Pivotal Research in Early Literacy: Foundational Studies and Current Practices
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Pivotal Research in Early Literacy: Foundational Studies and Current Practices
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781462536221 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Guilford Publications, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 06/14/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 326 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
| Age Range: | 4 - 7 Years |
About the Author
Susan M. Dougherty, EdD, is Associate Professor of Literacy Education in the College of Education and Human Services at Rider University in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in literacy and has a particular interest in preparing preservice and future literacy specialists to support children who find literacy learning difficult. Dr. Dougherty began her career in education as an elementary teacher in New Jersey and is currently on the board of the New Jersey Literacy Association. Her research interests include parent–preschooler talk, family literacy, and early literacy and science learning. She has published articles and book chapters in these areas and coauthored the book Engaging Readers: Supporting All Students in Knowledge-Driven Instruction, 4–8.
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CHAPTER 1
Now You're Talking
Vocabulary Development in the Home Context
Lillian R. Masek, Molly E. Scott, Rebecca Dore, Rufan Luo, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff
Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic.
— Albus Dumbledore (in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows)
A strong vocabulary is vital to literacy development (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1997; Dickinson, Golinkoff, & Hirsh-Pasek, 2010; National Early Literacy Panel, 2008; Ouellette, 2006; Storch & Whitehurst, 2002). Vocabulary knowledge helps children decode text through phonological awareness and print knowledge (Storch & Whitehurst, 2002), but being a good reader involves more than decoding. Without a strong vocabulary knowledge to back it up, decoding leaves a child with strings of meaningless sounds. Anderson and Freebody's (1981) knowledge hypothesis posits that a broad network of conceptual knowledge is needed to understand text. A child who knows a lot of words and the associations between those words will sail through a text more smoothly than a child who does not have a strong vocabulary. For example, if a child knows many words associated with trains (e.g., uncoupling, caboose) they will have an easier time reading about the transcontinental railroad than a child who does not know those words. Extracting meaning from a variety of texts demands a diverse vocabulary, which starts developing long before children learn to read and has a lasting effect. Preschool vocabulary predicts reading comprehension all the way to fourth grade (Dickinson & Porche, 2011) and gains in literacy from first to third and from third to fifth grade (Burchinal, Pace, Alper, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2016). Yet, vocabulary development begins before children enter early schooling (Fernald, Marchman, & Weisleder, 2013; Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2015; Kuhl, 2010), meaning that much of children's early exposure to language occurs at home.
Here, we focus on the home context of children's vocabulary development, highlighting three pivotal studies that shaped the way we look at language input and its effect on vocabulary. Each study spawned new research, as well as early language interventions. Three main lessons flow from these classic studies: (1) Early-language input matters; and, in particular, (2) the quality of language input matters and (3) conversational context matters.
THREE PIVOTAL PIECES ON VOCABULARY LEARNING
The first piece, Hart and Risley's (1995) now-classic work, highlights the gap between families of lower and higher socioeconomic status (SES) in children's home-language experiences and reminds us that both quantity and quality are key to successful language and vocabulary development. The second piece by Pan, Rowe, Singer, and Snow (2005) illuminated the substantial individual variation in parental language input, even within a low-SES sample. They stressed the importance of the quality of talk for children's later language amid discussions tilted toward quantity. The last piece by Tomasello and Farrar (1986) demonstrates that quality and quantity occur in a rich, coconstructed context. Without joint or shared attention between the child and a sensitive, responsive caregiver, what could be language learning moments fail to be realized. Winnowing down the research showing a link between language input and vocabulary to a mere three studies is, of course, a somewhat artificial exercise given the mountain of data speaking to these issues. The three pieces selected have deeply influenced not only early language research, but also interventions designed to support children in getting off to a strong start.
Hart and Risley (1995): Input Matters and Matters Early
In the 1960s, poverty had become the enemy of the common good, and politicians rallied behind the so-called "War on Poverty." Programs such as Head Start, a government initiative started in 1965 to support children of families living in poverty (National Head Start Association, 2017), were initiated as part of an effort to disrupt the cycle. The rationale was that if children in poverty were given a "booster" shot of early stimulation, they would be better prepared for formal schooling. Although at the time, the data were mixed (Cicirelli, 1969; Lazar, Darlington, Murray, Royce, Snipper, & Ramey, 1982), these initiatives became the impetus for research on socioeconomic status (SES) differences in social, cognitive, and health outcomes, as well as the experiences that might foster positive outcomes. Given that language is a strong predictor of improved reading, mathematics and social skills (Burchinal et al., 2016; Hoff, 2013), it became an area of increased concentration. It is in this context, centered on the expectation for and creation of high-quality preschools, that Hart and Risley's novel work sent a chill through research and policy circles. Their relatively limited but now classic study influenced those who want to heighten opportunity for low-income children and their families.
In 1968, Hart and Risley began work at the Turner House Preschool in an impoverished area of Kansas City. Although when observed independently, the 4- and 5-year-olds at Turner House were competent language users, Hart and Risley noticed that their language skills paled compared to preschoolers at the university laboratory school, despite their similar ages and programs. To bridge this gap, they attempted a series of interventions to teach children at Turner House new words. Much to their dismay, these programs had little effect (Hart & Risley, 1980). Faced with a mystery, they decided to find out what was going on at home, very early in children's lives, that might be contributing to the observed differences between the Turner House children and the professors' children once they got to preschool.
Hart and Risley set out to document the home language environments of young children, as well those children's language development. They recruited local families representing three SES groups that they dubbed "professional" (n = 13), "working-class" (n = 23), and "welfare" (n = 6). Notably, this differentiation has been criticized for both terminology and grouping ("working-class" represented both low- and mid-SES families), and subsequent research has shifted to labels that more accurately reflect families' economic situations.
Starting before the child could talk (7–12 months), researchers recorded each child's home language environment for 1 hour, once a month through the third year of the child's life. This resulted in 1,318 hours of transcripts documenting the language children heard during these early years. In addition, a variety of outcome measures were assessed, including the child's vocabulary and IQ at age 3 and literacy in third grade. The findings were profound. On average, children in professional families heard 2,153 words addressed to them every hour, whereas children in working-class families heard 1,251 words, and children in welfare families heard a mere 616 words. From these numbers, Hart and Risley projected that by age 4, children in poverty would hear 30 million fewer words than children in the highest SES strata. The researchers examined the quality of language as well and found that, beyond hearing more words, children in high-SES homes heard more responses, declarative sentences, auxiliary-fronted yes/no questions (e.g., "Can you clean up?" vs. "Clean up."), affirmative feedback (e.g., "That's right!"), and richer language (nouns, modifiers, and past tense verbs) than children in lower-SES homes.
Furthermore, these gaps in exposure appeared to have implications for children's later language and school achievement. Children who heard more words learned more words. By age 3, a full year or two before most of the remedial preschool programs such as Head Start began, there were already large differences in the number of words children knew. Whereas the average 3-year-old vocabulary size for the children in professional families was 1,116 words, for children in working-class families it was 749 words and for children in welfare families it was 525 words. Hart and Risley found that parental talk related not only to the child's vocabulary and IQ at age 3, but to the child's language and reading skills in third grade as well, showing a persistent effect of children's early language environment. These findings highlighted two important lessons: that the language children heard mattered to their later school achievement, and that the "booster shot" remedial preschool programs were starting too late. To be effective, interventions had to start early. This finding on quantity struck a nerve with the public. Hart and Risley coined the term, the 30-million word gap, which became a rallying cry inspiring considerable research in the field (Hoff, 2003; Pan, Rowe, Singer, & Snow, 2005) and new intervention efforts (Providence Talks, 2017; Suskind, Suskind, & Lewinter-Suskind, 2015; Talking is Teaching, 2017).
Although Hart and Risley's research (1995) was pivotal, it has also been widely criticized for its methodology, including, but not limited to, its small sample size, especially the "welfare" sample of six children (Pan et al., 2005), the homogeneity of its welfare sample (Dudley-Marling & Lucas, 2009), only evaluating mother's talk (Sperry, Miller, & Sperry, 2015), and using cumulative word types as a measure of children's vocabulary (Huttenlocher, Waterfall, Vasilyeva, Vevea, & Hedges, 2010). It has further been criticized for ignoring cultural differences in talk (Dudley-Marling & Lucas, 2009; Michaels, 2013; Sperry et al., 2015) and perpetuating a deficit model of poverty (Dudley-Marling & Lucas, 2009; Michaels, 2013). As discussed later, within SES strata, there is enormous variability in the quantity and quality of language input children receive and the developmental trajectories of early language skills. Furthermore, while Hart and Risley did examine aspects of language quality, the headlines that emerged too often emphasized quantity, giving rise to a misconception that the number of words a child heard was the most important feature of the early language environment. Despite these substantial limitations, the work of Hart and Risley has been widely replicated (e.g., Hoff, 2003; Huttenlocher et al., 2010) and continues to influence research, policy, and practice.
Beyond Hart and Risley: The Push for Quantity
At the same time that Hart and Risley's book was published, other researchers began to examine the relationship between language input, language development, and factors that relate to the amount of speech children heard. Some reported that older mothers spoke more to their children than adolescent mothers (Culp, Osofsky, & O'Brien, 1996). Compared to mothers from middle- or high-SES backgrounds, low-SES mothers were more likely to suffer from depression and stress, which was further associated with less talk to children (Lovejoy, Graczyk, O'Hare, & Neuman, 2000). Research showed that firstborn children heard more language addressed to them than later-born children (Hoff-Ginsberg, 1998), and that the child's participation in a conversation influenced the amount of parental talk (Hoff-Ginsberg, 1994). The setting influenced speech as well, such that all mothers, regardless of SES, talked most during book reading and least during mealtimes, although SES differences in talk were most apparent during dressing and mealtime and least apparent during book reading and toy play (Hoff-Ginsberg, 1991). Overall, this research expanded the field by asking what factors, beyond SES, related to differences in talk while replicating Hart and Risley's critical finding: that children in poverty hear fewer words.
This research on language input and language gaps continued to flourish in the decade after Hart and Risley published their book, as it continued to focus on the relationship between language input and children's output. While this approach had deep roots (e.g., Furrow, Nelson, & Benedict, 1979; Nelson, Carskaddon, & Bonvillian, 1973; Snow, 1972), this incarnation seemed to have narrowed its focus to the amount of language rather than to the equipotent findings on the quality of the interactions. Indeed, some argue that, in the right context, a word need only to be heard once to be acquired. For example, the human simulation model studies suggest a "sweet spot" for language learning that has little to do with quantity, but a lot to do with the quality of the interaction (Gillette, Gleitman, Gleitman, & Lederer, 1999; Trueswell, Lin, Armstrong, Cartmill, Goldin-Meadow, & Gleitman, 2016). The almost exclusive emphasis on quantity also gave the impression that the SES levels of participants were the primary predictor of later language abilities, without regard to variation within SES level (Cartmill, Armstrong, Gleitman, Goldin-Meadow, Medina, & Trueswell, 2013; Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2015; Pan et al., 2005). That is, the Hart and Risley study was and often still is erroneously interpreted to suggest that poor children inevitably have weak language skills and limited vocabularies. Surely there is variation of both quantity and quality within SES levels that could account even more for the children's language outcomes. Although headlines citing the 30-million word gap persist, another wave of research went beyond the deficit model to examine this variability in both language input and outcomes within a low-SES sample.
Pan, Rowe, Singer, and Snow (2005): Quality of Language Input within a Low-SES Sample
The work of Barbara Pan and colleagues was among the first to suggest heterogeneity in both the quantity and quality of language input within low-income families. Furthermore, the findings from Hart and Risley (1995), along with subsequent research (e.g., DeTemple & Snow, 1996), needed to be shown in a larger sample more likely to demonstrate this heterogeneity. Given that much of the research documented the SES-based language gap, Pan and colleagues wanted to change the perspective to focus instead on the variability within SES and how that variability might relate to children's later vocabulary. They performed the first large-scale longitudinal study examining language growth in an entirely low-income sample.
Pan and colleagues (2005) examined 108 mother–child dyads who were eligible for government assistance. Mothers were videotaped playing with their child at home at 14, 24, and 36 months. Mothers were instructed to play for 10 minutes with their children using the standardized, age-appropriate materials provided (a book and toys, such as a kitchen set).
During this interaction, researchers looked at the behaviors and language of the mother and child, including the number of words (as in Hart & Risley, 1995), the diversity of words, and the number of pointing gestures. They also examined the number of different words children used at each age. Contrary to what many people deduced from Hart and Risley's work, Pan and colleagues found a large variability in both mothers' and children's talk. While the least talkative mothers spoke fewer than 200 words per observation, the most talkative spoke over 1,200. Looking at children's talk at 14 months, the beginning of expressive language, the range was 0–22 words, with the least-verbal children saying no words at all. By age 3, the gap between the most- and least-verbal children had grown to 122 words, suggesting not only a range in vocabulary size at the onset of language development, but also a diverse rate of growth over the first few years.
Pan and colleagues reported no effect of quantity of speech on children's language growth between age 1 and 3: Simply hearing more language did not influence children's later abilities. Number of different words and pointing gestures, however, did predict children's language growth, but since the overlap between the two measures was high, it was difficult to determine whether both were independently important in predicting language outcomes. Mother's education and literacy levels were also predictors of children's language growth as was maternal depression. The latter was negatively related to children's language growth.
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
Introduction, Susan M. Dougherty and Christina M. CassanoI. Early Language Development
1. Now You’re Talking: Vocabulary Development in the Home Context, Lillian R. Masek, Molly E. Scott, Rebecca Dore, Rufan Luo, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff
Pivotal studies discussed:
- Hart and Risley (1995). Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children
- Pan, Rowe, Singer, and Snow (2005). Maternal Correlates of Growth in Toddler Vocabulary Production in Low‐Income Families
- Tomasello and Farrar (1986). Joint Attention and Early Language
2. Pivotal Theory and Research Affecting Emergent Bilingual Children’s Language and Literacy Achievement, Theresa A. Roberts
Pivotal studies discussed:
- Cummins (1979). Linguistic Interdependence and the Educational Development of Bilingual Children
- Dulay and Burt (1974). Errors and Strategies in Child Second Language Acquisition
- Hoover and Gough (1990). The Simple View of Reading
- Krashen (1982). Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition
- Willig (1985). A Meta-Analysis of Selected Studies on the Effectiveness of Bilingual Education
II. Literacy Development in the Early Years
3. Writing in the Early Years, Judith A. Schickedanz
Pivotal studies discussed:
- Durkin (1966). Children Who Read Early: Two Longitudinal Studies
- Hildreth (1936). Developmental Sequences in Name Writing
- Read (1975). Children’s Categorization of Speech Sounds in English
4. Reconceptualizing Alphabet Learning and Instruction, Marcia Invernizzi and Jordan Buckrop
Pivotal studies discussed:
- Mason (1980). When Do Children Begin to Read?: An Exploration of Four Year Old Children’s Letter and Word Reading Competencies
- Treiman and Broderick (1998). What’s in a Name: Children’s Knowledge about the Letters in Their Own Names
- Treiman, Tincoff, Rodriguez, Mouzaki, and Francis (1998). The Foundations of Literacy: Learning the Sounds of Letters
5. A Close and Careful Look at Phonological Awareness, Christina M. Cassano
Pivotal studies discussed:
- Juel (1988). Learning to Read and Write: A Longitudinal Study of 54 Children from First through Fourth Grades
- Liberman, Shankweiler, Fischer, and Carter (1974). Explicit Syllable and Phoneme Segmentation in the Young Child
- Lundberg, Frost, and Petersen (1988). Effects of an Extensive Program for Stimulating Phonological Awareness in Preschool Children
6. The Role of Word Recognition in Beginning Reading: Getting the Words off the Page, Ruth M. Wharton-McDonald
Pivotal studies discussed:
- Adams (1990). Beginning to Read: Learning and Thinking about Print
- Share (1995). Phonological Recoding and Self-Teaching: Sine Qua Non of Reading Acquisition
- Stanovich (1980). Toward an Interactive-Compensatory Model of Individual Differences in the Development of Reading Fluency
7. Engagement, Motivation, Self-Regulation, and Literacy Development in Early Childhood, Alisa Hindin
Pivotal studies discussed:
- Blair (2002). School Readiness: Integrating Cognition and Emotion in a Neurobiological Conceptualization of Children’s Functioning at School Entry
- Guthrie and Wigfield (2000). Engagement and Motivation in Reading
- Spira, Bracken, and Fischel (2005). Predicting Improvement after First-Grade Reading Difficulties: The Effects of Oral Language, Emergent Literacy, and Behavior Skills
III. Home and Community Literacy Experiences of Children
8. Starting Them Young: How the Shift from Reading Readiness to Emergent Literacy Has Influenced Preschool Literacy Education, William H. Teale, Emily Brown Hoffman, Colleen E. Whittingham, and Kathleen A. Paciga
Pivotal studies discussed:
- Almy (1949). Children's experiences prior to first grade and success in beginning reading
- Teale and Sulzby (1986). Emergent Literacy: Writing and Reading
9. Pivotal Research in Storybook Reading, Molly F. Collins
Pivotal studies discussed:
- Cochran-Smith (1984). The Making of a Reader
- Dickinson and Smith (1994). Long-Term Effects of Preschool Teachers’ Book Readings on Low-Income Children’s Vocabulary and Story Comprehension
- Whitehurst, Falco, Lonigan, Fischel, DeBaryshe, Valdez-Menchaca, and Caulfield (1988). Accelerating Language Development through Picture Book Reading
10. The Impact of Pivotal Research on the Role of Play in Early Literacy Development, Muriel K. Rand and Lesley Mandel Morrow
Pivotal studies discussed:
- Morrow and Rand (1991). Promoting Literacy During Play by Designing Early Childhood Classroom Environments
- Neuman and Roskos (1990). Play, Print, and Purpose: Enriching Play Environments for Literacy Development
- Pellegrini (1985). The Relations Between Symbolic Play and Literate Behavior: A Review and Critique of the Empirical Literature
11. Family Literacy: Is It Really All About Storybook Reading?, Susan M. Dougherty and Jeanne R. Paratore
Pivotal studies discussed:
- Bus, van IJzendoorn, and Pellegrini (1995). Joint Book Reading Makes for Success in Learning to Read: A Meta-analysis on Intergenerational Transmission of Literacy
- Heath (1983). Ways with Words: Language, Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
- Purcell‐Gates (1996). Stories, Coupons, and the “TV Guide”: Relationships between Home Literacy Experiences and Emergent Literacy Knowledge
- Scarborough and Dobrich (1994). On the Efficacy of Reading to Preschoolers
- Sénéchal, Lefevre, Thomas, and Daley (1998). Differential Effects of Home Literacy Experiences on the Development of Oral and Written Language
12. Enhancing Children’s Access to Print, Susan B. Neuman and Donna Celano
Pivotal study discussed:
- Neuman and Celano (2001). Access to Print in Low-Income and Middle-Income Communities: An Ecological Study of Four Neighborhoods
Afterword: Pivotal Research in Early Literacy: Lessons Learned and a Call to Action, Heidi Anne E. Mesmer and Melissa Rose-McCully
Index
Interviews
Teacher educators and students in early education programs; PreK–2 teachers, literacy specialists, and administrators; early literacy researchers. Will serve as a primary or supplemental text in advanced undergraduate- and graduate-level courses such as Early Literacy, Foundations of Literacy, and Elementary Literacy Methods.