Ice Is Water? Ice Is a Form of Water? Unpacking Conceptual Work in Read-Alouds

• In Event: Access to Rigorous Literacy Instruction in Early Childhood Education: Unpacking Instructional Moves

Abstract

Research in early childhood education (ECE) notes the importance of vocabulary instruction for young children (Biemiller, 2015). In examining components of vocabulary instruction Bowne, Yoshikawa, and Snow (2017) found that the amount of conceptual information provided to children impacted their vocabulary growth. However, little research examines the types of conceptual work that supports student learning. This paper examines the specific types of conceptual work occurring inside integrated science and literacy lessons across pre-k, kindergarten, and first grade classrooms. Integrated science and literacy read alouds were audio-recorded three times, capturing 105 lessons. Data was collected across 12 schools and 39 classrooms. This study addresses the following questions.
• When teachers engage in shared text reading around scientific big ideas with children in their classrooms what levels and types of conceptual work are they engaging children in?
• What is the relationship between teachers’ level of conceptual talk with children during shared text reading around scientific big ideas and children’s achievement?
To investigate these questions, we used a mixed-methods approach. We drew on data sources collected during the 2016-2017 academic year: children’s pre-assessments, children’s post-assessments, and classroom audio lessons. Qualitative analysis included inductive and deductive coding using codes created and honed iteratively. Once the final codebook was established classroom transcripts were coded in Dedoose, 20% of transcripts were double coded for an inter-rater reliability of 95.2%.
Findings indicate that the majority of conceptual work teachers engage children in occurs at the low-level.
• Of 13,583 moments where conceptual work was done during lessons, 79.31% of the time (10,773 instances), low-level conceptual work was occurring. The most common type of conceptual work in general was low-level, when children were asked to produce a response or a teacher produced information.
• Mid-level conceptual work occurred 16.31% of the time during the integrated lessons. The most common type of mid-level conceptual work was reproduction of response by students.
• High-level conceptual work only occurred 4.38% of the instructional time during integrated lessons. Generalizing was the most common type of high-level conceptual work we saw teachers engage in.
• There were not any significant differences in student achievement across classrooms. This finding aligns with the high use of low-level strategies across classrooms.
Findings from this study have implications on our work in early childhood education. As indicated by these findings the conceptual work occurring in classrooms needs to be improved. It would be advantageous for professional developers and teacher educators to support teachers in understanding different types of conceptual moves and how to use them to increase rigor in lessons and potentially, access to science big ideas. More research is needed to see if these findings are similar across contents in early childhood education.

Authors

• Susan B. Neuman, New York University

• Katie Danielson, New York University