Source: Educational Researcher, 39(4): 311-315. (May 2010).
The current paper discusses the potential positive and problematic influences of the National Early Literacy Panel (NELP; 2008) report on prekindergarten and kindergarten classroom instructional practice.
The authors support the instructional importance of the majority of the foundational skills identified in the NELP report as having “clear and consistently strong relationships with later conventional literacy skills”.
However, the authors also detail a number of concerns about NELP-influenced instructional recommendations drawn to date.
The authors argue that the NELP report is both insufficiently clear and overly narrow with respect to what preschool teachers should be focusing on instructionally in early literacy.
Reference
National Early Literacy Panel (2008). "Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel", National Institute for Literacy.