Poster #166 - Do you hear what I hear? Phonological awareness and reading acquisition in remote Indigenous Australia

• In Event: 3-206 - Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Section - Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context

Integrative Statement

Phonological awareness is a neurocognitive process that is explicitly taught in many schools across Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom, to facilitate reading acquisition. An extensive body of literature has shown phonological awareness competency to be a key predictor for the acquisition of fundamental reading skills (for reviews, see Ehri et al., 2001; Melby-Lervåg, Lyster, & Hulme, 2012). More recently, a growing field of research has begun to examine the cross-cultural validity of such findings and has demonstrated similarities (McBride–Chang & Kail, 2002) and differences (Huang & Hanley, 1995) across cultures with regards to the relationship between phonological awareness and reading. Such research highlights the complex interplay between culture, environment and neurocognitive development.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders living in remote and very remote regions of Australia live in communities where their Indigenous cultural and language practices remain strong and vibrant. Children growing up in these communities typically speak an Indigenous language as a first language and English is generally learnt at school as a second or subsequent language. Given that remote Indigenous Australian children are raised in a sociocultural and linguistic environment that is a distinctly different to most non-Indigenous Australian children, it is reasonable to expect that culture and environment may influence the neurocognitive development of phonological awareness, as well as the development of other neurocognitive processes associated with reading acquisition.

Research findings presented here are part of a broader project that examined the relationship between culture, environment and the development of phonological, visual and working memory processes that facilitate reading acquisition. Preliminary results show differences in performance between Indigenous and non-Indigenous children on two cognitive phonological awareness tasks. This suggests a difference in the development of phonological awareness of remote Indigenous Australian children, compared to the typical developmental trajectory of phonological awareness observed for non-Indigenous Australian children.

Discussion focuses on possible reasons for the observed differences in phonological awareness, as well as the consequent implications for the teaching of reading acquisition within an Indigenous classroom. Recommendations are also made which highlight the need to more explicitly assess the interaction between sociocultural and neurocognitive development with regards to reading acquisition for remote Indigenous Australian populations.

Authors

• Melissa Freire, Australian National University
  Presenting Author

• Kristen Pammer, University of Newcastle, Australia
  Non-Presenting Author