Electronic and Printed Books with and Without Adult Support as Sustaining Emergent Literacy

Abstract

Emergent literacy (EL) enhancement has been the goal of numerous educational programs for years, especially for children from low socioeconomic statuses (LSES) (Snow, 1994; Whitehurst, Zevebergen, Crone, Schultz, Velting, & Fischel, 1999). During the past decade, technology software, including electronic books (e-books), have become incorporated within this agenda. One of the common activities in children's education in the Western world in mainstream families is that adults read storybooks to children constantly from a very young age (DeBruin-Parecki, 1999). Studies of the last 4 decades have shown how powerful this activity is, especially for the child's oral language, with less clear results regarding emergent or early literacy (Stahl, 2003; van Kleeck, 2003; Whitehurst et al., 1999). The proposed study examined how e-books compare with traditional printed books in the support of LSES children's EL with and without adult assistance.