Poster #184 - Teacher-Child Positive Verbal Interactions from 6–36 Months, Child Care Provider Instability, and Kindergarten Literacy Skills

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - School Readiness/Childcare

Integrative Statement

Studies have shown that child care teachers’ classroom language practices can influence children’s subsequent skills (Wasik & Hindman, 2011). Yet, for children living in high-poverty rural areas, less is known about how positive language interactions with their child care teachers is associated with long-term outcomes. Further, potential benefits of positive language interactions for children prior to age three may be lessened if children experience a number of different child care teachers who interact with them. The current study fills these gaps by testing these relationships in predicting to kindergarten literacy skills as mediated by prekindergarten (pre-K) language skills.

Using data from the Family Life Project, a representative sample of 1,292 children born to mothers living in rural US, children who were in non-parental child care at least three time points between 6, 15, 24, and 36 months (n=359) were included in this study. At child care visits at each time point, the target child and their child care teacher were observed using the Child Care Observational Coding System (CVI), which is a time-sampling observational live-coding system intended to capture specific child-teacher interactions rather than global classroom quality (Author,1996, 2005). Two observations were conducted at every child care visit, with each observation lasting 10 minutes. Coders used continuous coding to identify which behaviors occurred in each 10-second block (interrater reliability=0.77). The categories were coded one time per 10-second segment if they occurred, regardless of the number of times they occurred in a 10-second segment. In this study, we created a composite variable from 6–36 months, teacher-child positive verbal interactions (=0.87), using two positive verbal initiation variables (child-teacher, teacher-child) at each time point. In addition, child care instability was measured as the number of child care providers children had across the four time points, ranging from 1–4.

Teacher-child positive verbal interactions from 6–36 months were added to analytic models predicting to pre-K Picture Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT, mediator) and kindergarten Woodcock Johnson Letter-Word Identification (LW, outcome). Control variables were child gender, race, and mental development index; site, income-to-needs ratio, maternal education, and maternal literacy; and pre-K and kindergarten global classroom quality (see Table 1). Using Mplus, path analyses with multiple groups analyses tested differences among these relationships for children who had one, two, three, or four child care providers.

As depicted in Figure 1, results indicated that in predicting to kindergarten LW, a higher level of teacher-child verbal interactions from 6–36 months was fully mediated through the relationship with child language skills (PPVT) at pre-K. However, this relationship was only significant for children with the same child care provider across the four time points. With any number of additional child care providers, the positive path from teacher-child verbal interactions to pre-K language to kindergarten LW was not supported.

Implications include the need for professional development to enhance teachers’ effective communication with very young children. These findings also provide support for the need for stable care for children, though this finding deserves replication with a larger sample.

Group Authors

Family Life Project Key Investigators

Authors

• Mary Bratsch-Hines, UNC-Chapel Hill
  Presenting Author

• Lynne Vernon-Feagans, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author