The Effects of Early Literacy Activities upon Reading Achievement in Grade Four in Eastern European Countries

In 2001, The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) studied children’s reading literacy and the factors associated with its acquisition. The IEA’s Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) assessed the reading achievement of 9and 10-yearsolds and collected information about the experiences children had at home and school when learning to read. PIRLS was based on IEA’s 1991 Reading Literacy Study and complements the IEA’s Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), which regularly assesses achievement at fourth and eighth grades. PIRLS also complemented the OECD’s Programme for International Student Achievement (PISA), which assesses the reading literacy of 15-year-olds. The study presented in this paper is a secondary analysis of data collected by PIRLS, conducted by The IEA in 2001 with 35 participating countries. The PIRLS database contains internationally comparable data from test items in reading, together with background data collected from students, their teachers, the principals of their schools, and their parents. Since I am Romanian, I have a special goal of trying to improve reading education in my country. Because of their similarities in terms of geographical, political, cultural, and socio-economic factors, it is informative to compare Romania to Bulgaria and Moldova. All three are young democracies formed after the fall of the communist regimes, and their current development is based on the western European model, including the values of a civic society and a market economy. Their education systems are state-administered and centralized. The vast majority of students in these countries speak the language of the PIRLS test at home although, due to the presence of minorities, Moldova administered the instrument in both Romanian and Russian, while Romania tested in Romanian and Hungarian. Bulgaria administered the test in Bulgarian only. LITERATURE REVIEW A great deal of research has been devoted to the importance of home environments for children’s reading literacy. Particular home characteristics can encourage young children to explore and experiment with printed and oral language, which in turn can establish a foundation for learning. In a recent article published in United States, Peck (2004) describes the University of Oregon’s assessment tools called Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) created to monitor the development of pre-reading and early reading skills in kindergarten through Grade 3. The DIBELS assessments measures essential early literacy domains discussed in both the National Reading Panel (2000) and National Research Council (1998) reports and written into the U.S. federal No Child Left Behind legislation. Specifically, the early literacy domains are student awareness of sounds, letters, letter-sound connections, and reading speed and accuracy, all indicators of early reading progress and predictors of later reading proficiency. The above-mentioned IEA's 1991 Reading Literacy Study focused on “students in the grade levels where most 9and 14-years-olds were to be found in 32 systems of education” (Elley, 1992, p. XI). For most countries, the study found that reading literacy scores were closely related to “national indices of economic development, health, and adult literacy” (Elley, 1992, p. XI). Another key factor found by IEA's Reading Literacy Study was students’ access to books, either in the home, in nearby community libraries and bookstores” or in the school (Elley, 1992, p. XIII). Despite the fact that, as discussed above, the indices of economic development, health, and adult literacy of a country are generally positively correlated with students' performance, PIRLS 2001 data suggest only a rough correspondence across Bulgaria, Moldova, and Romania. Each country’s gross national product (GNP) per capita, as indicated by PIRLS 2001 Encyclopedia (Mullis et. al, 2002) at the time of the test, was rather small compared to industrialized countries: Romania (US$ 1,670), Bulgaria (US$ 1,300), and Moldova (US$ 410). Their public expenditure on education, as reported by The World Bank in 2000, cited by Mullis et al (2002), ranged from 3.4% in Bulgaria, to 4.0% in Moldova, and 4.4% in Romania. However, as shown in Figure 1, each of these three countries performs differently in terms of reading achievement: Bulgaria is a top-performer with an average scale score of 550, Romania’s average scale score of 512 is close to the international average of 500, and Moldova is below the international average, with an average scale score of 492. Figure 1: Average achievement scale scores for Bulgaria, Moldova, and Romania. 460 470 480 490 500 510 520 530 540 550 560 Bulgaria Romania International Average Moldova Average Achievement Note: International average is included. Classification of the three countries, based on results from two of the indices reported in the PIRLS 2001 International Report, indicated a trend similar to the classification based on their achievement. The percentages of students coming from homes with a “High” Index of Early Home Literacy Activities (EHLA) were 62% for Bulgaria, 55% for Romania, and 42% for Moldova. Similarly, the percentages of students coming from homes with a “High” Index of Home Educational Resources (HER) were 11% for Bulgaria, 5% for Romania, and 4% for Moldova. The percentage of fourth-grade students that could do “Very Well” Early Literacy Activities Beginning School, as reported by their parents (the “PELABS” index, as I call it), showed the same trend as the previous indices: Bulgaria 29%, followed by Romania with 18%, and Moldova with 12%. A comparison of the three indices among the three countries is presented in Figure 2. Figure 2: Percentage of students with “High” EHLA and “High” HER, and that could do “Very Well” Early Literacy Activities Beginning School (PELABS) according to their parents. 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% Bulgaria Romania International Average Moldova Pe rc en ta ge EHLA% PELABS% HER % Linear (EHLA%) Linear (PELABS%) Linear (HER %) Notice the similarity between the trend lines of the three indices and the trend in reading achievement scores for these three countries. PIRLS 2001 Encyclopedia (Mullis, 2002) provides information with respect to children's reading readiness in a formal setting. The education systems of the three countries include pre-primary education, although it is neither compulsory nor affordable for all children, especially Moldavian ones. The Encyclopedia specifies that in Bulgaria: “Pre-school education is not compulsory and is for children aged between three and seven.” (p. 17), in Moldova: “Pre-primary education [...] enroll 33 percent of children 1 to 6 years old... At present, in the conditions of economic crisis, only 52 percent of 5 to 6 year-olds attend preparatory groups for school", while in Romania: “Pre-primary education is available to 3to 6-year-olds and is not compulsory.” RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND HYPOTHESIS The specific research questions that will be addressed in this paper are as follows: 1. How and to what extent des Romanian students' preparedness to learn to read at the beginning of school influence their reading achievement in grade four? 2. Having taken into account achievement differences in the three countries that are not attributable to reading readiness beginning school, what strategies are best preparing incoming students to learn to read? The literature indicates that an emphasis on early literacy activities, either at home or in preschool, is a powerful explanatory factor of reading achievement. In addition, in previous studies it has been shown that students’ access to educational resources, which is a reflection of the socio-economic status of both the home and the country, is closely related to their levels of reading achievement. The hypothesis being tested here is that the better the students are prepared to learn to read at the beginning of school the higher their reading achievement in grade four. Therefore, within Romania’s national context, as well as compared to Bulgaria and Moldova, the purpose of the current study is to find out if results from The IEA’s PIRLS 2001 would confirm this hypothesis.