Early literacy skills of preschool students: teacher’s subjective rating versus objective measurement by using a multi-dimensional test.

Abstract

This research establishes how are related teacher’s subjective rating of early literacy in preschool students, with the literacy objective level, as it is measured by a multidimensional test. Subjective rating was the Teacher Rating Oral Language-Literacy (TROLL; Dickinson, 2003). Overt literacy was obtained by the Early Literacy Inventory (PAI; Villalón & Rolla, 2003). A observational design applied scales procedures to teachers and preschools students. Probabilistic sampling included 24 teachers/courses of prekinder and kindergarden level, into 12 public schools of each communa at Concepcion province. Simple random sample of 5 student per level was extracted getting a total of 117 preschool students. Data analysis strategy was mainly hierarchycal regression analysis of multilevel data. As principal finding was obtained that teacher subjective rating determines the preschool student’s literacy score specifically in Emergent Reading/Writing and Print Knowledge, concluding in that were identified early evidences of a teacher-effect, labeled Pygmalion or Matthew effect, whose mechanism is a kind of teacher’s self-fulfilling prophecy related to their students’ early literacy.