Phonological awareness intervention for reading acquisition in different socioeconomic vulnerability contexts
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Abstract
Phonological awareness is a crucial precursor to early reading acquisition. This study assessed the effectiveness of a phonological awareness intervention in first-grade students from public schools in the metropolitan region of Panama. A quasi-experimental design was used with 318 students, divided into an experimental group (n=154) and a control group (n=164) from different socioeconomic backgrounds. The intervention consisted of a structured phonological awareness program with daily 20-minute multisensory playful activities over one school year. Pre- and post-measures of phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge were taken, along with post-intervention assessments of reading performance. The intervention had a significant effect on pseudoword reading accuracy and showed a differential impact by socioeconomic level, with greater benefits for students from vulnerable areas, though it did not eliminate the gap between contexts. No significant differences were found in reading speed or reading comprehension. These findings highlight the importance of phonological awareness stimulation in multidimensional poverty contexts and the need for widespread early education. They also suggest the necessity of complementing these interventions with strategies to strengthen rapid naming skills and ensure equitable access to reading materials.
Article Details
INTRODUCTION
Learning to read in the early years of primary school is fundamental to academic success, as evidenced by the high risk of failure and dropout among students with reading difficulties (). Reading problems can also affect students' socioemotional development, given the reported bidirectional relationship with behavioral difficulties (), making early intervention and support especially critical in the first school grades ().
Among the factors that predict reading development, phonological awareness is one of the most widely recognized as foundational (), particularly in the initial stages of reading acquisition (). Phonological awareness refers to explicit knowledge of the sound structure of speech () and directly impacts decoding accuracy (; ). Naming speed — defined as the rate at which a person recognizes and names familiar visual stimuli () — also plays an important role, particularly in decoding speed and reading automatization ().
Phonological awareness intervention has proven highly effective for reading development (). The literature indicates that reading programs yield the strongest results when delivered early, during the pre-reading stage (; ), and particularly when sustained for at least one year across approximately 70 sessions () — suggesting that program duration matters as much as content focus (). Programs integrating phonological awareness with naming speed training and broader cognitive reading processes have also shown effectiveness (), as have interventions targeting later-developing skills such as reading comprehension () and fluency ().
Ripoll Salceda and reported effect sizes ranging from d=.33 to d=.61 in phonological awareness training programs. Comparable effects have been found in non-Spanish-speaking populations, with effect sizes between .25 and .72 (); two-stage interventions have yielded effects between d=.47 and d=.72 (), while early interventions in at-risk populations have shown even larger effects, d=.77 to d=1.29 ().
In addition to psycholinguistic factors, socioeconomic context (SEC) shapes reading skill development by conditioning the quantity and quality of linguistic input children receive (; ), with downstream effects on phonological awareness () — particularly in Latin America (; ). Reading acquisition also depends on other SEC-conditioned factors, including shared reading practices (), access to reading materials at home (), and nutritional status, which directly affects learning (). Both family- and school-level SEC mediate the reading performance gap between public and private school students, a gap that is pronounced across Latin America ().
Panama's educational context is marked by deep socioeconomic inequality — among the most severe globally (). In response, the national government launched "Plan Colmena" in 2022, a poverty-reduction strategy prioritizing districts with the highest multidimensional and income poverty rates across five dimensions: education (absenteeism, low attainment), housing (precariousness, overcrowding, electricity access), environment (transportation, waste), employment (job precariousness, unemployment), and health (water access) (). A marked reading gap between public and private schools has been documented, spanning both reading performance across primary education () and the psycholinguistic precursors that shape future reading outcomes (; ). In the public system, one in five students at the midpoint of second grade has yet to establish grapheme-phoneme correspondence (; ; ), leading to prolonged dependence on phonological awareness strategies well beyond the point — fourth grade — at which this reliance is expected to have faded. This pattern is associated with delayed decoding automatization () and may contribute to the low reading comprehension scores Panama records on international assessments (; ). The problem is compounded by limited early childhood education coverage: 50% of 4-year-olds from the most vulnerable sectors lack access to preschool (), making it difficult to deliver phonological awareness programs before formal literacy instruction begins — precisely when such training is most effective (), typically at 1st grade entry.
SEC is also a relevant factor in reading intervention design, as it moderates intervention outcomes (; ). PISA data indicate that the SEC gap is reflected in academic performance, and while overall effect sizes in reading interventions are small (.09), they are significant and variable across studies (). SEC influences reading through mechanisms such as restricted access to reading materials and lower linguistic richness in the home environment (). Reading interventions have nonetheless shown effectiveness in disadvantaged SEC contexts (; ), and early childhood education serves as a key protective factor against socioeconomic inequality (). Importantly, reading interventions have also been shown to reduce the influence of SEC on reading outcomes ().
In light of phonological awareness's well-established role in reading acquisition (), the inequality between Panama's public and private educational systems, and the limited access to early childhood education among the most vulnerable populations, the present study pursued three objectives: (1) to describe the effect of socioeconomic vulnerability on reading outcomes; (2) to evaluate the effectiveness of a phonological awareness intervention on reading in first-grade students; and (3) to assess whether intervention effectiveness differed between higher- and lower-vulnerability groups.
METHOD
Design
A quasi-experimental design was used with random assignment of groups to the intervention/control condition.
Participants
Eight public schools were intentionally selected from the metropolitan region of Panama, 5 of which were located in districts recognized as particularly vulnerable due to their high multidimensional poverty index, according to the map developed by the Government of Panama for Plan Colmena (). In each school, one 1st-grade experimental classroom and one control classroom were randomly selected. The study initially included 329 students (mean age: 6.4 years). Thirty-eight students with a diagnosed condition, or one in the process of diagnosis, likely to affect literacy development were excluded from the final analysis, as a higher proportion of cases was found in one of the two groups ( (1, 374) = 6.940, p<.001). Additionally, 16 students left their schools between the pre-intervention and post-intervention assessments and were thus excluded from the analysis (leaving n=275 for the pre/post comparison on reading precursor variables), while another 43 enrolled shortly after the pre-assessment and were therefore not included in pre-post comparisons but were included in the final reading performance measure (n=318, of whom 154 were in the experimental group, 48.1% girls).
Procedure
After obtaining approval from the Research Ethics Committee of Universidad Santa María la Antigua de Panamá (code PT-007.2), the intervention program described in the “Instruments and materials” section was designed. After obtaining teachers' consent to participate in the project, a 25-hour training on the program's application and concepts related to phonological awareness was conducted with teachers in the experimental group. Once informed consent from participants' families and assent from participants were collected, individualized pre-intervention assessment of phonological awareness and alphabetic knowledge was conducted in both experimental and control classrooms (March 2024). Between April and October 2024, the program was implemented in classrooms by teachers at a rate of 20 minutes per day, with regular remote monitoring and periodic modeling visits by the research team and observation with feedback. Teachers also received a new 25-hour refresher training in June 2024. No influence was exerted on the methodology each teacher used to guide their students' reading learning. In November 2024, the post-intervention assessment was conducted (phonological awareness; alphabetic knowledge; reading accuracy and speed for syllables, words, pseudowords, and texts; and reading comprehension).
Instruments and materials
A phonological awareness intervention program was designed with an initial section emphasizing syllabic awareness and a subsequent block for phonemic awareness development, which began with an activity for each phoneme in Spanish to develop its categorization. The program consisted of a group play-based activity of up to 20 minutes conducted by the classroom teacher (68 activities in total, some of which were repeated). The program included activities of categorization, detection, and evocation of syllables and phonemes, plus a small final block on deletion, addition, and substitution. It drew on the use of articulemes (), kinestheme associations (; ), with simultaneous introduction of grapheme-phoneme correspondences (), and the use of visual and tactile cues related to phoneme manner and voicing, as well as a musical video created by the researchers.
Each classroom session, always integrated within the Language Arts subject time, followed this structure: explanation of the activity content by the teacher; modeling by the teacher; individual, pair, or group execution, depending on the dynamics proposed in each task.
The instrument used to measure phonological awareness was the phonological awareness subtest of the PROLEXIA battery (), with 6 tasks (Identify the different; No. of syllables; Pseudoword repetition; Syllable omission; Phoneme substitution; Syllable inversion) with ordinal alpha coefficients of .76, .94, .92, .94, .88, and .90 respectively. We used the PROLEC-R battery () to measure mastery of the alphabetic principle and reading ability, which has a Cronbach's alpha of .79, specifically using the subtests: Letter name or sound; Word reading; Pseudoword reading; and Text comprehension (the latter to quantify reading accuracy and speed in the first two texts: “Carlos” and “Cumpleaños de Marisa”). Additionally, student attendance records were collected to calculate the number of school days for each student.
In the pre-intervention data collection, the 6 phonological awareness subtests of the PROLEXIA battery () were used, followed by the “Letter name or sound” subtest of the PROLEC-R battery (), in this order. In the post-intervention data collection, the following were administered in this order: the same subtests as in the pre-assessment, followed by the Word reading, Pseudoword reading, and Text comprehension (first two texts) subtests of the PROLEC-R battery ().
Statistical analyses
We used repeated-measures ANOVAs to compare group changes in variables with pre and post measures. To compare groups on variables measured only post-intervention, or to identify pre-intervention differences between vulnerability groups, we applied Kruskal-Wallis one-way ANOVA and Mann-Whitney U tests to strengthen the analysis given the lack of distributional normality. To determine effect size, we used the standardized biserial correlation r (). We interpreted effect sizes following Cohen's guidelines (), considering small effects for r values between 0.1 and 0.3, medium for values between .3 and .5, and large for values above .5. All analyses were conducted using SPSS (v. 27) and JASP (v. 0.18.3).
RESULTS
Characterization of participants by vulnerability level
To verify that the assignment of schools to high-vulnerability areas produces real effects on students' socioeconomic conditions, we compared results across various socioeconomic variables (Table 1). The results confirm differences between students from vulnerable schools and the rest of the participants, specifically in father's educational level (p<.001; r=.31), family income (p<.05; r=.17), and number of children's books purchased per year at home (p<.05; r=.19).
| Variable | Students from non-vulnerable schools (n=102) |
Students from vulnerable schools (n=216) |
r | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| x̅ | σ | x̅ | σ | ||
| Father's educational level | 3.70*** | 1.11 | 3.10 | 1.08 | .31 |
| Mother's educational level | 3.74 | 1.16 | 3.47 | 1.05 | |
| Family income | 2.75* | 1.11 | 2.42 | 1.21 | .17 |
| Books purchased per year | 3.08* | 1.18 | 2.69 | 1.17 | .19 |
Objective 1. Differences in reading performance by vulnerability group
As shown in Table 2, students from schools in vulnerable areas begin the school year with lower overall phonological awareness performance (p<.05, r=.16), and this gap widens over the course of the year (p<.001, r=.22). They also end the school year with a small-effect-size disadvantage in letter recognition accuracy (p<.001, r=.23) and a medium-effect-size disadvantage in letter recognition speed (p<.001, r=.39), despite no significant initial differences between groups.
| Variable | PRE | POST | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Non-Vulnerable (n=100) |
Vulnerable (n=193) |
r | Non-Vulnerable (n=102) |
Vulnerable (n=216) |
r | |||||
| x̅ | σ | x̅ | σ | x̅ | σ | x̅ | σ | |||
| Identify the different | 1.15 | 1.40 | 1.23 | 1.54 | - | 2.34 | 2.32 | 2.05 | 2.12 | - |
| No. of syllables | 5.56* | 3.88 | 4.56 | 3.71 | .17 | 8.18 | 1.98 | 7.50 | 2.89 | - |
| Pseudoword repetition | 8.98 | 1.36 | 8.57 | 1.73 | - | 8.83 | 1.28 | 8.51 | 1.97 | - |
| Syllable omission | 1.43 | 2.76 | 1.29 | 2.70 | - | 5.70 | 3.46 | 4.88 | 3.75 | - |
| Phoneme substitution | 0.66 | 2.03 | 0.17 | 0.77 | - | 3.11** | 3.30 | 2.08 | 3.03 | .19 |
| Syllable inversion | 0.55 | 1.64 | 0.43 | 1.74 | - | 4.88** | 3.33 | 3.77 | 3.36 | .19 |
| P.A. Total | 18.33* | 8.49 | 16.23 | 7.55 | .16 | 33.04*** | 09.35 | 28.79 | 11.36 | .22 |
| Letters accuracy (n=275) | 17.40 | 28.79 | 14.38 | 26.54 | - | 80.44*** | 18.68 | 69.49 | 27.29 | .23 |
| Letters speed (n=275) | 9.80 | 17.28 | 6.85 | 13.12 | - | 35.20*** | 18.79 | 24.08 | 15.62 | .39 |
Comparing the reading performance of participants from vulnerable-area schools against the remaining participants (Table 3), we found statistically significant differences across all variables studied — both accuracy and speed — as well as in reading comprehension (effect sizes ranging from small to medium). Comparisons between the non-vulnerable group that received no intervention and the control and experimental groups from vulnerable-area schools (comparisons 1-3 and 1-4 in Table 7) show that the intervention attenuated, but did not eliminate, the effect of socioeconomic vulnerability on reading accuracy variables.
| Variable | Non-vulnerable (n=102) | Vulnerable (n=216) | r | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| x̅ | σ | x̅ | σ | |||
| Letters accuracy | 80.44*** | 18.68 | 69.49 | 27.29 | .23 | |
| Letters speed | 35.20*** | 18.79 | 24.08 | 15.62 | .40 | |
| Words accuracy | 68.92*** | 31.69 | 48.07 | 39.14 | .30 | |
| Words speed | 16.75*** | 14.39 | 9.54 | 10.41 | .39 | |
| Pseudoword accuracy | 64.07*** | 33.37 | 45.80 | 38.91 | .26 | |
| Pseudoword speed | 14.38*** | 9.11 | 8.83 | 8.66 | .35 | |
| Text reading accuracy | 75.32*** | 37.08 | 52.60 | 45.55 | .26 | |
| Text reading speed | 28.77*** | 26.56 | 17.83 | 23.95 | .31 | |
| Reading comprehension | 44.00*** | 34.32 | 25.17 | 31.19 | .31 | |
Objective 2. Effectiveness of the phonological awareness intervention for reading learning
As can be seen in Table 4, the repeated-measures ANOVA with Holm correction using intervention groups as the grouping variable showed differences in favor of the experimental group only in the “No. of syllables” task (F(1.273)=6.804; p<.05), with a partial eta-squared effect of .024. It produced no effects on mastery of the alphabetic principle (accuracy and speed in letter recognition).
Table 5 shows a trend for the experimental group to outperform the control group in accuracy variables across all item types (words, pseudowords, texts), although only the difference in pseudoword reading accuracy was statistically significant (p<.05; r=.11).
Objective 3. Differential effectiveness of the intervention by vulnerability group
Despite improvements in alphabetic knowledge accuracy in the experimental groups under both vulnerability conditions, the intervention produced no significant effects in the group of students from non-vulnerable-area schools (Table 6). However, it did produce a significant effect in schools located in vulnerable areas (F(1.180)=4.762; p<.05; p=.026).
Regarding reading, no performance differences were observed between the control and experimental groups in schools located in non-vulnerable areas (Table 7, comparison 1-2), despite a slight apparent trend toward better accuracy and speed in word, pseudoword, and text reading in the experimental group. However, among participants from schools in socioeconomically vulnerable areas (Table 7, comparison 3-4), significant differences in favor of the experimental group appear in reading accuracy for words and pseudowords (p<.05, small effect size).
| Variable | 1.Control no vulnerable (n=54) |
2.Experimental no vulnerable (n=48) |
r (1-2) |
3.Control vulnerable (n=110) |
4.Experimental vulnerable (n=106) |
r (3-4) |
r (1-3) |
r (1-4) |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| x̅ | σ | x̅ | σ | x̅ | σ | x̅ | σ | |||||
| PP | 68.33 | 31.10 | 69.58 | 32.65 | - | 43.57 | 40.56 | 52.74 | 37.22 | .13* | .34*** | .23* |
| PV | 17.75 | 15.44 | 15.61 | 13.17 | - | 9.54 | 11.51 | 9.54 | 9.18 | - | .41*** | .42*** |
| SP | 63.61 | 32.60 | 64.58 | 34.55 | - | 41.34 | 39.40 | 50.43 | 38.02 | .15* | .33*** | - |
| SV | 14.71 | 9.46 | 14.00 | 8.78 | - | 8.81 | 9.55 | 8.85 | 7.67 | - | .35*** | .37*** |
| TP | 74.01 | 38.60 | 76.80 | 35.64 | - | 47.64 | 46.57 | 57.76 | 44.09 | - | .28** | .23* |
| TV | 29.57 | 28.43 | 27.86 | 24.56 | - | 18.84 | 28.50 | 16.77 | 18.14 | - | .30** | .31** |
| CL | 45.37 | 35.71 | 42.45 | 33.00 | - | 24.32 | 31.08 | 26.06 | 31.44 | - | .33*** | .31*** |
Additional findings
Teachers were asked to share their students' school attendance records. Comparing the number of school days attended throughout the year by vulnerability group, a medium-effect-size difference was found in favor of students from non-vulnerable-area schools in the Mann-Whitney U test (x̅ = 135.03; σ = 25.35, versus x̅ = 125.73; σ = 14.90, p < .001; r = .32).
DISCUSSION
The present study aimed to describe the effect of vulnerability on reading learning; to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention on reading learning in first-grade students; and to measure the effectiveness of the intervention independently in a higher-vulnerability group and a lower-vulnerability group. Regarding the effect of vulnerability on learning, the study reveals the existence of marked differences in reading performance that constitute a second reading gap between schools by socioeconomic level within the public system itself, adding to the already existing gap in the country between public and private education (; ).
Regarding intervention effectiveness, the results show that the intervention improved reading accuracy. When examining its effectiveness separately by vulnerability group, the effect was significant only in schools located in areas classified as vulnerable due to their high levels of multidimensional poverty — and even there, the effect size was small. The program improved reading accuracy variables in the most socioeconomically vulnerable schools, but did not close the identified gap. Its clearest effects were on pseudoword reading accuracy, which is consistent with psycholinguistic evidence and with findings from similar studies (): pseudoword reading relies exclusively on the phonological (sublexical) route (according to the dual-route model; ), as readers cannot draw on stored orthographic representations for nonexistent words and must instead apply grapheme-phoneme decoding strategies — the very skills that phonemic awareness supports. This is precisely the component of phonological awareness on which the program had its greatest impact. The results reveal a limited scope of the program regarding the types of phonological awareness tasks that showed significantly greater improvement in the experimental group between pre and post-intervention measures. This phenomenon may be partly due to the fact that the program was not designed to specifically include tasks of the same type as those in the assessment used to measure participants' phonological awareness ability; however, it opens the door to considering aspects for improvement in the program's implementation in the specific context in which it was developed.
Expressed as Hedges' g, the effect size of the intervention on pseudoword reading accuracy (.11 to .30) is consistent with what a meta-analysis of Spanish-language studies reports for programs combining PA work with other precursors (g=.36; ). This modest effect likely reflects multiple contributing factors: insufficient stimulation volume, poor integration of the program with teachers' reading instruction methods (which varied widely, from phonetic-phonological to whole-language approaches), and challenges in providing adequate implementation support. Beyond SEC-related variables — presumed to be particularly influential in Latin America () — a range of school-, teacher-, and student-level factors must also be considered, including school infrastructure and climate, and the documented lower attendance rates among students from vulnerable areas.
Limitations
The Panamanian educational context introduced additional constraints that may have affected the intervention's effectiveness, including frequent class cancellations, absenteeism, school dropout, and challenges with basic services such as water and electricity — all of which reduce effective instructional time and complicate school management and enrollment.
A second limitation concerns teacher adherence to the program. Although support was provided throughout the intervention, neither adherence nor implementation fidelity was systematically monitored. This may have influenced outcomes, given that program effectiveness depends on consistent implementation. Future research should incorporate specific adherence measures — such as implementation logs, structured observations, or teacher reports — and explore strategies to strengthen fidelity, including more robust initial training, structured reminders, and more detailed instructional materials adapted to teachers' feedback.
Despite these limitations, the intervention improved reading accuracy in students from the most socioeconomically vulnerable schools.
Recommendations
Programs like this one can help address structural reading crises in Central American and Caribbean education systems. Its implementation through teachers offers several advantages: it relies on easily reproducible materials and follows a structured sequence of defined activities, making teacher training readily systematizable through virtual formats and instructional videos. Its play-based design has been well received by students, as both teachers and project researchers observed.
To strengthen its impact, future iterations should consider increasing daily stimulation time, aligning the program more explicitly with classroom reading instruction methods, and providing more sustained teacher support throughout implementation. More broadly, the findings support the direct pairing of phonemic awareness work with grapheme-phoneme correspondence instruction, as recommended in systematic reviews of reading difficulties interventions (; ), and the use of multisensory exercises organized in a systematic progression as an effective classroom strategy.
Consistent with the broader evidence base, the program impacted reading accuracy (; ) but not speed, which depends on other psycholinguistic precursors — notably naming speed — whose targeted training has shown effectiveness in this domain (). This distinction is particularly relevant in transparent orthographies such as Spanish, where grapheme-phoneme correspondences are highly regular (). Future programs with broader scope should incorporate naming speed stimulation to produce more comprehensive gains in reading fluency (accuracy, speed, and prosody), break the persistent reliance on phonological awareness into the later primary grades (), and accelerate decoding automatization to support functional reading comprehension and improve performance on international assessments.
Given that phonological awareness training is most effective when delivered in the years preceding formal reading instruction (; ), expanding early childhood education coverage in Panama — particularly for the most vulnerable populations — is essential. This expansion should incorporate targeted content to stimulate key reading precursors. Efforts to bridge the persistent gap between research evidence and classroom practice in Spanish-speaking contexts are equally warranted ().
The additional finding of significantly fewer school attendance days in vulnerable contexts deserves attention, as reduced instructional time may be a contributing factor to poorer reading outcomes in these schools. Research into the causes of this disparity is needed to inform interventions that can equalize total educational exposure.
The findings also have implications for teacher training in literacy. Despite its centrality to primary education, early literacy instruction often remains misaligned with the scientific evidence on reading acquisition (). Integrating structured, evidence-based methodologies — such as the one evaluated here — into both pre-service and in-service teacher education would support more effective and systemic reading instruction, benefiting children's literacy development and building teachers' capacity to implement proven classroom strategies.
Finally, while the program produced positive results in vulnerable schools, these students continue to lag behind their peers in non-vulnerable settings. Closing this gap requires more than a phonological awareness program: it calls for context-specific strategies that address learning comprehensively, including stronger pedagogical monitoring, greater reading exposure, family engagement, and access to additional learning materials. Providing specialized training and ongoing implementation support for teachers in vulnerable schools will be key to achieving a more equitable impact on reading development.
NOTE
The author Daniel Cubilla-Bonnetier is affiliated with Universidad Iberoamericana (UNIBE), Dominican Republic; the Faculty of Education and Teacher Training Centre at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain; and is an affiliated researcher at the Centro de Investigación Educativa de Panamá (CIEDU-AIP), Panama.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
Daniel Cubilla-Bonnetier: Project administration; Formal analysis; Conceptualization; Data curation; Writing – original draft; Writing – review & editing; Investigation; Methodology; Resources; Software; Supervision; Validation; Visualization; Funding acquisition.
Delfina D'Alfonso: Project administration; Formal analysis; Conceptualization; Data curation; Writing – original draft; Writing – review & editing; Investigation; Methodology; Resources; Validation; Visualization; Funding acquisition.
Nadia De-León-Sautú: Formal analysis; Data curation; Writing – original draft; Writing – review & editing; Investigation; Resources; Supervision; Validation.
Raquel García-Gómez: Formal analysis; Writing – review & editing; Validation.
Laura Sánchez-Vincitore: Formal analysis; Writing – review & editing; Methodology; Supervision; Validation; Funding acquisition.
FUNDING
This study was funded through a competitive grant from the Centro de Investigación Educativa (CIEDU-AIP) of Panama.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To the National Secretariat of Science, Technology and Innovation of Panama and the Ministry of Education of Panama, for their support of the project; to the teachers who carried out the program implementation; and to the evaluators who participated in the pre and post data collection.
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