About this srcd poster session

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Panel information
Panel 8. Education, Schooling

Abstract

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Research shows that shared reading promotes children language and literacy skills (Dickinson et al., 2012; Zucker et al., 2013). Teachers’ extratextual talk (i.e., utterances outside of the book text) during shared reading predicted children’s reading comprehension and receptive vocabulary (Pentimonti et al., 2021; Zucker et al., 2013). Yet preschool teachers almost exclusively rely on narrative storybooks, with other books such as alphabet books, math books, and books with multicultural themes rarely read (Dynia & Justice, 2015). Researchers have argued that the book plays an important role in the quality of share reading between adults and children (Hammett-Price et al., 2009; Fletcher & Reese, 2005; Nyhout & O’Neill, 2013). However, research examining the impact of book type (narrative, expository) and book genre (fiction, nonfiction) on teachers’ reading strategies has been limited.

To examine the impact of book type on teachers’ extratextual talk during shared reading, seven preschool teachers read two different books to their class. Participants were lead teachers in a state public preschool program housed in elementary schools in the mid-west. Teachers ranged in age from 21–49 years (M = 33.3 years). Four teachers were white, one was black, and one was multiracial. All but one teacher had over seven years teaching experience working in early childhood. Three teachers had their Bachelor’s degree and three teachers had their Associate’s degree. During the spring, these teachers were recorded reading two different books to their class: one narrative book and one non-fiction book. The narrative book was about a girl who adopted a Sloth as a pet. The non-fiction was a National Geographic book depicting real photographs of sloths and other animals in the rainforest. Videos were coded by two trained coders on the Systematic Assessment of Book Reading (SABR-2.2; Pentimonti et al., 2021). This assessment includes three main categories of extratextual talk: language-facilitating (e.g., asking questions that require responses); literacy-related (e.g., pointing out letters and letter-sounds); and meaning-related (e.g., elaborating on vocabulary meanings and/or talking about emotions). Intraclass correlation for the raters was .79.

Word counts were normalized by dividing the frequency of each of the three categories of extratextual talk by the total time spent reading each book. Given the small sample, nonparametric statistics were used. The results for the permutation and Winsorized t-test both show that there was a statistically significant difference in the number of teachers’ language facilitating talk when reading the two books (see Table 1). Given the negative mean difference for language-facilitating talk, teachers used more language-facilitating talk for non-fiction book than for the narrative book. The size of this effect is large based on Cohen’s d (Cohen, 1988). In addition, the Bayesian hypothesis probabilities indicate that it is highly likely that in the population the mean number of language-facilitating talk for the non-fiction book is greater than for narrative book. Thus, early childhood teachers should expand their classroom libraries and shared reading time to include non-fiction books to enhance language-facilitating talk during shared reading.

Author information

Author	Role
Kathryn L. Fletcher, Ball State University	Presenting author
Ligia E. Gómez Franco, Ball State University, Muncie, IN	Non-presenting author
W. Holmes Finch, Ball State University, Muncie, IN	Non-presenting author

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