Dialogic Reading with Emotion-Laden Storybooks: Intervention Methods to Enhance Children's Emergent Literacy and Social-Emotional Skills

Abstract

Improving both literacy and social-emotional skills has become a focus of recent intervention research. Replicating procedures previously implemented by Whitehurst et al. (1994, 1999) with emotion-laden storybooks, this study introduced and evaluated intervention methods (i.e., teacher-directed small-group storybook readings) aiming to simultaneously enhance preschooler's vocabulary and social-emotional skills. Participants included 27 teachers and 114 children in the southern Colorado Rocky Mountain SER Head Start Program divided into 2 groups: the intervention group (i.e., teachers used dialogic reading techniques during storybook readings) and the book reading control group (i.e., teachers read storybooks as usual). Results regarding intervention effects across experimental group assignment and Head Start programming dosage revealed that of children attending half-day and full-day classrooms assigned to the intervention and book reading control groups, children attending half-day Head Start classrooms assigned to the intervention group demonstrated the greatest affective perspective taking skills of all groups. Children attending full-day Head Start classrooms assigned to the intervention group, however, demonstrated the least affective perspective taking skills of all groups. Results also revealed that children in classrooms assigned to the intervention group had stronger vocabulary skills and demonstrated greater productiveness during classroom activities than children in classrooms assigned to the book reading control group. Findings warrant the potential value of future research investigating altered intervention methods. Teachers held favorable attitudes toward intervention implementation. Education and educational policy implications are discussed.