Elementary educators’ perspectives of an integrated literacy and music programme concerning phonological awareness as well as evaluating the programme during and after a six-month implementation

This study aimed to explore a sample of elementary educators’ perspectives of an integrated literacy and music programme by initially determining their knowledge and needs concerning phonological awareness and evaluating the programme during and after a six-month implementation. A mixed retrospective-prospective short-term longitudinal design was employed with four South African first-grade educators from two private schools serving multilingual learners in resource-constrained contexts. Data from initial surveys assessing knowledge and needs, weekly e-survey polls conducted during implementation, and semi-structured interviews after implementation were analysed. Surveys revealed gaps in participants’ phonological awareness knowledge and misalignment between their perceived confidence and competence. E-survey polls showed educators’ inconsistent accuracy in identifying targeted phonological awareness skills.
Participants valued the programme’s supports, particularly infographics, to enhance their phonological awareness knowledge. Interviews demonstrated that educators felt the integrated Literacy and Music Programme had the potential to improve teaching practices and learners’ early literacy abilities. Educators demonstrated limited phonological awareness knowledge and often referred to phonics abilities, reflecting foundational gaps and conceptual confusion. This aligns with South African and global evidence that educator preparation underemphasises phonological awareness and provides insufficient training for explicit phonological awareness instruction. Educators viewed the integrated Literacy and Music Programme supports as helpful. Weekly e-survey polls and infographics helped clarify phonological awareness concepts, and educators identified gaps in their knowledge. Offering various supports aligns with evidence that multimodal, skill-specific scaffolds enhance comprehension, retention, and instructional clarity. These findings further support previous research indicating that integrated literacy-music approaches can effectively scaffold phonological awareness and vocabulary development, enhance educator responsiveness, and foster meaningful learner engagement. Their efficacy is maximised when grounded in practical, contextually relevant resources shaped by educators’ expertise. Future research should examine the impact of these approaches on learners directly to compare learner outcomes with educators’ reported experiences. Findings suggest educator-informed, integrated literacy and music instruction may strengthen early literacy teaching in multilingual, resource-constrained contexts.
This dataset contains the figures and tables included in the dissertation and the anonymised raw as well as the coded data of the initial surveys and e-survey polls as well as the raw interview data (transcripts) of foundation phase educators to determine participants' knowledge and perspectives of an integrated literacy and music programme for phonological awareness development. The initial survey data responses were collected as part of data from an integrated Literacy and Music Programme (LaMP) development project. Data responses of the e-survey polls were collected using an online survey hosted on the University of Pretoria's Qualtrics database. The anonymised transcripts were collected through individual in-person semi-structured interviews. The information-sharing infographics are also included in this dataset, which served as a training component of the programme, supported participants' understanding of phonological awareness concepts, and enabled the author to track and compare potential changes in participants' phonological awareness knowledge.