The effect of coaching support on preschool teacher's pre-literacy practices and pre-literacy skills of children

In the study, it was aimed to determine the effect of teachers' coaching support for pre-literacy skills on the teacher's pre-literacy practices and the teacher's practices on pre-literacy skills on children's pre-literacy skills. The study group of the research consists of 1 teacher working in an independent kindergarten in the province of Kütahya and 2 class of kindergarten children (1 experimental group children and 1 control group children). The experimental group consists of 15 children attending the A. Class and 14 of children attending the B. Class of a total of 29 children are attending an independent A. Kindergarten. The research was carried out with a mixed method in which both qualitative and quantitative research methods were used, and since in the research the teacher's pre-literacy practices were intervened with the support of coaching and the effect on children's pre-literacy skills were examined based on this, the design of the research was determined as an intervention design from mixed method research. The quantitative data obtained from the children and the qualitative data obtained from the teacher were used simultaneously to support each other, to compare and interpret the results. Therefore, the symbolic view of the research design is QUAN+QUAL. The basic qualitative research design was adopted as the qualitative design of the research. Qualitative data were included in the research before, during and after the experimental intervention through observation, interviews, feedback sessions and diary recordings with the teacher. The quantitative design of the research was determined as one of the experimental research types, pretest-posttest, permanence test and quasi-experimental design with experimental-control group. The data on teacher's pre-literacy practices before and after the coaching support process were first obtained by semi-structured interview technique. Within the scope of the coaching support process; all of the teacher's pre-literacy and Turkish activities were observed every weekday for 5 weeks. During each observation, the observation checklist prepared by the researcher was filled and observation notes were taken. The pre-literacy skills observation checklist consists of 112 items, including how the teacher applies phonological awareness, print awareness and verbal language skills, which are among the pre-literacy skills, whether they address these skills in their activities, if so to what extent, and what strategies and materials they use. At the end of each implementation, feedback sessions were held in which the teacher and the researcher evaluated the implementation. During the evaluations in the feedback sessions, coaching support was provided to the teacher in terms of content knowledge, method, technique and strategy, and planning of future activities. Quantitative data; Phonological awareness scale, Print awareness checklist, Peabody picture word test, Descoedres language test were obtained through measurement tools. Two-Factor ANOVA for Mixed (Repeated) Measures was used to test the effectiveness of the experimental application, as the research was an experimental study aiming to determine the effects of teacher practices received coaching support on children's pre-literacy skills such as verbal language skills, phonological awareness and print awareness. In the research, a 2x3 (experimental/control groups X pretest/posttest/permanence test) split plot design was created. In addition, in order to determine between which groups the difference determined in the analysis of variance is significant, Bonferroni Test was used to compare the measurement scores of the Descoeudres Language Test (Descoeudres Dictionary Test) (DDT), Peabody Picture Word Test, Phonological Awareness Scale and Preschool Children's Print Awareness Evaluation Checklist pretest, posttest and permanence. Statistical analyzes of the findings were performed based on the .05 significance level. With this .001 and .01 significance levels are also shown in the tables. Research findings show that the coaching support process contributes to the teacher's knowledge of the content of pre-literacy skills and to the practices of pre-literacy skills (generating the activity plan, implementing, evaluating, using materials, using methods, techniques and strategies). In this context, it is seen that the awareness level of the teacher who received coaching support for pre-literacy skills has increased. At the same time, according to the findings obtained from the Phonological awareness scale, Print awareness checklist, Peabody picture word test, Descoedres language test measurement tools, a significant difference was found in favor of the experimental group between the scores they got from the pretest-posttest and permanence measurements (p<0.01). Based on these findings, it has been concluded that coaching support contributes to the teacher's pre-literacy practices and that the teacher's practices to pre-literacy skills contribute to the development of children's literacy skills. Key Words:pre-literacy skills, coaching, literacy coaching, professional development, teacher training.