Classroom age composition and preschoolers’ language and literacy gains: The role of classroom engagement

• In Event: Examining proximal and distal factors that promote kindergarten readiness among preschool children in the United States

Abstract

Background
Given the vast evidence for preschool education in facilitating school readiness, national statistics show an increasing number of 3- and 4-year-olds in preschool compared with 20 years ago (38% and 61%; National Center for Education Statistics, 2018). Due in part to the blending of funds in preschool contexts, classrooms are more likely to be age-diverse than serving a single age (Ansari et al., 2016). Such variability in age composition practice partly stems from a lack of consensus in both the theoretical and empirical literature about how classroom age composition might be associated with individual learning, including children’s literacy and language development (Foster et al., 2020). Possible mechanisms that may connect age composition to children’s learning are children’s engagement in the classroom with teachers, peers, and tasks. Children’s classroom engagement is conditional on both the behaviors of their teachers and peers, and has the potential to modify how classroom experiences shape their further development. Therefore, this study aimed to examine whether: 1) classroom age composition is associated with 4-year-olds’ classroom engagement; and 2) classroom age composition is related to children’s gains in literacy and language as a result of their classroom engagement.

Method
Data were drawn from Phase 3 of the Teacher Professional Development Study conducted by the National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education. Participants were 895 ethnically diverse children (Mage=4.11, SD=0.50) across 223 classrooms. Classroom age composition was reported by teachers as the percentage of 2 or 3-year-olds, 4-year-olds, and 5-year-olds in their classrooms. During the school year, the Individualized Classroom Assessment Scoring System was used to observe children’s positive engagement with their teacher, peers, and tasks, and negative engagement with their teacher and peers (Downer et al., 2011). During the fall and following spring, children’s receptive vocabulary and expressive vocabulary were measured using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (Dunn & Dunn, 1997) and the Woodcock-Johnson Picture Vocabulary subtest (Woodcock et al., 2001). Two subtests of the Test of Preschool Early Literacy (Lonigan et al., 2007) assessed children’s phonological awareness and print knowledge. Covariate adjusted path models were estimated in Mplus with standard errors clustered at the classroom-level to address issues of nesting and full information maximum likelihood estimation applied to handle missing data.

Results
Compared with classrooms with more same-age peers, children in classrooms with more younger peers demonstrated less positive engagement with teachers whereas children in classrooms with more older peers had less negative engagement with their teacher and peers (see Table 1). In turn, positive engagement with teachers was positively related to children’s receptive vocabulary gains and negative engagement was negatively related to children’s print knowledge gains (see Table 2). Mediation analyses showed that children in classrooms with more younger peers made smaller receptive vocabulary gains through the indirect pathway of positive engagement with teachers (Bindirect =-0.02, p<0.05).

In sum, these results suggest that preschoolers’ interactions with their teacher and peers may be important mechanisms through which classroom age composition shapes language and literacy learning.

Authors

• Qingqing Yang, Ohio State University
  Presenting Author

• Caroline Bartholomew, Public Health
  Non-Presenting Author

• Arya Ansari, Ohio State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kelly M Purtell, Ohio State University
  Non-Presenting Author