Poster #21 - A Post-Hoc Quasi-Experimental Design Analysis of the Effects of Early Language and Literacy Initiative

• In Event: Poster Session 05

Abstract

Abstract (497 words)
Purpose: In this study, we describe the results of a post-hoc quasi-experimental design study of a replicable high quality language and literacy preschool program, the Early Language and Literacy Initiative (ELLI) preschool program. The following research questions guided this study:
1. Do young children attending ELLI preschool programs demonstrate greater early literacy skills at the end of the school-year compared to students attending non-ELLI preschool programs?
2. If significant differences are found, what is the magnitude of effect?
Methods: The ELLI program was developed in 2012. One of ELLI’s major tenets is its focus on developing children’s language. Instruction is centered around big ideas and projects associated with those ideas and include the predetermined academic language and vocabulary to be taught. The predetermined language and vocabulary are explicitly taught and intentionally used in daily experiences during teacher-child and child-child social interactions.
During the 2018-2019 school year, 1,046 three- to five-year-old children from 18 school readiness (SR) preschool programs completed the Preschool Early Literacy Indicators (PELI) at the beginning and the end of the school year. Children (n = 82) at four SR preschool programs received ELLI intervention. One program was operated at the museum, while the other three operated in elementary schools. Children (n = 964) at all other 14 SR preschool programs received business-as-usual preschool programming. Table 1 provides the demographic characteristics of participants.
We used the propensity score (PS) method to reduce selection bias by balancing differences between treated and untreated individuals on observed covariates (Leite, 2016), as well as the estimation of the average treatment effect (ATE) with weighted regression.
Results: We estimated the effect of ELLI attendance on children’s end of year PELI Composite Score (PCS), Alphabet Knowledge (AK), Phonological Awareness (PA), Vocabulary/Oral Language, and Listening Comprehension, controlling for available covariates (See Table 2). We found a statistically significant treatment effect for ELLI attendance and a covariate adjusted effect size of g = 0.39 (95% CI: 0.17-0.62), which is educationally meaningful. The covariate adjusted effect size for the Alphabet Knowledge subtest was g = 0.22 (95% CI: -0.01-0.44); for the Comprehension subtest was g = 0.46 (95% CI: 0.23-0.68); for the Phonemic Awareness subtest was g = 0.42 (95% CI: 0.20-0.65); and for the Language Index was g = 0.36 (95% CI: 0.13-0.58).
Conclusion: The results of the current study provide evidence for ELLI’s effectiveness at impacting young children’s early literacy skills. However, although comparison children attended different programs than ELLI, little is known about the quality or content of instruction they received throughout the year. In addition, the complexity of ELLI’s curriculum requires a significant amount of teacher judgement, time to become proficient, and skills to be more individualized. Thus, intensive professional development is necessary. State-wide professional development models designed to scale-up early language and literacy instruction have realized only modest gains (Piasta et al., 2020). More research is needed to understand how to efficiently teach preschool teachers how to implement evidence-based early literacy programming to scale these practices.

Authors

• Jinxiu Serena Liu, University of Florida
  Presenting Author

• Nicholas A Gage, WestEd

• Margie Gillis, Literacy How