It is generally accepted among scholars and educators that literacy is critical to positive educational experiences and outcomes. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) defines education as a fundamental human right intrinsically important for human development and wellbeing, and for its part, literacy is viewed as a central component of education that provides a foundation for lifelong learning. For these reasons, among others, literacy is a pivotal contributor to fostering self-determination, which is the overarching theme of this study. There is a consensus among educators that literacy is essential to social and human development in its ability to transform lives. Indeed, ensuring basic literacy skills for all is a central goal of every national education system in the world. In New Zealand, research on aspects of literacy has been conducted primarily in monolingual English medium classrooms, or, to a lesser extent, in te reo Māori (the Māori language) immersion settings. Little, however, is known about literacy in home environments where children are exposed to English and te reo Māori.

The purpose of this research is to examine literacy with bilingual four-year-old children attending a dual language (te reo Māori and English) early childhood centre in Christchurch, New Zealand. It focuses specifically on two key sets of cognitive skills, which are widely recognised as playing a critical role in children’s emerging literacy, namely phonological awareness, which can be broadly defined as an awareness of the sound structure of spoken words; and key aspects of oral language, including vocabulary knowledge, and story comprehension and retell skills. More explicitly, by replicating eight case studies, the research seeks to determine the efficacy of a home-based intervention involving rich reading and reminiscing (RRR), and stimulating sound sensitivity (SSS), on children’s literacy outcomes. In keeping with a general Māori worldview, as well as theoretical contentions put forward in this work, this research takes a holistic view, and also examines the role of whānau, and in particular, mothers, in children’s literacy acquisition.

The purpose of this research is to examine literacy with bilingual four-year-old children attending a dual language (te reo Māori and English) early childhood centre in Christchurch, New Zealand. It focuses specifically on two key sets of cognitive skills, which are widely recognised as playing a critical role in children’s emerging literacy, namely phonological awareness, which can be broadly defined as an awareness of the sound structure of spoken words; and key aspects of oral language, including vocabulary knowledge, and story comprehension and retell skills. More explicitly, by replicating eight case studies, the research seeks to determine the efficacy of a home-based intervention involving rich reading and reminiscing (RRR), and stimulating sound sensitivity (SSS), on children’s literacy outcomes. In keeping with a general Māori worldview, as well as theoretical contentions put forward in this work, this research takes a holistic view, and also examines the role of whānau, and in particular, mothers, in children’s literacy acquisition.

Three key series of data are reported on in this thesis. The first sets, presented in Chapter Four, explored the influence of the home literacy environment, and whānau literacy practices, on children’s literacy acquisition, as well as the effects of the intervention on the literacy environment and practices. The results demonstrated that whānau have a significant influence on children’s foundational literacy skills, and that the intervention was effective in creating positive shifts in whānau literacy practices, and the home literacy environment in general. The second series of data, reported on in Chapter Five, was generated by the phonological awareness assessment tasks the children completed in both English and te reo Māori pre-, mid- , and post-intervention, as well as six months after the intervention ceased. A two standard deviation band method was utilised in order to statistically validate the data. The findings indicate that the intervention had a substantial effect on the phonological awareness skills of the children participating in this study, specifically on their ability to identify the first phoneme in English and te reo Māori words, and their skills in detecting the number of syllables in English and te reo Māori test items. The vast majority of the results for each child were significantly different to the average score established pre-intervention, according to the two standard deviation band method.

The final sets of data were presented in Chapter Six, and illustrate the findings of the Picture Naming Task, as well as the story comprehension task and story retell assessments, both of which involved two books – one in English, and one in te reo Māori. The results of the Picture Naming Task, which combined both English and te reo Māori test items, indicate that the strategy trialled in the intervention in order to determine its efficacy in growing children’s vocabulary knowledge, was successful in assisting children to learn new words. In addition to this, the story comprehension skills, particularly in English, of the majority of children improved as the intervention progressed. Some improvements were evident in the te reo Māori story comprehension results for most of the children, although the gains made on this task were not as substantial as those made in the English assessment. These findings are an indication of the dominance of the English language for each child participating in this research. Illustrating this dominance further are the results of the story retell task in te reo Māori, where the researcher was unable to obtain an oral language sample of the children telling the story in te reo Māori. However, they could answer the comprehension questions in English, which indicates they could understand the story, despite their inability to retell it in te reo Māori. The results from the English story retell assessment are mixed, and few solid conclusions were able to be drawn from these about the efficacy of the intervention in strengthening this particular skill. However, it is possible that running the intervention for a longer period of time would reveal the effect of the intervention in creating positive shifts in the children’s ability.

The findings from the various series of data reported in this thesis, interpreted through both statistical and sociocultural lenses, overwhelmingly indicate that the intervention trialled in this work had a substantial effect on the phonological awareness skills, and aspects of oral language proficiency, of the children participating in this study. Furthermore, the findings demonstrate that the intervention was successful in generating positive shifts in the home literacy environments and whānau literacy practices, both of which, it was revealed, have an impact on children’s foundational literacy skills. It was stated at the outset that literacy is a fundamental human right, critical to accessing other human rights, and a key contributor to self-determination. Therefore, the overarching contention put forward in this work is that the intervention strengthens the emerging literacy of preschool children exposed to English and te reo Māori, and in turn, fosters an ability to access human rights, and to exercise self-determination. Additionally, this study illustrates that aspects of Māori history, epistemology, and traditional pedagogical approaches and practices can be utilised in contemporary whānau settings to support the foundational literacy skills of preschool Māori children.