{"id":148,"date":"2025-03-18T10:33:37","date_gmt":"2025-03-18T10:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/H890Conference\/?p=148"},"modified":"2025-03-18T10:37:54","modified_gmt":"2025-03-18T10:37:54","slug":"phonetically-decodable-e-books-impact-on-early-reading-practices-and-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/H890Conference\/index.php\/2025\/03\/18\/phonetically-decodable-e-books-impact-on-early-reading-practices-and-progress\/","title":{"rendered":"Phonetically decodable e-books – impact on early reading practices and progress."},"content":{"rendered":"

Phonetically decodable e-books – impact on early reading practices and progress.<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Kirsty Masterton<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Keywords<\/strong>: e-books; early reading; decoding; decodable books; phonics programme; parent\/carer support for e-book reading.<\/p>\n

The government and Ofsted are committed to synthetic phonics as the method of teaching early reading in England (Glazzard & Stones, 2020).\u00a0 A key feature of validated phonics programmes is that they provide decodable reading books, which must be closely matched to the stage of pupil learning, enabling pupils to practise the learned grapheme-phoneme correspondences.\u00a0 Decodable texts are used for practising reading within school and at home.\u00a0 Some phonics programmes provide decodable books in both print and e-book form.<\/p>\n

E-books are typically more cost effective than print books (Clinton, 2019) and they can also offer an engaging medium, opportunities for independent reading and ease of implementation for teachers (Brueck & Lenhart, 2015).\u00a0 Although there is existing research comparing children\u2019s e-books and print books, most studies focus on comprehension outcomes (Furenes et al., 2021) and many on adult-read e-books (Kucirkova, 2019).\u00a0 Few studies have considered the effect of e-books on phonological awareness, with those that do being mainly small-scale studies (Littleton et al, 2006; Wood, 2005; Shamir & Korat, 2015).\u00a0 Some studies have pointed to less parent-initiated discussion with e-books (Furenes et al., 2021; Korat & Or, 2010).<\/p>\n

This study, which is being planned as a proposal for a part-time EdD, will aim to explore two key questions:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. What impact does the use of decodable reading scheme e-books, compared to print versions of the same, have on decoding progress\/attainment in early readers (reception and year 1) in UK primary schools?<\/li>\n
  2. How does the provision of decodable reading scheme e-books affect the way that parents\/carers support and scaffold reading practise at home?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    For ethical and practical reasons, a quasi-experimental approach to the study is planned, recruiting participant schools that are all following the same phonics programme, but with some using print books for home reading and some using e-books.\u00a0 As the phonics programme will incorporate assessments at key points throughout the two-year duration of the programme, this secondary data will be utilised, comparing mean assessment scores for children in the e-book and print book groups at each assessment point to establish whether the use of e-books has an impact on decoding attainment.<\/p>\n

    Insight into the typical frequency and duration of home reading sessions, level of parent involvement and parent child interaction will be gained via parent surveys, mainly by collecting quantitative data via multiple choice and Likert scale questions, as well as qualitative data via a limited number of open questions.\u00a0 The qualitative data will be analysed for themes via a thematic analysis approach.<\/p>\n

    I hope the findings of the study will inform schools and be useful in making resourcing decisions e.g. investment on print books or e-book libraries and for providing guidance for parents\/carers on how to support reading at home.\u00a0 The phonics scheme\/book publisher selected as the focus for the study would be interested in the findings, but other phonics schemes and publishers would also be interested as the findings may also be relevant to their own schemes and e-books.\u00a0 I hope that the findings could be disseminated more widely to add to the published research on e-books for children and extend it to cover decodable books used for learning to read.<\/p>\n

    \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

    References<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Brueck, J. S., & Lenhart, L. A. (2015). E-books and TPACK: What teachers need to know. In Reading Teacher<\/em> (Vol. 68, Issue 5, pp. 373\u2013376). John Wiley and Sons Inc.<\/p>\n

    Clinton, V. (2019). Reading from paper compared to screens: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Research in Reading<\/em>, 42<\/em>(2), 288\u2013325.<\/p>\n

    Furenes, M. I., Kucirkova, N., & Bus, A. G. (2021). A Comparison of Children\u2019s Reading on Paper Versus Screen: A Meta-Analysis. Review of Educational Research<\/em>, 91<\/em>(4), 483\u2013517.<\/p>\n

    Glazzard, J., & Stones, S. (2020). A Rigorous Approach to the Teaching of Reading? Systematic Synthetic Phonics in Initial Teacher Education. Frontiers in Education<\/em>, 5<\/em>.<\/p>\n

    Korat, O., & Or, T. (2010). How new technology influences parent-child interaction: The case of e-book reading. First Language<\/em>, 30<\/em>(2), 139\u2013154.<\/p>\n

    Kucirkova, N. (2019). Children\u2019s Reading With Digital Books: Past Moving Quickly to the Future. Child Development Perspectives<\/em>, 13<\/em>(4), 208\u2013214.<\/p>\n

    Littleton, K., Wood, C., & Chera, P. (2006). Interactions with talking books: phonological awareness affects boys’ use of talking books. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 22, 382\u2013390.<\/p>\n

    Shamir, A., & Korat, O. (2015). Educational Electronic Books for Supporting Emergent Literacy of Kindergarteners At-Risk for Reading Difficulties\u2014What Do We Know So Far? Computers in the Schools<\/em>, 32<\/em>(2), 105\u2013121.<\/p>\n

    Wood, C. (2005). Beginning readers\u2019 use of talking books software can affect their reading. Journal in Research and Reading, 28, 170-182.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Phonetically decodable e-books – impact on early reading practices and progress. Kirsty Masterton Keywords: e-books; early reading; decoding; decodable books; phonics programme; parent\/carer support for e-book reading. The government and Ofsted are committed to synthetic phonics as the method of teaching early reading in England (Glazzard & Stones, 2020).\u00a0 A key feature of validated phonics […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[40,39,37,38,42,41],"class_list":["post-148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-decodable-books","tag-decoding","tag-e-books","tag-early-reading","tag-parent-carer-support-for-e-book-reading","tag-phonics-programme"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/H890Conference\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/H890Conference\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/H890Conference\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/H890Conference\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/H890Conference\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/H890Conference\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/H890Conference\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions\/152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/H890Conference\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/H890Conference\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/H890Conference\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}