A Longitudinal Investigation of Literacy Achievement and Development in the First Three Years of School

This paper describes a longitudinal study of literacy development in the early years of schooling. Monitoring the development of children’s literacy learning in the early years of school poses challenges for educational researchers, including the need for appropriate strategies for identifying the full range of literacy knowledge and skills demonstrated by young learners. The seven-year national ACER Longitudinal Literacy and Numeracy Study (LLANS) followed the growth in literacy of a single cohort of students across the years of primary school (Meiers, Khoo et al, 2006). A key research question in this study was: “What is the nature of literacy development amongst Australian school children?” The study created an opportunity to develop achievement scales describing growth in literacy and numeracy from the very first year of schooling