Observing Literacy Practices in Neighbor Institutions: Testing an Educational Program for Preschool Teachers in a Danish Municipality

The Danish National Centre for Reading and a municipality in southern Denmark cooperate to develop a program to improve preschool children’s early literacy skills. The project aims to support preschool teachers’ ability to create a rich literacy environment for children age 3‒6. Recent research projects have shown, that Danish preschool teachers are very good at stimulating children’s social and emotional development, but not sufficiently capable of supporting children’s language and literacy development (Bleses et al. 2015, Markussen-Brown, 2015). Considering the importance of early efforts (The Early Literacy Panel, 2008, the British EPPE project, 2004), preschools need new approaches to develop teachers’ practices. The National Centre for Reading conducted observations and interviews in two local preschools in order to establish knowledge on daily routines and preschool teachers’ procedures on language and literacy. Based on this material, we developed an observation scheme and a guide for preschool teachers to follow, inspired by an action learning concept. During fall 2015, a pilot project is carried out. Preschool teachers from one institution visit a neighbor institution one by one during work hours, in order to observe and register how language and literacy events look like there. Afterwards, they share their registrations at a team meeting, and discuss and decide which procedures to test in their own institution. Thus, they form a professional learning network. In the pilot project, observation scheme and guide are tested. This paper presentation focusses on observations from daily life in a Danish preschool and discusses findings from the pilot project: Where and when do literacy events occur? How is the literacy environment organized? How do preschool teachers consider literacy events observed in neighbor institutions? What – if relevant – prevents them from testing new efforts? Bleses, D., Højen, A., Andersen, M.K., Dybdal, L., Sehested, K. (2015): Rapport om SPELL og Fart på sproget. Undersøgelser af effekten af to sprogindsatser Markussen-Brown, J. (2015): Danske børnehaver er ikke gode nok til at udvikle børnenes sprog, Videnskab.dk National Early Literacy Panel (2008): Developing Early Literacy - REPORT OF THE NATIONAL EARLY LITERACY PANEL. A Scientific Synthesis of Early Literacy Development and Implications for Intervention. Sylva, K., Melhuish, E., Sammons, P., Siraj-Blatchford, I., & Taggart,B. (2004): The Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) Project: Findings from Pre-school to end of Key Stage 1.