER) editorial teams, including former ER editors, led by Greg Camilli. Current ER associate editor Deborah Dillon and her editorial colleagues then partnered with Anne McGill-Franzen and Timothy Shanahan to oversee the manuscript review and revision process. In the introduction, McGill-Franzen provides the rationale for a critical examination of the National Early Literacy Panel report, in particular the implications of this important research synthesis for the development of policy in early literacy. She also establishes a context for each of the commentary pieces that follow.

This article summarizes Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel, which was published in 2008. That report provides an extensive meta-analysis of approximately 300 studies showing which early literacy measures correlate with later literacy achievement. It also provides a series of meta-analyses of a comprehensive collection of experimental and quasi-experimental studies of ways of teaching early literacy (preschool and kindergarten) that have been published in refereed journals. These analyses examine the effects of code-based instruction, shared book reading, home/parent interventions, preschool/kindergarten interventions, and early language teaching.

The authors examine the National Early Literacy Panel (NELP; 2008) report from two complementary vantage points: (a) the historical tradition of research syntheses in reading research, beginning with Chall and extending through the NELP report, and (b) other recent attempts to examine or synthesize early reading development. While acknowledging the care and precision that characterized the work, the authors of this response raise concerns about the reluctance of the NELP authors to contextualize their findings in relation to both historical and contemporary efforts.

The authors consider how the National Early Literacy Panel’s decision to focus on identifying precursors to “conventional” literacy skills shaped the questions asked, conclusions drawn, and take-home message of the panel’s 2008 report. They suggest that this approach may keep the field of literacy research from seeing and valuing other kinds of “head starts”—including ones that are better aligned with the broad, flexible, transcultural literacy skills that will be demanded in the future. The authors call on the field to learn from the experiences of children from nondominant groups to build a more comprehensive model of literacy development.

This review focuses on the inclusion criteria for the selection of studies in the National Early Literacy Panel report. It argues that the interpretation of early literacy is overly narrow and ignores the important role of background knowledge and conceptual development. To make this argument, it examines studies of comprehension in content areas and shows how domain-specific knowledge uniquely contributes to literacy learning. It suggests that code-based skills do not sufficiently account for early literacy development. Rather, content-rich settings in which skills are learned through meaningful activity help children acquire the broad array of knowledge, skills, and dispositions that build a foundation for literacy learning.

Although the National Early Literacy Panel report provides an important distillation of research, the manner in which the data are reported underrepresents the importance of language. Unlike other predictors with moderate associations with later reading, language exerts pervasive and indirect influences that are not described by the effect sizes used in the meta-analysis. Also, unlike code-related skills that develop rapidly during the years studied, language develops over an extended time span. Because it is relatively difficult to devise interventions that dramatically alter children’s language abilities, the authors of this response are concerned that schools will target the more malleable code-based skills. They warn against such a move.

This article discusses the potential positive and problematic influences of the National Early Literacy Panel (NELP; 2008) report on prekindergarten and kindergarten classroom instructional practice. The authors support the instructional importance of the majority of the foundational skills identified in the NELP report as having “clear and consistently strong relationships with later conventional literacy skills” but also detail a number of concerns about NELP-influenced instructional recommendations drawn to date, arguing that the NELP report is both insufficiently clear and overly narrow with respect to what preschool teachers should be focusing on instructionally in early literacy.

The National Early Literacy Panel (2008) report identified early predictors of reading achievement as good targets for instruction, and many of those skills are related to decoding. In this article, the authors suggest that the developmental trajectories of rapidly developing skills pose problems for traditional statistical analyses. Rapidly developing skills yield correlations with later reading success that change with learning, so the predictive strengths are temporary and unstable. The correlations are strong only briefly, when children demonstrate partial learning of a skill that they will master completely later. Thus correlations with rapidly developing skills exaggerate the strength of the relation to later achievement, ignore the transient developmental window, and inflate effect sizes of interventions.

The authors discuss the 19 individual studies included in chapter 4 (shared story reading interventions) of the report of the National Early Literacy Panel (NELP) and offer more nuanced conclusions than the report’s authors do. They also emphasize the need for more comprehensive approaches to shared story reading in preschool than those found in the studies available to the NELP for its meta-analysis. Like the panel authors, the authors of this response call especially for shared reading interventions that support children’s understanding of meaning, as well as vocabulary and syntax development and print-related skills.

The authors argue that the findings from the National Early Literacy Panel (NELP; 2008) report related to parent involvement and family literacy programs require further clarification. Based on an ideological view of literacy, the authors offer three recommendations that would provide a more accurate representation of parent involvement and family literacy programs and the families they serve, as well as enhance the findings of the NELP report: (a) Create an expanded definition of parent involvement and family literacy programs, (b) include programs that are familial and culturally competent, and (c) develop expanded matrices for evaluating family literacy programs that reflect a more inclusive measure of effectiveness.

The authors examine the implications and limitations of the National Early Literacy Panel report on the early care of young children who are dual-language learners (DLLs). They examine the relevance of the report for DLLs, particularly the practice in this and other national synthesis reports of extrapolating implications for the education of young DLLs based on a broader population of children. The article addresses the existing gaps in knowledge about literacy practices—knowledge that is central to the development of sound and appropriate educational policies and practices that support DLLs’ full development as language and literacy learners.

This rejoinder provides responses to the conceptual concerns expressed in the nine critiques published in this issue of Educational Researcher of the 2008 National Early Literacy Panel report. It explains the necessity of adhering to clearly established study selection parameters in conducting trustworthy meta-analyses and the need to be cautious in claims made on the basis of empirical evidence. The rejoinder summarizes the report’s extensive analyses of language development data and highlights substantial empirical evidence that contradicts the critics’ claims about alphabetic code-related skills. Also included are pointed discussions of the critics’ conceptual arguments concerning shared reading activities, parent/home literacy programs, English-language learners, and early childhood education.

Many of the methodological criticisms of the National Early Literacy Panel (NELP) report presented in this special issue of Educational Researcher are not specific to the NELP report but are in fact broad criticisms of much of the quantitative research on early literacy. This rejoinder demonstrates that these criticisms are off target and are based on a misunderstanding of the basic statistical assumptions employed in early literacy research. These assumptions are explained in this rejoinder, with the conclusion that quantitative research on early literacy rests on a strong statistical foundation.

2010 AERA Election Results. (2010). Educational Researcher, 39(3), 248–252. (Original DOI: 10.3102/0013189X10368382)

The name of Marlene J. Darwin, who was elected to the office of Chair of the School Turnaround and Reform SIG, was misspelled.