Impact of professional development on preschool teachers’ conversational responsivity and children's linguistic productivity and complexity

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Abstract

The present study investigated the effect of professional development (PD) on preschool teachers’ conversational responsivity in the classroom, defined as teachers’ use of strategies to promote children's participation in extended conversational exchanges (communication-facilitating strategies) and exposure to advanced linguistic models (language-developing strategies), and the resultant impact on proximal child language outcomes. We randomly-assigned 49 preschool teachers to receive 15–20 h of such PD (PD; n = 25) or to a comparison condition (n = 24). Growth curve analysis indicated that trained teachers used significantly more communication-facilitating strategies across the year but no such difference for language-developing strategies. Moreover, children in these classrooms showed greater linguistic productivity and complexity in their talk. These findings suggest that PD may alter some aspects of teachers’ conservational responsivity responsible for increasing the amount and complexity of child language. Alteration of some strategies, however, may require more intensive PD efforts.

Highlights

► We examined the efficacy of providing responsivity education to preschool teachers. ► Teachers were randomly assigned to treatment or control. ► Teachers’ use of responsivity strategies was monitored over an entire academic year. ► Treatment led to more use of communication-facilitating strategies in classrooms. ► Treatment did not impact teachers’ use of language-developing strategies.

Section snippets

Preschools as language-learning environments

Both theory (e.g., Bruner, 1975, Bruner, 1981, Chapman, 2000) and recent research (e.g., Zimmerman et al., 2009) suggest that children's language development is contingent upon the quality and quantity of language and communicative acts to which they are exposed. Considerable evidence supports a direct correspondence between classroom language environments provided in preschool and children's language productivity (e.g., Girolametto and Weitzman, 2002, Girolametto et al., 2003) and growth

Conversational-responsiveness: the Learning Language and Loving It approach

Given the potential value of adults’ use of responsivity strategies when interacting with children, there have been a number of efforts to develop means for effectively promoting adults’ use of such strategies. Such efforts transcend both parents (e.g., Fey et al., 2006) and teachers, for whom the most well-known is perhaps the Hanen Center's Learning Language and Loving It–The Hanen Program for Early Childhood Educators (LLLI; Weitzman, 1994, Weitzman and Greenberg, 2002). LLLI is

The present study

The present work was conducted to determine whether an adapted version of the LLLI program, as a well-established and manualized form of PD for early childhood educators, can promote the conversational responsivity of preschool educators working with children at risk for developmental and academic difficulties. We also determined whether teachers’ participation in PD had positive impacts on the linguistic productivity and complexity of children in their classrooms, based on analysis of

Participants

Two sequential cohorts involving a total of 49 preschool teachers from a single mid-Atlantic state participated in the study and were randomly assigned to PD treatment (n = 25) or comparison conditions (n = 24). All teachers were volunteers and were recruited through contacts with preschool administrators and information sessions. Participating teachers taught in 38 different preschool programs, with 19 programs involved in each study condition. All were targeted enrollment programs, in that only

Teachers’ responsivity strategy use

Descriptive statistics for general teacher variables are presented in Table 2 and for teacher use of two sets of responsivity strategies in Table 3 (separated by condition and time point). As shown in Table 2, teachers indicated moderate feelings of self-efficacy (M = 3.60, SD = 0.50) and beliefs about children that were slightly more child- than adult-centered (M = 2.32, SD = 0.50). As shown in Table 3, descriptive results concerning CRAFT scores indicated teachers’ use of responsivity strategies

Discussion

The presented study investigated the extent to which PD could promote the conversational responsivity of educators working in targeted-enrollment preschool settings and thereby impact the proximal language skills of children in these classrooms. Three major findings of this work warrant discussion: (a) the generally low use of responsivity strategies coupled with considerable variation in the extent to which individual teachers utilized these strategies, (b) the significant impact of PD on

Acknowledgments

This research project was supported by grant R305F05124 from the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences. The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Institute of Education Sciences, nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Department of Education. We thank the many teachers, children, and research staff who made this study possible, with special mention to Sarah Friel.

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      Citation Excerpt :

      Finally, there were no pre-existing differences between conditions in children's second-language vocabulary and grammar skills pre-intervention. The findings align with prior reports that teachers who had received professional development as part of an intervention program modified their interactive reading in various ways: a greater number of open-ended or reasoning questions, more informational questions, more encouragement to use theme-related vocabulary, and more support for conversation, demonstrated in teachers serving monolingual children (Cabell et al., 2015; Lorio & Woods, 2020; Piasta et al., 2012; Wasik et al., 2006; Wasik & Hindman, 2020) as well as those serving linguistically diverse groups (Milburn et al., 2014; Rezzonico et al., 2015). The present study adds to the small number of studies that have examined teacher talk modifications, resulting from professional development, during interactive reading with DLLs.

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    1

    The author is now at the Core Knowledge Foundation.

    2

    The author is now affiliated with The Ohio State University.

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