A Qualitative Systematic Literature Review on Phonological Awareness in Preschoolers Supported by Information and Communication Technologies

Abstract

This review is a systematic literature review (SLR) with the aim of advancing the state of the art in Phonological Awareness in preschoolers (4–6 years) by means of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The SLR provides an important guide to newcomers to this domain and researchers who seek a structured body of knowledge in the subject for gaining new, important insights. Searches were carried out in the indexed database Scopus© between June and July 2020. Among the inclusion and exclusion criteria were studies reported in English, Spanish and Portuguese, updated electronic documents from the last ten years and studies cited by others at least once, except for those with publication acknowledgement after 2017. To complete the task, a triangulation assessment was made among three researchers using the same tool developed in Microsoft Excel©, in which the search terms, the search strings, inclusion and exclusion criteria and the study collection process were systematized along with a word cloud of keywords to improve the systematic feature of the SLR. Fifty-nine (59) scientific articles were selected and from those, 24 articles met the experts’ criteria. The method included: (1) search and selection of terms; (2) inclusion and exclusion criteria; (3) the searching process; and (4) reporting study collection. The SLR synthesis reported in this paper is a novel contribution built on two conceptual categories: Computer assisted learning systems (CAL) and Computer assisted instruction systems (CAI) which frame works on Phonological Awareness processes with Preschoolers and provide an appraisal of the results to advance knowledge of systematic reviews of preschoolers’ phonological awareness strictly supported by ICT.