Disaggregating Emotional and Climate Factors: Multilevel Analysis of Early Childhood Programs and Vocabulary Acquisition

• In Event: Roundtable Session 9
  In Roundtable Session: Early Literacy Learning and Instruction

Abstract

Vocabulary acquisition in pre-kindergarten has a strong relationship with subsequent academic outcomes. Prior research has identified Instructional Climate and Emotional Climate factors, composed of 4-5 individual components, as among classroom characteristics that influence vocabulary growth. We conduct HLM on data with 1,870 students in 580 classrooms to assess which individual components of those factors have the strongest relationship with student growth. We find that, while productivity and concept development matter more than other instructional components, the full Instructional Climate factor is the best operationalization of instruction. In contrast, positive climate contains most of the explanatory value of the Climate factor overall. Both findings have implications for teacher professional development and classroom improvement.

Author

• Daniel Thomas Fitzpatrick, Michigan State University