Discourse Analysis in an Urban Head Start Serving Latinx and Black Preschoolers: Results from a Conversation-Based Professional Development for Teachers

• In Event: Teachers’ Extended Discourse Interactions with Black and Latinx Children in the Early Childhood Classroom

Abstract

During preschool, discourse skills are burgeoning, especially for those children who are enrolled in early education programs because both the home and school environment are integral in shaping young children’s conversation skills (e.g., Hoff, 2006). Professional development (PD) intervention research demonstrates that conversation-based PDs positively impact teacher’s classroom talk and child outcomes (Cabell et al., 2015), but more work is needed about how such interventions can be targeted toward culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) learners. Two specific groups of CALD children, Black and Latinx, benefit from conversation-based PD approaches at school, which have been linked with positive changes in children’s language and early literacy outcomes (Cabell et al., 2011; Justice et al., 2018). This study examines classroom discourse before and after teachers’ participation in Name Blinded professional development (PD), a workbook-based training accompanied by an asynchronous online course designed for teachers of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) learners. The Name Blinded PD approach is designed to foster language and school readiness skills especially for culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) children by emphasizing positive home language traditions among CALD children, such as exposure to open-ended “real” questions and participation in joint conversations (Heath, 1983) and their understanding mental states (Curenton, 2005).
We examine changes in classroom discourse after teachers’ participation in the PD. We hypothesize that following teachers’ participation, classroom discourse will improve such that (1) turn-taking will be more equitable between teachers and children (i.e., our proxy for joint conversations), (2) teachers’ use of cognitively challenging questions will increase (i.e, proxy for open-ended question), and (3) students’ use of mental state talk will increase.

Method
Forty classroom conversations were videotaped across 10 Head Start teachers of preschoolers (ages 3-5) living in small urban cities throughout the Mid-Atlantic. The average classroom had 54% Latinx students, 21% multiracial students, 16% Black/African American students, Native American (4%), White (4%), and Asian (1%). Children came from linguistically diverse households: 62% dual language learners (DLLs) speaking Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Twi, African American Vernacular English, or Jamaican Creole. Children ranged in age from 3 to 5 years and were evenly split between genders (pre-intervention: M = 4.28, SD = 0.61, 20% missing, 46% female versus post-intervention: M = 4.66, SD = 0.81, 15% missing, 50% female).
Videos were transcribed using the Children’s Data Exchange System (MacWhinney, 2014) and analyzed for: (1) joint conversational load between teachers and children, (2) teachers’ use of cognitively challenging questions, and (3) children’s use of mental state talk. Conversational load was assessed using the ratio of turn-taking between teachers and children. Cognitively challenging questions were categorized into four mutually exclusive groupings: informing, analyzing, and brainstorming (see Curenton, 2016). Students’ use of mental state words such as know, think, thought, etc.
Results & Implications. Pre- and post-intervention discourse features were compared using paired samples t-tests (one-tailed). See Table 1. These results suggest that PD can be specifically targeted to improve discourse features of joint conversations, children’s use of mental state talk, and teachers’ use of open-ended questions.

Authors

• Jacqueline P. Sims, Boston University
  Presenting Author

• Stephanie Michelle Curenton, Boston University
  Non-Presenting Author