Quantitative examinations of adult word counts and child vocalizations in preschool teacher-child conversations

• In Event: Classroom language environments in preschool and kindergarten: Variability across activities, time, and content

Abstract

The preschool language environment is important for children’s early language development and later academic achievement (Dickinson, 2011). Yet, opportunities for children to practice and learn language vary widely within and across classrooms (Duncan, et al., 2020; Justice et al., 2018). In preschool, class schedules include various activity settings including free play, small group, and large group. Because each activity offers different learning opportunities (Bowers & Vasilyeva, 2011), children often have different language exposure and practice across them. Nonetheless, relatively fewer empirical studies have described preschoolers’ language experiences across classroom activity settings.
This study explored how children’s language experiences, specifically adult words counts (AWC; the number of adult words heard) and child vocalization counts (CVC; the number of child words spoken) during teacher-child conversations differs across class activity settings. We further explored whether AWC and CVC differ based on who initiates the conversation (teacher or child) across activity settings. We chose to explore language experiences when a target child had conversations with teachers because empirical evidence suggests a significant contribution of back-and-forth conversations for language learning (Duncan, et al., 2020).
Participants were 32 3- to 5-year olds (M = 52 months) from six preschool classrooms across three centers. Teachers provided their daily schedules and were coded for 6 activities (See Figure 1). Approximately 40 hours of recordings were collected via the Language Environment Analysis (LENA) system for each child. We first selected LENA recording segments of teacher-child conversations where conversations were defined as when a focal child and an adult respond to one another within 5 seconds (Ford et al., 2008). We identified 10,862 teacher-child conversations in the data and then used LENA estimates of AWC and CVC within each conversation and compared them across different activity settings, and by the person who initiated the conversations. Figure 1 presents raw data of AWC and CVC per conversation and model-based estimates of mean and 95% confidence interval.
Zero truncated generalized Poisson general linear mixed models were used to estimate and compare the means of AWC and CVC for each activity setting and initiation type. Control variables included child age, child gender, parent education, and classroom ID. With these models (shown in Table 1), we found the following after post-hoc comparisons with a Tukey correction (1) children hear more AWC in teacher-initiated conversations during Small (M = 71.68) and Large Group (M =85.93) compared to other settings; (2) when child-initiated, children heard less AWC per conversation during Free Play (M = 19.79) and Outside Play (M = 20.63) than in other activities; (3) children vocalized more during child-initiated conversations (M = 3.4) than during teacher-initiated (M = 1.6) across activity settings except for Large Group and Mealtime; and (4) teachers talked more toward children when they initiate the conversation.
Our study provides an empirical description and analysis of children’s conversations across preschool classroom activities showing significant within-class variability. These findings may help to partially explain the mechanism by which different activities are related to different language outcomes (e.g., Bowers & Vasileyva, 2011).

Authors

• Craig K. Van Pay, University of Oklahoma
  Presenting Author

• Ji Young Choi, Iowa State University
  Non-Presenting Author