Previous research investigating both the knowledge of early childhood educators and the support for vocabulary development present in early childhood settings has indicated that both educator knowledge and enacted practic

Previous research investigating both the knowledge of early childhood educators and the support for vocabulary development present in early childhood settings has indicated that both educator knowledge and enacted practice are less than optimal, which has grave implications for children's early vocabulary learning and later reading achievement. Further, the nature of the relationship between educators' knowledge and practice is unclear, making it difficult to discern the best path towards improved knowledge, practice, and children's vocabulary outcomes. The purpose of the present study was to add to the existing literature by using stimulated recall interviews and a grounded approach to examine how 10 preschool educators used their knowledge to made decisions about their moment‐to‐moment instruction in support of children's vocabulary development. Results indicate that educators were thinking in highly context‐specific ways about their goals and strategies for supporting vocabulary learning, taking into account important knowledge of their instructional history with children and of the children themselves to inform their decision making in the moment. In addition, they reported thinking about research‐based goals and strategies for supporting vocabulary learning that went beyond simply defining words for children. Implications for research and professional development are discussed.

The study is a cross‐sectional developmental investigation of morphological and phonological awareness in word spelling and reading in Arabic in reading‐accuracy disabled (RD) children and in age‐matched typ

The study is a cross‐sectional developmental investigation of morphological and phonological awareness in word spelling and reading in Arabic in reading‐accuracy disabled (RD) children and in age‐matched typically developing (TR) controls in grades 1–4 ( N ?=?160). Morphological awareness tasks targeted the root and word pattern derivational system of Arabic, in both the oral and the written modalities. Phonological awareness employed a variety of orally administered segmentation and deletion tasks. The results demonstrated early deficits in morphological awareness, besides deficits in phonological awareness, in RD children as compared with typically developing controls, as well as in word and pseudoword spelling and reading (voweled and unvoweled). While phonological awareness emerged as the strongest predictor of reading, morphological awareness was also found to predict unique variance in reading, and even more so in spelling, beyond phonological awareness and cognitive skills. The results demonstrate the early emergence of morphological awareness deficits, alongside phonological deficits in Arabic RD, as well as the role of morphological processing in early reading and spelling. These findings reflect the centrality of derivational morphology in the structure of the spoken and the written Arabic word. Copyright ? 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.