Habia una vez: Teacher beliefs about the purpose of story time that influence their decisions during story time in bilingual early childhood special education classrooms

Story time is frequently used to promote literacy development in young children, including preschoolers with disabilities; however, the quality of story time may be influenced by the instructional decisions teachers make. These decisions are based on a number of factors including their training, teaching experience, knowledge of the subject matter, information about students' needs, and classroom structure. Understanding the relationship between these factors, teachers' beliefs, and their practice is particularly important in preschool because this is a critical period for early literacy development as students are still in the process of forming their beliefs and attitudes about print and its function.; This exploratory and descriptive study utilized an ethnographic approach to research to describe the use and function of story time in bilingual early childhood special education (ECSE) classrooms. Purposeful sampling was used to identify three teachers from a pool of 14 teachers in an urban school district in central Texas. Teachers were selected on the basis of their proficiency in Spanish and years of experience, the language of instruction, the setting, and the range and severity of the students' disabilities. Interviews were conducted to elicit teacher beliefs about how preschool children acquire literacy, to define the function and use of story time, and to describe the teachers' role. Observations were used to document teacher behavior and language use during story time.; Findings indicate that story time was the primary teaching time in all three classrooms. Story time and extension activities were used for literacy development, language development, and concept development. Even though teachers' awareness of the importance of integrating language, culture and disability, their students' disability influenced teacher decision making and practices the most. Practices reflected teachers' beliefs about how preschool children with disabilities develop literacy therefore, what occurred during story time was very different in each classroom. Based on the differences exhibited by each teacher and the differential effect these differences have on what the students learn about books and print, there is a need to identify specific literacy practices that support the literacy acquisition of exceptional preschool children from cultural and linguistically diverse backgrounds.