Teachers' assumptions about teaching and learning have a critical impact on pedagogical practices. This study was conducted to investigate the perceptions of early childhood educators regarding children's acquisition of literacy in an attempt to gain a picture of current instructional practices. Prekindergarten through second grade teachers (n = 76) responded to the Literacy Acquisition Perception Profile. Responses on the reading readiness and emergent literacy subscales served as the dependent variables in a series of ANOVAs conducted with educational level, teaching assignment, and teaching experience as the independent variables. Results revealed a statistically significant difference [F(4, 65) = 3.31, p = .03, g 2 = .17] between the teachers who had 6-10 years of experience and more than 21 years, with teachers who had 6-10 years clearly ascribing to reading readiness as the preferred way of teaching reading over teachers with 21? years. This finding may be attributed to many teachers with more than 21 years experience having received initial teacher training during the late 1980s and early 1990s when an emergent literacy perspective, a departure from the traditional view of reading readiness, was the predominant view. It is posited that differentiated instruction rather than the application of a single instructional approach fully grounded in a particular perception may be the best approach to facilitating young children's literacy acquisition.

Since the reading habits of both preservice and inservice teachers have been linked to their abilities as reading teachers, aliteracy among teachers is particularly distressing. The purpose of this study was to investigate the amount of leisure time elementary teachers spend reading literature for pleasure. Prekindergarten through sixth grade teachers (N=24) enrolled in a graduate education course logged the minutes they spent engaged in various leisure activities during one week of the summer. Reading literature, defined as the reading of novels, short stories, plays, or poetry in one’s spare time, ranged from 0 to 845 minutes. Of the 13 activities investigated, the highest average amount of time was spent watching movies (M=552.92). Reading literature for pleasure had the eighth highest mean (M=123.13). Pairwise comparisons revealed no significant difference (t = -.795, p < .435) between time spent reading literature and time spent in other non-literature leisure activities. Results or paired samples t-tests indicated that participants spent significantly less time reading newspapers/magazines (t = 2.696, p < .013) and reading blogs (t = 2.783, p < .011) and significantly more time watching movies (t = -3.287, p < .003) than reading literature for pleasure. It appears that lack of motivation may be a factor in participants’ decision to read literature for pleasure as opposed to either lack of time or technological distractions.

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