Phoneme awareness of prospective primary school teachers: How well are they prepared for early literacy instruction?

Abstract

Phoneme awareness is an important component of primary school teachers’ diagnostic competence. Internationally, teachers’ phoneme awareness has already been extensively studied; in Germany, further research is needed in this field. Therefore, a standardised test to assess phoneme awareness was developed and administered to N = 271 advanced undergraduate students in Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria, Germany.The students’ explicit phoneme awareness is rather low, and, with 41 % correctly solved items, they are not optimally prepared for early literacy instruction. Orthographic interference effects are mainly responsible for this. Overall, 73 % overestimate their performance, and this effect is stronger the lower the test performance. The practical implications are discussed.