Introduction: research questions and the longitudinal design This paper describes a longitudinal study of early literacy development. 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?” A longitudinal study created the opportunity to develop achievement scales describing growth in literacy from the beginning of schooling.

Methodology: linked assessments and a scale of developing literacy achievement One thousand children from a randomly selected Australia-wide sample of 100 schools formed the cohort for the study. The students were aged between 4.6 and 6 years old at the time of the first assessment. A comprehensive review of assessment approaches, longitudinal studies, and studies of literacy development in the early years of school was undertaken at the commencement of the study (for example, Snow et al, 1998, Tymms. 1999). This review informed the design of the study. The literacy tasks in the series of five surveys which comprised the assessments in the first three years of the study were developed with a view to gathering a broad range of responses to critical aspects of literacy. The literacy tasks focused on critical aspects of literacy, including concepts of print, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, comprehension and writing. The literacy tasks were administered by teachers in a one-on-one interview situation. The tasks included many hands-on activities and authentic texts, for example, quality children’s picture storybooks. These student achievement data from five linked assessments was used to develop literacy measurement scales. These assessments were vertically equated to construct a long measurement scale to measure developing literacy achievement. Additionally, since the Rasch (Rasch, 1960) item difficulties and student performance estimates were defined on the same scale, it was possible to relate the performance levels along the literacy scale to the skill demands at those levels based on the assessment tasks. Descriptions of the skill demands along the literacy scale continuum were developed, making it possible to put the students’ progress and development in context.

Key findings and further research Analysis of the assessment data from the cohort of students in the LLANS project showed a wide distribution of literacy achievement at school entry and through the first three years of school. All students in the cohort made progress in literacy achievement over the first three years of school. A major outcome of the longitudinal study has been the recognition of the value of the linked set of early years literacy assessment tasks. They have provided a model for two system wide assessments of progress in the early years of schooling These linked assessment tasks and the scale have also been used in other research studies to identify students’ progress over time for the purposes of investigating the effectiveness of teaching approaches and interventions. In one study, an analysis of growth in performance on the assessment tasks from the beginning to the end of the school year was undertaken to provide an evidential link between student outcomes and teaching practices (Louden et al, 2005). The LLANS literacy assessment tasks and scale are now available for further research into literacy development.