Early Childhood Teachers’ Emergent Literacy Data Practices

Despite a growing focus on access to and use of emergent literacy assessment in early childhood, little is known about early childhood teachers’ data practices and their associations with children's emergent literacy skills. A questionnaire was used to confirm and elaborate findings from prior qualitative work (Schachter & Piasta, 2022) investigating U.S. teachers’ emergent literacy data practices. We focused on how teachers gathered data (data gathering), what they learned from those data (data knowledge), and how they used those data in their practice (data use) along with associations between the practices and children's emergent literacy skills. Overall, teachers reported engaging in multiple data practices, often with high levels of knowledge about children's emergent literacy skills. A small set of data practices, related to data gathering and data knowledge, were associated with children's emergent literacy skills. However, there were also some unexpected negative associations between children's outcomes and teachers’ data practices.