Publication

This Landscape Report on Early Grade Literacy takes stock of where we are, as a global community of educators within the field of international development, in improving literacy acquisition in the early grades in low-income countries. Hence, the purpose of the report is to review relevant, recent research coming principally from developing country contexts on efforts to improve early grade literacy learning and instruction. The scope of this report includes reviewing evidence from the field on (1) what has worked in developing countries; (2) what practices show promise at this point even if the available evidence is not yet definitive; and (3) what the gaps in the literature/evidence base are. Within these large and overarching goals, topics of examination and discussion include:

• Cross cutting aspects in literacy instruction: Instructional time, assessment, and teaching and learning materials, including ICTs
• Skill building in the following areas: emergent literacy, oral language, reading fluency, reading comprehension, and early writing.
• Literacy acquisition in multilingual contexts
• Teacher knowledge, and teacher education practices
• Parental and community engagement
• Long-run considerations: costs, financing, scaling up, and sustainability of literacy programs