Dialogic reading in an early childhood education setting: ECEs’ learning in the context of a community of practice model

Abstract

ABSTRACT The professional development (PD) of early childhood educators (ECEs) is key to childcare quality. The Professional Learning Community (PLC) model has been well-researched in K-12 settings and is found to have advantages over traditional models of PD; thus, it holds promise for educators in other settings such as early childhood education centers. Indeed, there is an increasing call for the implementation of this model in ECE settings. Some research has found that supporting ECEs’ professional learning (PL) through PLC development is a promising approach; nonetheless, PLCs remain under-researched in early childhood contexts, and findings are less conclusive. The current study examined the potential of PLC development for supporting learning about Dialogic Reading (DR) – a topic of interest to ECEs. In the current study, ECEs in one Canadian context participated in an online project in which they concurrently learned about the PLC model and DR. Our research, including ECEs’ written reflections, and video data of the ECE-child storybook reading, yielded novel findings. These findings suggest that ECEs learned to employ the specific techniques of dialogic reading for engaging children and enriching the dialogic interactions during storybook reading, while also learning to enact processes associated with a PLC model. The ECEs attributed several features of the PLC model to deepening their DR learning. These findings and their implications for practice and future research are further considered.