| Research over the last decade has established that phonemic awareness plays a critical role in literacy acquisition. This study examined whether reading teachers are familiar with these findings and equipped to make use of them. Specifically, what do reading teachers know about phonemic awareness, how important do they judge it to be, can they accurately demonstrate it, and are these factors related to their beliefs about how to teach reading?;A sample of 121 literacy professionals in different roles (primary classroom teachers, reading specialists, Special Education teachers, and graduate students in a literacy education program) supplied information on a comprehensive questionnaire, which included a phoneme-counting task and The DeFord Theoretical Orientation to Reading Profile (TORP). A representative subsample participated in follow-up interviews and additional phonemic awareness tasks.;Results present a complex picture of relationships among teachers' knowledge regarding phonemic awareness, program-specific training, perception of knowledge, and theoretical orientation. Although no simple linear relationships among these factors exist, the data do suggest ways to help teachers improve their knowledge, skill, and instructional strategies in this domain.;Many respondents were unclear about the distinction between phonemic awareness and "phonics." Although most thought it important to have children attend to speech sounds, few reported that they demonstrate how to segment words into phonemes while reading and writing.;Responses on the phoneme-counting task varied widely, revealing some confusion about what constitutes a phoneme. Performance did not vary by reported levels of familiarity with the subject or by theoretical orientation. However, it did vary by level of training in specific code-oriented programs and by amount of linguistic coursework. During follow-up interviews, those individuals who were able to identify, match, and manipulate phonemes accurately attributed their superior phonemic awareness to intensive training, in which they learned to override their spelling knowledge and listen for within-word sounds.;Clearly, teachers who re-establish and refine their own phonemic awareness will be better equipped to foster it among their students. Courses and workshops that focus explicitly on this subject and its associated skills appear to be promising. |
