Early literacy curriculum and its journey to kindergarten classroom

Abstract

Implementing new school reforms in school practice is extremely challenging mostly because of teacher resistance to change, or uncertainty, fear, or nostalgia for the previous curriculum. Since 2016 a new preschool curriculum including a new early literacy curriculum has been in force in Slovakia. The aim of the study is to assess how well teachers follow the requirement to use a variety of texts in the classroom to promote early literacy development. The analysis is performed on 138 observations out of a total of 215 structured observations, in which teachers used a text as part of an educational activity. The predominant use of narrative texts is linked to more traditional early literacy activities; however, the employment of different text genres relates to the use of different sources of text presentation, engagement with different ways of working with the text and is accompanied by different reading activities.