Establishing and Maintaining an Early Childhood Emergent Literacy Technology Curriculum

Abstract

The three-year Early Childhood Emergent Literacy Technology Curriculum (ELiTeC) study (E2) was designed to replicate, on a broad scale, the results of earlier research in which a curriculum model was developed, implemented, and studied in preschool classrooms for children with disabilities or those at risk. ELiTeC was based on the assumptions that technologies provide access to literacy activities that benefit children with disabilities and an integrated curriculum approach offers a meaningful context for learning. The original study (E1) encompassed 255 children and 8 teachers over a three-year period. During E2, ELiTeC was replicated in 17 classrooms, with 18 teachers who served 438 children. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected. One major goal of E2 was to investigate the implementation and maintenance of the ELiTeC model in multiple settings. Findings of the E2 study demonstrated the importance of allowing adequate time for an innovation to be integrated into practice. The longer teachers used the curriculum model the more positive were the results related to both model fidelity and children's gains in important aspects of literacy.