Phonemic awareness skill of speech-language pathologists and other educators

Educators rely on sufficient knowledge and skill to provide effective phonemic awareness instruction, an important component of early literacy instruction, particularly for children who experience difficulty learning to read. The purpose of this study was to evaluate and compare the phonemic awareness skill of several groups of educators, including speech-language pathologists (SLPs; n = 160), kindergarten teachers (n = 109), first-grade teachers (n = 112), reading teachers (n = 100), and special education teachers (n = 60).

Participants completed a paper-pencil measure of phonemic awareness skill that included 3 tasks. The measure was designed to assess sophisticated explicit phonemic awareness skill within a print context, representing an advanced skill level that has been deemed critical to teaching.

SLPs demonstrated superior performance on the measure of phonemic awareness skill when compared to other educators (d = 1.54). The performance of reading and special education teachers was comparable to that of kindergarten and first-grade teachers. Orthographic knowledge had an adverse impact on the performance of all groups. However, SLPs were far more proficient than other educators at segmenting words that had a complex relationship between speech and print (e.g., box, use).

SLPs have relative expertise in phonemic awareness, yet their performance may not be proficient. Three recommendations are discussed: (a) Increase the phonemic awareness skill of all educators, (b) revise instructional materials to enhance educators' efforts to provide accurate and effective phonemic awareness instruction, and (c) include SLPs as members of the team responsible for phonemic awareness instruction and intervention.