Navigating Teachers’ Experience in Teaching Kindergarten: Recognizing Sounding out Letters to form Words

Phonics and phonological awareness refer to a couple of the early reading skills that are very necessary for the progress of kindergarten learners and form the basis of academic success. The study, which was a totally descriptive qualitative research and has origins in the phenomenological approach, focused on participants’ real-life experiences. This included the deliberate selection of 20 kindergarten teachers, with a preference for those having 7 years of experience, to reach data saturation. The data collection method was through interviewing, and a semi-structured interview protocol was used. The interview data qualitative analysis was performed using thematic analysis. Before and during the study, the researcher adhered to all ethical protocols. The problems that the kindergarten teachers have to face are mostly related to the learners who sometimes slow down the process of learning phonemic awareness and sound discrimination due to their limited vocabulary and language delays. Moreover, instructional issues arise when a teacher is faced with a lack of time and materials, along with limited engagement and differentiation opportunities. On top of that, there are environmental and contextual issues such as interruptions at school and the lack of literacy support at home caused by socioeconomic problems. Very important are the teacher, related problems such as insufficient training in phonics teaching, and the struggle of handling the different needs of the learners.