ABSTRACT
The view that early childhood education plays a key role in enabling children to learn to read and write is supported in both preschool settings and the home environment. This chapter provides a comprehensive review of the research on early childhood education, the home literacy environment and early literacy intervention programmes, as well as their relations to children’s early literacy development. The chapter begins with a description of the importance of early childhood education in language and literacy learning. I further discuss how early childhood education influences children’s literacy skills. The chapter also reviews home learning environment and the effects of early literacy intervention programmes across orthographies on early literacy acquisition. Finally, educational implications are provided for parents, caregivers/teachers and policy-makers. Overall, I argue that not only is early childhood education enrolment a key factor for early literacy development, but the programme’s intensity, quality and type also play vital roles in children’s early literacy acquisition. Further, home literacy environment and early interventions are also important for literacy development in the first years. For future, I anticipate that the mechanism by which early childhood education influences early language learning and their relationships with home literacy environment will be investigated in future studies among different age groups across the world.
