Read-aloud practices are widely recognized as central to early childhood literacy; however, they are often conceptualized as print-centered instructional activities rather than socially and emotionally situated meaning-making processes. While prior research has examined interactive read-alouds and children’s responses to texts, little is known about how these processes unfold in post-disaster early childhood contexts. Addressing this gap, this study investigates how preschool children construct meaning during interactive read-aloud sessions in an earthquake-affected setting, drawing on reader-response theory (Rosenblatt) to foreground the transactional nature of reading. This qualitative exploratory study analyzes 11 classroom transcripts from read-aloud sessions and follow-up activities (e.g., discussions, dramatizations, and design-based tasks) conducted with 18 children aged 5–6 in an earthquake-affected region. Using interactional discourse analysis and an inductive, iterative coding process, the study examines (a) teacher prompts, (b) forms of children’s responses, and (c) emerging interaction patterns. Findings show that children’s meaning-making is predominantly experiential and emotionally grounded, with frequent shifts from story events to personal narratives related to fear, safety, and prior disaster experiences. These narrative expansions position read-alouds as spaces for processing lived realities rather than solely developing comprehension skills. Although teachers initiate open-ended questioning, limited sustained scaffolding constrains the development of collective meaning-making. In contrast, embodied and multimodal extensions (e.g., role-play and design tasks) support deeper engagement and expression. The study argues that, in post-disaster contexts, read-alouds function as dialogic and affective spaces where literacy, memory, and emotional processing intersect, calling for trauma-responsive and interactionally attuned pedagogies in early childhood education.

Authors:
Vahide Yigit-Gencten, Emirates College for Advanced Education, United Arab Emirates

About the Presenter(s)
Dr Vahide Yigit-Gencten is currently working as an assistant professor at Emirates College for Advanced Education in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

Connect on Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/vahide-yiğit-gençten-390a694a

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