RESUMEN
The present study reports on the development, structure, and associations with practice for a new measure of preschool teachers' knowledge about language and vocabulary development and how to support this development in the classroom. Results from item response theory models with responses from a sample of 248 preschool teachers indicated that four scales measuring pedagogical content knowledge and content knowledge for vocabulary and language, respectively, had adequate psychometric characteristics. Confirmatory factor analyses further supported a four-factor structure, although all scales were correlated. In an overlapping sample of 94 preschool teachers, preliminary investigation of associations between knowledge and teachers' self-reported practices, observed instructional time allocation, and the quality of classroom language environments were mixed. Results indicate promise for the measure yet add to prior research suggesting that connections between knowledge and practice are highly complex and likely interwoven with many other influences on instructional decision-making in early childhood classrooms.
Asunto(s)
Lenguaje Infantil , Conocimiento , Maestros/psicología , Enseñanza/psicología , Vocabulario , Adulto , Preescolar , Femenino , Humanos , Masculino , Persona de Mediana Edad , PsicometríaRESUMEN
Purpose: The present article reports on the implementation and results of a randomized intervention trial targeting the literate language skills of prekindergarten children without identified language disorders but with low oral language skills. Method: Children (N = 82; 45 boys and 37 girls) were screened-in and randomized to a business-as-usual control or to the pull-out treatment groups in which they received 4 instructional units addressing different sentence-level syntactic and semantic features: prepositions, conjunctions, adverbs, and negations. The intervention was delivered by paraprofessionals in small groups in the form of 20-min lessons 4 times a week for 12 weeks. Results: Overall, children receiving the supplemental instruction showed educationally meaningful gains in their oral language skills, relative to children in the control group. Significant group differences were found on researcher-designed oral language measures, with moderate to large effect sizes ranging from .44 to .88 on these measures. Conclusions: The intervention holds the potential to positively affect understanding and production of syntax and semantic features, such as prepositions and conjunctions, in young children with weak oral language skills.