Bilingual Preschoolers’ Performance on the Spanish and English Individual Growth and Development Indicators

• In Event: 2-185 - Measuring School Readiness Skills of Dual Language Learners: Development and Validation of Assessment Tools

Integrative Statement

Spanish-speaking children are a rapidly growing population in the US, however they experience ongoing inequity in long term reading outcomes (Garcia & Jensen, 2009). Understanding Spanish-English dual language learner’s (SE-DLLs) performance in Spanish and English is an important contributor to tailoring instruction to meet their individual needs and providing effective early intervention. Evidence indicates bilingual students have reduced rates of growth in both English and Spanish when considered separately, and it is not until both languages are considered together that DLLs vocabulary can be compared to that of monolinguals (Hammer et al., 2011). However, few studies of expected early language and literacy performance are available in the research literature. This study focuses on two research questions: What are the expected rates of growth for SE-DLLs on Spanish measures of early language and literacy? And what are the expected rates of growth for SE-DLLs on English measures of early language and literacy?
This study used the English and Spanish Individual Growth and Development Indicators (IGDIs-E and IGDIs 2.0; Wackerle-Hollman, Durán, & Rodriguez, 2015) to assess early literacy skills across three domains of early language and literacy: oral language, alphabet knowledge and phonological awareness. Data from over 400 pre-kindergarten SE-DLLs (4-5 years old) will be used to produce hierarchical linear models during the 2017-2019 academic year, including 9 time points. The performance of children with varying levels of Spanish proficiency and with differences in their home and classroom exposure to Spanish will also be compared. The need to monitor the progress of children in Spanish will be discussed as well as approaches to interpreting the results of the IGDIs-E and IGDIS 2.0 in the context of guiding instructional decision-making in Spanish.
The results of this study will provide a new contribution to the research literature by modeling growth over the course of one academic year in three domains of early language and literacy and providing growth metrics in Spanish and English to comprehensively examine how each language grows as a function of pre-kindergarten instruction and with different levels of classroom and home exposure to English and Spanish.

Authors

• Lillian Duran, University of Oregon
  Presenting Author

• Alisha Wackerle-Hollman, University of Minnesota
  Non-Presenting Author