Ethiopian Early Grade English Teachers’ Preparedness to Teach Basic Reading Skills

Abstract

Ethiopian children in early grades were found to be significantly nonreaders after 2–3 years of schooling regardless of linguistic variation. This is mainly attributed to the way children are taught basic literacy skills, which is attributed to teacher preparation and training. This research aimed to examine Ethiopian early grade teachers’ preparedness to teach basic reading skills. Five schools were randomly selected out of 44 public primary schools in the research site. Among 40 teachers of English in the selected schools, 32 teachers were willing to take knowledge assessment test and fill in the questionnaire. Two of knowledge test papers and two pieces of questionnaire were rejected because the responses were incomplete. The data were gathered from (n = 30) randomly selected primary schools English teachers by using a questionnaire and knowledge assessment test. Data analysis was done using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS Version 25.0). Descriptive statistics were calculated for the responses to knowledge test and questionnaire. Pearson’s correlation was calculated for the relationship among teacher preparation coursework emphasis, practicum attention, and teachers’ felt preparedness to teach basic reading after categorical data were transformed into scale. The results have shown that primary school English teacher preparation designated only certain lecture sessions of coursework and few of activities of practicum to teaching early reading. The average knowledge assessment test score of teachers was 43.4%; 21 (70%) of the teachers achieved below 50% while 9 (30%) of them achieved 50% and above. There is a statistically significant relationship among teacher preparation coursework emphasis, practicum attention, and teachers’ felt preparedness to help Ethiopian children learn to read. It can be concluded from the results that teacher preparation both in its courses and practicum activities did not place due emphasis on teaching teachers to teach basic reading skills. Participant English teachers also had knowledge gap about early reading instruction. Thus, participant English teachers were not adequately prepared to teach early grade reading. Teacher preparation coursework emphasis, practicum attention, and teachers’ felt preparedness to teach early grade reading have a strong positive relationship.