“I know I don’t read enough or even pick up a book in the baby room sometimes”: Early Years Teacher Trainees’ perceptions and beliefs about reading with under-threes

This thesis investigates how Early Years Teacher Trainees (EYTTs) support under-threes with early reading development within their daily provision. It also explores their experiences, views, perceptions and challenges of early reading. Many years, of research into the practice and pedagogy of early reading has led to copious contentious debates and reviews (Johnston and Watson, 2005; Rose Review, 2006; Wyse and Goswami, 2008; Goouch and Lambirth, 2011), resulting in an unnecessary and imperious policy investment in Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) to teach reading in schools. This study suggests that this policy agenda not only influences EYTT’s views and beliefs about early reading, but also their practice with under-threes.

This thesis reports the findings of a mixed methods study, which aims to explore the experiences and practices of EYTTs. Phase one consisted of a survey to understand the experiences of practitioners working with under-threes. This was followed by the second phase, which involved five qualitative interviews, two focus group workshops and Zine data to clarify and refine the earlier quantitative results, as well as to explore the practitioners’ views and experiences in more depth (Creswell, 2005).

This study stresses the urgent need to support Early Years Teachers in understanding that babies must have access to high quality books and regular shared stories as part of their daily routine. Findings from this study indicate that the emphasis on school readiness (Moss, 2013) within the EYTS training is influencing practitioner’s perceptions of early reading and as such, practitioners may be failing to provide under-threes with the resources, activities and experiences needed to encourage children to engage with reading.