Introduction
Education has become the need of the hour and a major developmental challenge in today’s society. In other words, it has become an essential component of social development, teaching kids how to read in an age-appropriate way with the help of phonics. Children learn a language and acquire literacy skills as soon as they start attending preschool or kindergarten. Good reading development is often seen as crucial for future success in school. The growth and development of early childhood is an essential aspect of human development.
However, there are still obstacles for many children to achieve their full potential. For example, most children do not attend school regularly due to economic hardship, illness, or other factors. The net result is a global challenge that must be addressed by all countries involved in early childhood development. The specific issue that I am addressing is phonics and their implementation in early childhood education programs worldwide.
Focus on Phonics in Literacy Instruction for Young Learners
The issue of phonics in early childhood education is crucial because it affects literacy skills and opportunities, which are fundamental to success in the classroom. Phonics can provide a foundation for reading and writing. However, some teachers do not provide an adequate basis for a child to learn phonics by emphasizing concepts over specific sounds within words. Such a narrow approach restricts children from developing true fluency in word recognition and restrains them from realizing their full potential in speaking and writing. The continued prevalence of this faulty approach means that too many students are left with limited understanding and often struggle to take full advantage of the education system’s resources.
The critical issue concerns teachers who do not consider phonics an essential element of early childhood literature instruction and teachers who do not provide students with proper tools for learning common word structures. In addition, parents have unrealistic expectations about what their children should achieve by minimizing the importance of phonics instruction. In other instances, parents have failed to ask their children questions about how they learn or why they learn better with effective methods such as those in this study. Finally, several schools fail to provide sufficient early childhood literacy instruction and focus only on tests.
Role of Teachers
One of the most critical factors is the teacher’s role in facilitating teaching. Essential phonics systems that generate significant outcomes need teachers to follow specific publisher requirements. While this may help standardize the instructional calendar, it may also detract from instructor interest and motivation.
As a result, one of the challenges is identifying how to preserve uniformity in training while simultaneously providing opportunities for teachers to demonstrate their diverse abilities. On the other hand, other programs require a firm grasp of spelling, structural linguistics, and word etymology. When examining the data, one must pay close attention to how instructors can prepare to teach systematic phonics efficiently and creatively while being uniform in their approach.
Teachers should be able to determine the unique needs of each student and adapt instruction to meet those needs. There are, however, various phonics programs that follow a set of lessons from the start of the school year to the finish. When this occurs, teachers must be able to adapt their phonics instruction to meet the specific needs of each student and class.
Children who have mastered phonics abilities and can use them during the reading process do not require the same level of phonics training as those just beginning to read. As a result, it will be vital to discover the most effective ways to incorporate systematic phonics education into comprehensive and balanced reading programs. Part of this work should be conducted in pre- and post-service education to assist teachers in selecting, integrating, and implementing phonics instruction as part of a comprehensive reading curriculum.
Phonics Instruction (Norway and China)
Teachers must recognize that systematic phonics education is only one component of a well-rounded reading program. Developing a comprehensive reading curriculum should be supplemented with phonemic awareness, fluency, and comprehension instruction. While most teachers and educational leaders recognize this, there may be a tendency in some classrooms, particularly in first grade, to make phonics the most crucial feature in terms of time spent on it and its importance. Phonics abilities should not solely determine a child’s reading aptitude. Additionally, it is critical not to disregard their interest in books simply because they cannot finish them.
Further, teachers must recognize that systematic phonics instruction may be pleasant, colorful, and inventive. Systematic phonics instruction aims to improve decoding and word recognition, resulting in improved understanding. Norway and China spent nearly 2% of their fiscal revenue on early childhood education programs focusing on systematic phonics (Hong & Zhang, 2019). As a result, the countries record the highest comprehension rates in ECEC programs.
Another essential skill that must be taught and cultivated to enhance oral reading and reading comprehension is the ability to rapidly and instinctively apply phonics to text. Again, teachers must recognize that while phonics abilities are critical, they are insufficient in and of themselves. Practicing phonics skills with phonemic awareness, fluency, and text-reading comprehension is vital.
Norway and China implemented a phonics empowerment program for teachers to revamp their early education sector. Dr. Christina Williams, the owner of Book Bums, is happy with a new early childhood reading teaching trend. “I’m seeing an increased emphasis on systematic and straightforward phonics instruction,” she says. More literacy experts and organizations have concluded over the last two years that huge publishing companies have promoted subpar curricula.
Williams notes that research has long revealed a disconnect between how ECE materials and teachers teach our code-based language to children. Emily Hanford’s stories, she asserts, are a factor in the rise of phonics education. Hanford’s study examines instructors’ and educational resources’ ideas about how to teach reading.
Adults and children alike benefit from changing their phonics training. It is also helpful to teachers, according to Williams. Comparing such analogies with Norway’s ECE demonstrates a growing trend where teachers do everything possible to better their understanding of phonics. Also, Norway is miles ahead in equipping teachers with the latest trends to help them administer instruction in a simplified fashion.
Changes Occuring Throughout Early Childhood Education
According to Williams, many teachers are unaware or poorly equipped to adequately train educators in phonics. According to her, the problem begins when institutions fail to train educators in phonics adequately. When these new instructors begin their careers, they rely on content purchased by the district.
However, far too frequently, such items adopt approaches that have been proven to be erroneous, alienating many readers. As a result of this difference, ECE teachers have numerous possibilities to differentiate themselves. Chris Drew, an early childhood education professor at a university, has noted that many ECE practitioners lack the practical skills and knowledge necessary to teach young children phonics. If you want to be recruited, conducting a study on effective phonics instruction and demonstrating your practical abilities during the job interview is essential.
Early childhood practitioners must have an in-depth understanding of their subjects and the best and most effective communication practices. Teacher training should not just be a one-way affair but a continuous, mutual, undisrupted process to connect them and their subjects. That way, learners reap the maximum benefits.
Also, ECE teachers must embrace technology to administer learning. In our modern world, this is the surest way of guaranteeing continuity. Early childhood education must be dynamic due to transformations in the immediate and ever-changing society. However, change must start with all stakeholders and trickle slowly to learners incrementally.
ECE is a critical part of any child’s development. Every teacher or caregiver has the massive task of going the extra mile to look at the overall well-being of a learner. Diversity and diverse learning environments are an essential part of any ECE curriculum.
Children come from different backgrounds, and every teacher needs to be receptive to every learner’s needs. Administering phonics instruction appropriately calls for regular review of learners’ needs at an early age. That way, it becomes easy to make necessary adjustments as learning progresses. Also, other crucial stakeholders, such as parents, can be integrated into their children’s development and overall well-being (Healy, 1998; Kleiman, 2000). ECE is changing at a relatively faster rate, and so should be the trend for educators.
Closing the Gap in Achievement Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)
Finally, the Achievement Gap is frequently fueled by socioeconomic inequality, implicit or explicit prejudice against minorities, low-income families, andwomen, and preconceived notions about intellectually disabled students. The Achievement Gap can be attributed to racism, inadequate acculturation, socioeconomic status, sexism, and technology. Because each of these elements interacts with the others, it is not easy to tell which has the most significant effect. However, this further complicates issues.
Research demonstrates that Hispanic/Latino and African-American children enroll in kindergarten for an average of 7-12 months and lag in reading and comprehension skills. Also, they lag 9-10 months in math comparatively. A more significant gap exists for low-income students. It is important to note that most of these gaps do not disappear but expand and persist as learners progress with their K-12 education. Such trends impact state economies, the workforce, and the education system.
The ESSA and the 2015 bipartisan reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act present new opportunities to tailor and minimize learning opportunity gaps in different states. Opportunity gaps are heavily influenced by minority and low-income children’s shrinking access to extracurricular, after-school, and pre-K activities. These gaps culminate in their K-12 education, eventually leading to achievement gaps, a common issue affecting every state. ESSA allows states to create easy-to-implement policy options for closing early learning opportunity gaps.
It is essential to appreciate that the previous version of a law meant to resolve this gap, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB), spurred growth in early childhood education. NCLB highlighted areas where students made commendable progress and required support regardless of background, home language, disability, zip code, income, or race. ESSA brings positive energy to the education sector by advancing equity and addressing and protecting America’s high-needs and disadvantaged students.
Secondly, it emphasizes the need for all students to be subjected to high academic standards that will lay a foundation for their success in college and careers. Finally, it advocates for regularly providing vital information to educators, parents, and communities through assessments and gauging progress toward set standards. Therefore, ESSA reflects tailored priorities for improved learning and closing the achievement gap.
Socioeconomic Disparities
However, socioeconomic disparities are the primary driver of Achievement Gaps, which means that Achievement Gaps are more prominent in places with significant income disparities. Youngsters from low-income families do not have the same opportunities as wealthier children. Such a trend is frequently the case in areas with low incomes and employment rates for minorities.
Achievement disparities exist even when there are no significant income disparities across races. Wisconsin and New Jersey, for example, have nearly identical socioeconomic inequalities between black and white residents. These states would be similar if socioeconomic status were the only factor contributing to the Achievement Gap. However, this is not the case, as explained below.
Black youngsters in Wisconsin perform worse in math than their New Jersey counterparts. They believe that early schooling, home, school segregation, and the quality of public schools are all likely contributors to this surprising conclusion. To appreciate the Achievement Gap and its underlying causes, we must consider all aspects of immigration, such as language barriers, acculturation, and diverse traditions.
The socioeconomic status of a learner’s parents has been the main predictor of educational attainment and academic achievement. Over the years, the difference in learning and comprehension patterns between the two groups does not appear to narrow as children progress through school. Socioeconomic status makes it difficult for learners to have all the privileges contributing to a conducive learning environment. Wisconsin and New Jersey present extreme scenarios that expose socioeconomic status as the underlying factor. However, other unseen or yet-to-be-understood factors may directly or indirectly contribute to academic achievement.
Strategies to Close the Achievement Gap
Several strategies exist for closing the Achievement Gap, ranging from very targeted community activities and efforts to national laws and regulations. Of course, the most effective way to ensure everyone has equal opportunity is to close the socioeconomic divide between different parts of the population. Because it is not a simple or realistically attainable solution for resolving a complex issue such as poverty, the focus should concentrate on more specific approaches to assist.
Students who enroll in well-structured courses that emphasize daily problem-solving, data analysis, and higher-order cognitive tasks have the potential to close the gap. It’s remarkable how quickly disadvantaged children’s grades can improve when presented with a well-structured and focused lesson. Combining out-of-school and in-school tactics, such as intellectual summer activities with regular school classes, might also bring significant benefits.
Individuals who live in divided neighborhoods on racial or economic lines will employ significantly different strategies for narrowing the Achievement Gaps than those in less segregated areas. Also, teachers must be regularly updated on the environment in which their students come from. That way, making rational decisions on differentiated learning becomes easy if necessary.
Early recognition of disadvantaged children enables actions to assist them in acquiring higher possibilities. It is never too late to close the Achievement Gap, but doing so early will make the process easier and more efficient. There is no way to compensate effectively for the missed time in school or culture. Even the most robust educational system will fall short if a youngster does not have the appropriate cultural and academic support from their parents.
Combining conventional and online learning methods is the most effective way of closing learning and motivation gaps. From the start, students should be able to access instructional materials and complete homework online. Younger generations are more technologically sophisticated.
While today’s children can play games on their phones or use computers for enjoyment, they can also utilize them for educational purposes. Some believe that mixing information and entertainment will be detrimental to our well-being. However, there is no concrete way to determine this unless educators are willing to experiment and integrate technology incrementally. As a result, it’s worthwhile to investigate novel approaches to resolving old problems.
Institutional Divide
Finally, there is an institutional divide, which is the result of disparate beginning points. For example, at some schools, specific minorities do not comprise the majority of students, even though we can only address this by first addressing the holes in our knowledge and motivation. Numerous individuals are ignorant of the Achievement Gap’s impact on schooling. When addressing one aspect of a broader problem, we must address many other concerns with far-reaching social consequences.
Institutional racism affects students’ overall well-being, both psychologically and physically. Tremendous efforts are in place to sensitize stakeholders and create a level playing ground for all learners, regardless of background. The poor deserve equal opportunities as their wealthy counterparts. The consequences of such a gap make it difficult for learners to make a turnaround later in their careers and lives. Addressing solutions is not a long-lasting remedy. To understand the achievement gap, people must be open to discussing inequalities and how they directly affect learners.
Technology in Child Development
There is substantial debate on the appropriate use of technology in early childhood education from birth onwards. Parents and educators are often concerned about the safety of small children, whether physically or mentally when introducing technology. Many argue that incorporating technology into schools wastes time and money and even distracts youth, as it expedites and diminishes critical learning experiences (Cordes & Miller, 2000; Healy, 1998). However, proponents claim that children should be permitted to utilize modern technologies. Even if there are several fascinating interactions between children and computers, we may not use computers optimally or achieve the desired goals (Healy, 1998; Kleiman, 2000).
It is important to note that stakeholders in the education sector have children’s needs at heart. This is because children between one and eight years grasp knowledge relatively quickly. Children from one to eight years old acquire knowledge at a breakneck pace. They perceive emotions and interact with the environment around them by using their senses and entire bodies. Infants learn in five critical ways at this stage of their development through play and discovery (Kagan, Moore, & Bredekamp, 1995).
Social and emotional development are two dimensions. Learning takes on a new significance when you can establish and maintain relationships. Responsive interactions foster a sense of well-being in children, which promotes the development of relationships with others and positive engagement in educational activities.
There are numerous methods of education. Children may acquire knowledge in a variety of ways. Adults may help children become more enthusiastic about learning by knowing how their predispositions and learning styles influence their response to learning opportunities. Various intellectual experiences and options are available to young people using technology. Computers can display and perform physically impossible or hard-to-achieve phenomena in the actual world. Children, for example, can experiment with gravity and speed to determine what happens and how the environment behaves (Clements, 1999; Seng, 1998).
Numerous studies demonstrate that utilizing technology can benefit your cognitive and social talents, learning, and advancement (Clements, 1994; Haugland & Shade, 1994). Numerous studies with children of all ages revealed that utilizing computers in conjunction with other support activities (e.g., manipulatives, objects used by children to aid in concept learning) was preferable to using computers alone. Children aged three and four who engaged in computer-assisted support activities demonstrated more significant progress in verbal and nonverbal abilities, problem-solving, abstraction, and conceptual capacities than children in the same classroom who did not engage in computer-assisted support activities (Haugland, 1992).
The same applies to third-grade children who use manipulatives and computer applications. Those who used manipulatives displayed lower expertise in classification and logical reasoning than those who used both (Clements & Natasi, 1993). The use of technology connected to what children already know and can develop results in an increased sense of motivation and self-direction.
Conclusion
Early childhood education is a contemporary issue, and phonics has been a challenge in early childhood education. The point is that many parents have difficulties reading and writing to their children at home and school due to a lack of practical teaching skills and inadequate preparation. When there is no proper help to teach children how to read, write, and speak English as early as possible, it becomes very challenging for them to perform satisfactorily or better in school. Then, further on, when they do not meet pre-defined expectations in school, it makes their life very difficult because they do not know why they are lagging or how they can revisit their approach to learning. Students can learn what they’re learning if they discover products specifically tailored to their needs. Even though technology has been demonstrated to be highly effective in the classroom, instructors continue to have reservations due to a lack of adequate technology integration or personal biases.
The challenge of phonics in early childhood education is a contemporary issue that continues to trouble educators. Critics say that the emphasis on phonics and sight words prevents children from learning to read, which is not a good use of taxpayer resources. However, proponents say reading through phonics is also essential because it teaches students to think critically and gives them an understanding of how language works and how we communicate with others in different cultures.
Early childhood education’s current crisis is a feature of the general decline in American education. While early childhood education has been criticized for being too structured and often underfunded, it is also criticized for being too permissive and easy. A recent study found that “early childhood education is good at teaching children’s basic skills — like literacy, vocabulary, and math. But one area where it lags is supporting resistant or challenging behaviors.”
Technology, or screen time, is also expected to take various forms. According to them, there are four primary types of people: Consumers who are not actively looking for things to purchase, including watching television, reading, listening to music, and reading books. Instances—”interactive consumption”- involve playing video games and surfing the web.
Two modes of communication include video chatting and social media. You generate content when you use technology to produce digital art or music. According to Common Sense Media, you should not use more than one hour of technology daily in your lesson plans. That way, learners have a healthy balance when using digital resources.
Systematic phonics education makes it easier for proficient readers to compose accurate words at every grade level. Kindergartners were disproportionately impacted, and the effect waned as grades increased. For individuals who could not read well, phonics education did not impact spelling, possibly because impaired individuals had difficulties learning to spell.
However, research conducted by psychologists and educators over the last few decades has shown that children learn best when they experience the topic or subject matter right away rather than being told about it passively. They will make better progress if given opportunities to discover things themselves and make decisions independently. The data refuted the prevailing wisdom that kindergarten students were unprepared for phonics classes.
In kindergarten and first grade, systematic early phonics training emphasized that routine phonics programs should be adopted. The NRP study concluded that systematic phonics education is ready for classroom deployment. After analyzing research undertaken in various classrooms by teachers and children from diverse backgrounds and socioeconomic levels, the Panel concluded that explicit, systematic phonics instruction is effective.
ESSA expressly urges state and local education officials to interact with early childhood programs such as childcare and Head Start, which it views as a positive development. Federal funds may be used to establish or improve preschool programs for children ages one to five. The Grants for Preschool Development Birth to Five programs are the law’s first dedicated early childhood financing stream. It is a $1 billion grant program designed to assist states in increasing poor children’s school readiness by increasing their participation in public and private, high-quality early learning programs from infancy to kindergarten. As part of the Every Student Succeeds Act, ESSA emphasizes the importance of non-school situations in a child’s education. It recognizes childcare as a critical component of early childhood education, encourages schools to engage with various community programs and services, and emphasizes the need for schools to maintain an active, continuous relationship with families.
Even though the ESSA defines “early childhood education” as “from birth through kindergarten enrollment,” the 15 states that intend to use early learning to boost school performance primarily focus on pre-K for 4-year-olds. That is unfortunate because ESSA offers schools a once-in-a-generation opportunity to pay attention to the science that demonstrates the critical nature of the years between birth and age three for school readiness.
International education authorities wish to ensure all pupils can access the resources necessary for academic success. Access to all resources is called “equity” in early childhood education (ECE). The International Education Study Group at NCSL discovered that countries with the highest student performance on international tests provide additional and tailored assistance to the most vulnerable young people, which is a plus for cognitive development.
Additionally, many countries enroll their children in preschool as soon as feasible, often for three or more years. Over 20% of young children in the United States do not attend preschool, which is much higher than in other high-performing countries. NCSL has been awarded a two-year grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to focus on early childhood education challenges. They seek to arouse state legislators’ interest in closing the opportunity gap for all young people, frompreschool through third grade. Access to high-quality preschool, teacher effectiveness, school resource allocation, school environment, improvement strategies, and student achievement are critical policy topics for review.
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