Early Childhood Research Quarterly 26 (2011) 157–168 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Early Childhood Research Quarterly Contexts of reading instruction: Implications for literacy skills and kindergarteners’ behavioral engagement  Claire Cameron Ponitz * , Sara E. Rimm-Kaufman University of Virginia, United States article info Article history: Received 25 November 2009 Received in revised form 7 October 2010 Accepted 16 October 2010 Keywords: Behavioral engagement Child by literacy instruction interactions Classroom observations Emergent word-reading Kindergarten Phonological awareness abstract This observational study examined kindergarteners’ (n = 170) exposure to literacy instruction in their classrooms (n = 36), child-by-instruction interactions, and behavioral engagement in relation to literacy skills. Time spent in four instructional contexts was coded according to who managed children’s attention (teacher-managed, TM or child-managed, CM), and the content focus (basic skills such as teaching letters and their sounds, or meaning-focused such as discussing a book); children’s behavioral engagement and off-task behavior were also coded live five times over the year. Word-reading and phonological awareness skills were assessed in fall and spring. Hierarchical Linear Modeling results indicated that kindergarteners with lower initial skills gained more in word-reading, but not phonological awareness, when they were exposed to relatively more time in TM basic skills instruction. In contrast, more time in CM meaning- focused instruction did not interact with initial skills to predict either outcome. Engagement analyses indicated that students were more likely to be off-task in CM than in TM contexts. Children who spent more time off-task during TM contexts had lower spring scores on both outcomes. Discussion explores the implications of this work for both literacy learning and behavioral engagement in the transition year of kindergarten. © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Learning to read is the principal task of the elementary school years. Many children struggle with this task, and those who fall behind early face an uphill challenge as they proceed through school. Since No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was signed into law in 2002, school accountability policies have heavily targeted ele- mentary reading achievement. Some states responded to NCLB by requiring research-based literacy curricula and teacher practices, mandating minimum amounts of classroom time devoted to read- ing instruction, and providing targeted instruction for struggling readers early in their school experience. Perhaps as a consequence of these efforts, the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showed overall improvement in Grade 4 read- ing compared to 2005 results (Lee, Grigg, & Donahue, 2007). Yet, reading problems are far from resolved. NAEP gains from 2005 to 2007 occurred in only 18 states; in the other 32 states, no change  The Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education is gratefully acknowledged for its fellowship support to the first author through the University of Virginia (R305B060009). This work was also funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation-Developmental and Learning Sciences #0418469 to the second author. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the U.S. Department of Education or the National Science Foundation. * Corresponding author at: CASTL, University of Virginia, 2200 Old Ivy Road, Char- lottesville, VA 22903, United States. Tel.: +1 434 982 6965; fax: +1 434 243 0533. E-mail address: ccponitz@virginia.edu (C.C. Ponitz). occurred. Further, over 30% of fourth-graders still do not read at a basic level. Multiple explanations for the discrepancy between policy, instructional mandates, and literacy outcomes are possible. We apply ecological perspectives from research on early literacy acquisition (Connor, Son, Hindman, & Morrison, 2005; Morrison, Bachman, & Connor, 2005). Ecological theorists seek to understand how child and environmental factors separately, and through com- plex interactions, contribute to development (Cairns & Rodkin, 1998). To learn to read, children must master the oral and writ- ten language system that humans use to communicate (Bialystok, 1995). This system includes component skills that vary within children, including vocabulary, syntactic knowledge, phonologi- cal awareness, orthographic/alphabet knowledge, insight to the alphabetic principle, and automaticity with written code (Catts, Fey, Zhang, & Tomblin, 1999). A growing base of evidence sug- gests that most children require deliberate instruction to acquire the component skills involved in reading (Adams, 1994; Foorman, Francis, Fletcher, Schatschneider, & Mehta, 1998; Rayner, Foorman, Perfetti, Pesetsky, & Seidenberg, 2001). Furthermore, researchers have described, with increasing detail and specificity, the envi- ronmental (i.e., instructional) experiences associated with literacy competence (Connor, Piasta, et al., 2009; Morrison et al., 2005). The centrality of instruction in reading development turns our attention to the social system of homes, classrooms, and schools in 0885-2006/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ecresq.2010.10.002