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JCPSLP
Volume 18, Number 2 2016
Journal of Clinical Practice in Speech-Language Pathology
National Disability Insurance Scheme
awareness) of literacy intervention specialists (Moats,
2014). The underlying rationale is that these professionals
must have an explicit knowledge of language structure
to teach their students to become capable readers (see
Moats, 2014). This paper reports the preliminary phase
of a planned longitudinal project aimed at improving
the professional preparation of teachers and speech
pathologists at an Australian university by tracking one
aspect of their language structure knowledge, i.e.,
phonological awareness, during their first semester of study.
Phonological awareness can be defined as the ability
to consciously reflect upon and manipulate the sound
structure of spoken words, at syllable (e / le / phant =
elephant), onset-rime (r / oom = room), and phoneme (c
/ a / t = cat) levels (Stahl & Murray, 1994). Phonological
awareness is crucial for early reading and spelling success
(Stahl & Murray, 1994), and research has clearly established
that a large percentage of children with reading difficulties
demonstrate poor phonological awareness (Carson, Gillon,
& Boustead, 2013). Phonological awareness should not be
confused with phonics. Phonics is a teaching strategy that
addresses how sounds are mapped to letters or symbols
(e.g., what sound does the letter /s/ make?), whereas
phonological awareness refers to the ability to recognise
and manipulate the sounds in spoken language (e.g.,
what sound does the word
snake
start with? or how many
sounds (not letters) in the word
thought?
answer = 3) (e.g.,
Gillon, 2004).
Once children commence their formal school education,
qualified teachers play an important role in young children’s
reading development. Teaching of reading has been and still
is a large focus in curriculum and policy, both in Australia
and internationally (Australian Government, 2005; 2015).
Apart from teachers, speech pathologists address literacy
development with a range of clients – for example when
working with children with spoken language impairment
– who are considered at risk of long-term reading
difficulties (Catts & Hogan, 2003). Considering the fact that
phonological awareness is best taught explicitly, especially
with children who have difficulty in literacy acquisition
(Gillon, 2004), it stands to reason that both teachers and
speech pathologists should display strong phonological
awareness skills themselves. Alarmingly, however, research
suggests that education professionals, including early
childhood educators and primary school teachers generally
present with poor phonological awareness skills (Carroll,
2006; Carroll, Gillon, & McNeill, 2012; Moats, 2003;
Spencer, Schuele, Guillot, & Lee, 2008). Although results
from Carroll et al.’s (2012) and Spencer et al.’s (2008)
Responding to the urgent call to address the
need for appropriate preparation of
professional teachers of reading, this
preliminary investigation examined the
phonological awareness knowledge of
Bachelor of Primary Education and Master of
Speech Pathology students in their first
semester of study before and after their
regular course work. This report outlines the
results of the study and proposes ways of
utilising this information to enhance tertiary
teaching practices, with the ultimate aim of
raising student performance in the area of
phonological awareness.
T
he ability to read is an essential skill in today’s world.
Skilled readers not only need to recognise or decode
the written words, they also need to understand what
those written words mean. Results from the Progress in
International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS; Mullis, Martin,
Foy, & Drucker, 2012) showed that Australian students
scored significantly lower than 21 other countries, with 24%
of the Australian year 4 students performing at the low or
below low international benchmarks (Thomson et al., 2012).
This is concerning and, accordingly, the value of teaching
reading in our primary schools has been well recognised
by the Australian government including departments of
education. In 2005, the Australian government initiated a
National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy and identified
the importance of “teachers adopting an integrated
approach to reading that explicitly teaches phonemic
awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary knowledge and
comprehension” to ensuring reading success (Australian
Government, 2005, p. 11). A decade later, a report titled
Action Now: Classroom Ready Teachers
, also known as
the TEMAG report (Australian Government, 2015), indicated
a continuing necessity for quality and explicit practices
to focus on the teaching of reading in the early years and
throughout schooling.
Ferrari (2015), in a newspaper article summarising
the views of Dr Louisa Moats, noted that “teachers’
lack of basic understanding of how language works is
the underlying problem of teaching reading in schools”.
In the last 20 years, Moats has been a keen advocate
for improving the language-structure knowledge and
skills (e.g., phonological, morphological, and syntactic
The phonological awareness
skills of education and speech
pathology higher education
students during their first
semester of study
Marleen F. Westerveld and Georgina Barton
Marleen F.
Westerveld (top)
and Georgina
Barton
THIS ARTICLE
HAS BEEN
PEER-
REVIEWED
KEYWORDS
HIGHER
EDUCATION
PHONOLOGICAL
AWARENESS
SPEECH
PATHOLOGY
TEACHER
PREPARATION