Early Childhood Educators' Knowledge and Self-efficacy in Foundational Literacy Instruction
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis is comprised of two studies. The first utilizes a mixed-method approach and explores early childhood educators’ early literacy knowledge and self-efficacy for early literacy instruction. Fifty-four ECEs participated in this research, of which 29 were pre-service ECEs and 25 were in-service ECEs. Participants were assessed on their early literacy knowledge and self-efficacy for early literacy instruction. They were also assessed on their early literacy-related experiences, including assessments of their literacy-related training and practicum experiences as well as assessments of their professional experiences. Study 1 revealed significant gaps in ECEs’ early literacy knowledge, and identified differences between pre-service and in-service ECEs in their early literacy knowledge and experiences. The findings of study 1 showed that despite their varied early literacy-related experiences and training, both pre-service and in-service ECEs lacked adequate knowledge and self-efficacy in phonemic awareness and oral language instruction, two essential components of early literacy education. The second study is a mixed methods study examining the impact of a targeted professional development intervention designed to improve knowledge and self-efficacy in phonemic awareness and oral language instruction. Study 2 found that the professional development intervention was effective in improving both knowledge and self-efficacy in phonemic awareness and oral language instruction. Qualitative findings provided further insight as to specific components of the intervention that were seen as beneficial in improving the knowledge and self-efficacy of ECEs, which included opportunities to apply theoretical learning through hands-on activities and video demonstrations. Overall, the findings of this thesis provide insight into the early literacy experiences, knowledge and self-efficacy for early literacy instruction of pre-service and in-service ECEs. Furthermore, the findings suggest that ECEs can make significant improvements in knowledge and self-efficacy through a targeted professional development intervention.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.016 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".