Exploring the Relationship between Phonological Awareness and Reading Ability from Elementary Teachers Perspective

The current research findings on early literacy development demonstrated that phonological awareness is an important variable to emerge reading ability (Blackman, 2000; Gillon, 2004). However, how do elementary teachers perceive the significance of phonological awareness in their classrooms has not been widely explored? Thus, the present study aimed to fill in the gap by exploring how elementary school teachers perceive the importance of phonological awareness as well as how this is demonstrated in their classroom experiences. The participants included 100 elementary school teachers of both genders with diverse years of experience from 30 elementary schools in Khorram Abad, Iran. A survey study along with short interviews were employed to obtain the required data. The obtained data could provide a description of elementary school teachers’ perception regarding the significance and use of phonological awareness instruction. Overall, the findings revealed that the teachers not only did recognize the importance of phonological awareness as a reading skill that should be taught, but they also considered it as a prevention strategy for reading acquisition which can play a vital role in incidental reading. The descriptive obtained profile from the data analysis was useful to attain a greater awareness of how theoretical understandings pertaining to phonological awareness relevance and usage are actually occurring in the elementary classroom context.