Since 2000, the poor reading performance of children from disadvantaged families has been pointed in several studies, which conclude that children from homes that value early literacy practices, where parents frequently read aloud to their children, become better readers. In disadvantaged families, parents are less aware of the benefits of reading to their children, and they possess no or few books. This sociocultural gap in early literacy practices negatively affects children’s school success. Early childhood education and care (ECEC) institutions often fail to fill this gap. Moreover, according to sociologists (Joigneaux, 2009; Bautier & Goigoux, 2004) kindergartens influence school failure by being insensitive to children’ individual differences in terms of the amount of print exposure and experience with written language. Given that social inequalities translate into school inequalities, it is important to act long before the child starts compulsory education; reading problems are difficult to fix, but very easy to prevent. Preventive action in the area of early literacy implies training professionals to instil a culture of reading for pleasure, to increase parent engagement in literacy activities and improve the quality of children’s literate environment. Therefore, our goal is to increase children’s early literacy skills development by preparing professionals involved in early childhood education and parents to engage in reading aloud to children and in books sharing practices in order to reduce the literacy gap among children from diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. We will develop a training programme for early childhood professionals to master reading picture books aloud for children in a highly attractive and engaging manner, while also modelling this reading for the children’s parents; test the training programme on a variety of ECEC professionals (kindergarten teachers, nursery nurses, student teachers) within the partner countries and on volunteers; equip ECEC professionals and parents with freely accessible appropriate toolkits to provide guidance for how to read aloud for young children and infants and how to ensure a literate learning environment at home and at nursery/ kindergarten/ preschool/ day care centres; raise awareness of ECEC professionals, teacher trainers, librarians, educational decision-makers of the importance of reading aloud to children and infants in order to give them a good start in literacy skills development. We will engage 12 teacher educators who will train and support 110 ECEC teachers and nursery staff and 25 volunteers to read aloud to 600 children individually and in groups, to select age appropriate children’s books, and empower 200 parents to read aloud to their children at home. We will disseminate our project products and results to 160 institutions and organisations with activities relevant for ECEC. In order to reach these groups, our consortium will develop and test four major products: the curriculum of the 3MR training course, the guidelines for implementation of the 3MR curriculum, including training materials adapted to each cultural context, a basic toolkit for teachers and similar professionals who read to children, and a basic toolkit for parents to provide a literate home environment. These products will be developed in a cooperative and mutually supportive partnership of the four partners, with complementary expertise, who will have six working meetings within the project implementation period, at crucial moment for product development. We will apply a process of gradual output development, in which we start from the curriculum, building on which we will develop the training methodology, systematically collecting data and feedback from the beneficiaries as we pilot these two products, so as to inform the best quality final outputs. Finally, we will synthesise and repackage the major messages in the two toolkits addressing our two most relevant target groups: teachers and parents. In order to prepare for the development of the methodology, we will train 12 teacher educators in a joint staff training event. We will ensure broad dissemination of our project and its products, in English as well as French, Romanian, Italian and Estonian, including in eight multiplier events, but also in articles published in relevant journals and in presentations made in international literacy conferences. The expected impact of our project is improved early literacy skills development of children from culturally less advantaged backgrounds. Ultimately, our project should impact positively the reduction of the literacy gap among children on account of their diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. We expect that our project will inform and impact policy-makers and decision-makers in ECEC and in social inclusion, including local authorities who will realise the relevance of investing in initiatives targeting early literacy skills development.
Since 2000, the poor reading performance of children from disadvantaged families has been pointed in several studies, which conclude that children from homes that value early literacy practices, where parents frequently read aloud to their children, become better readers. In disadvantaged families, parents are less aware of the benefits of reading to their children, and they possess no or few books. This sociocultural gap in early literacy practices negatively affects children’s school success. Early childhood education and care (ECEC) institutions often fail to fill this gap. Moreover, according to sociologists (Joigneaux, 2009; Bautier & Goigoux, 2004) kindergartens influence school failure by being insensitive to children’ individual differences in terms of the amount of print exposure and experience with written language. Given that social inequalities translate into school inequalities, it is important to act long before the child starts compulsory education; reading problems are difficult to fix, but very easy to prevent. Preventive action in the area of early literacy implies training professionals to instil a culture of reading for pleasure, to increase parent engagement in literacy activities and improve the quality of children’s literate environment. Therefore, the project goal was to increase children’s early literacy skills development by preparing professionals involved in early childhood education and parents to engage in reading aloud with children and in books sharing practices in order to reduce the literacy gap among children from diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. For this purpose, a training programme was developed for early childhood professionals to master reading picture books aloud for children in a highly attractive and engaging manner and to empower parents to improve the home literate environment and to increase literacy practices. This training course was tested on a variety of ECEC professionals (kindergarten teachers, nursery nurses, student teachers) within the partner countries and on volunteers. In addition, two toolkits were created to equip ECEC professionals and parents with freely accessible appropriate resources to provide guidance for how to read aloud for young children and how to ensure a literate learning environment at home and at kindergarten/ day care centres. Concretely, four major products developed: the 3MR curriculum training course, the guidelines for implementation, including training materials adapted to each cultural context, a basic toolkit for teachers and similar professionals who read to children, and a basic toolkit for parents to provide a literate home environment. These products were developed in a cooperative and mutually supportive partnership of the four partners, with complementary expertise, who met 4 times face-to-face and 8 times online within the project implementation period. A process of gradual output development was applied. We started from the curriculum, on the basis of which we developed the training methodology. We systematically collected data and feedback from the beneficiaries as we piloted these two products, so as to inform the best quality final outputs. In order to prepare for the development of the methodology, we trained teacher educators in a joint staff training event. Finally, we synthesised and repackaged the major messages in the two toolkits addressing our two most relevant target groups: teachers and parents. Concretely, 12 teacher educators who trained and supported 139 ECEC professionals (2189 online) and 32 volunteers to read aloud to 15808 children individually and in groups, to select quality children’s books, and empower 629 directly impacted parents (16918 online) to read aloud to their children at home. We disseminated our project products and results to 235 institutions and organisations with activities relevant for ECEC. This project ensured raising awareness of ECEC professionals, teacher trainers, librarians of the importance of reading aloud to children and infants in order to give them a good start in literacy skills development. Broad dissemination of our project and its products, in English as well as French, Romanian, Italian and Estonian, occurred through seven multiplier events, but also articles published in relevant journals and presentations made in international literacy conferences. Ultimately, reading and exposure to books should increase children’s literacy skills. Indeed, reading with children enriches their experience of narrative language, and contributes to their emotional and cognitive development, thus increasing their chances of academic success. Since our project contributes to early childhood education, it could potentially reduce literacy gaps due to social and cultural differences. It should inform and impact decision-makers in ECEC and in social inclusion. Our results highlight the relevance of investing in initiatives targeting early literacy skills development.