DEVELOPMENTAL PROGRESSION OF ENVIRONMENTAL PRINT RECOGNITION IN KINDERGARTEN CHILDREN

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Abstract
Children construct knowledge about print by interacting with the logos, labels, road signs, billboards, and other print found in the child's immediate environment. A study was conducted to better understand the developmental progression of kindergarten children from reading of environmental print in context to reading of environmental print in standard manuscript, sentence, and in typed script. Eighty‐six kindergarten children from five classrooms in a middle‐class community were the subjects. These subjects had been exposed, through various activities, to environmental print instruction in the classroom. Teachers were then asked to identify the twenty most popular logos brought in by the children. Each logo was translated to six formats to evaluate the students’ abilities to recognize environmental print in different formats. Students were administered all six formats of all twenty logos randomly arranged across five sittings. A multivariate analysis of variance was employed with two repeated measures with‐in subjects factors (logo and trial) and two between‐subjects factors (teacher and student gender). There were significant main and interaction effects involving the between‐subjects teacher factor. These appear to be attributable to the fact that students in one classroom (teacher had experience in environmental print) performed significantly better on formats 4, 5, and 6 than students in the other four classrooms. This teacher used the logos in context and in manuscript in her classroom instruction.

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