Transforming Literacy Practices in Early Childhood Education: A Systematic Review of Emergent Literacy, Multimodal Meaning-Making, Play, and Child Agency

Abstract

Literacy practices in early childhood education (ECE) have expanded from approaches primarily emphasizing readiness for conventional reading and writing toward broader views of literacy as meaning-making and communication through language, text, images, symbols, movement, objects, play, and technology. Nevertheless, early childhood literacy research remains fragmented between emergent literacy perspectives focusing on oral-language and code-related skills and sociocultural/multimodal perspectives emphasizing meaning-making, identity, participation, and child agency. This review maps how literacy is conceptualized in ECE research, identifies literacy domains and learning experiences, examines adult mediation and spaces for child agency, and develops integrative principles for developmentally appropriate literacy practice. The study is designed as a systematic literature review reported with reference to PRISMA 2020. The preliminary search covers empirical articles published in Indonesian and English from 2020 to 28 August 2026 through Google Scholar, ERIC, Garuda, and DOI/publisher cross-searching. The preliminary synthesis matrix includes 23 empirical reports from international and Indonesian ECE contexts, representing shared/dialogic reading, storytelling, sociodramatic play, emergent writing, environmental and playful literacy, digital storytelling, multimodal assessment, and e-picture books. Five overlapping domains emerged: oral-narrative literacy, print/code and emergent writing, play-embedded literacy, multimodal/embodied literacy, and digital/new literacies. The synthesis suggests that meaning-making and foundational literacy skills should not be treated as competing agendas. Strong literacy practices connect conversation and narrative with attention to print and symbols, enable drawing and emergent writing, embed literacy in play and everyday activity, and use digital resources selectively with pedagogical purpose. Child agency expands when children move beyond answering adult questions to choosing, creating, negotiating, and transforming representations. The review proposes the MELPA-ECE Framework (Multimodal Emergent Literacy through Play and Agency), linking literacy domains, representational modes, experience contexts, adult mediation, child agency, and developmental outcomes