Preschoolers' Exposure to Language Stimulation in Classrooms Serving At-Risk Children: The Contribution of Group Size and Activity Context

Research Findings:  This research examined preschoolers' exposure to 6 types of language stimulation techniques (LSTs) in classrooms serving at-risk children and considered whether specific activity contexts were associated with educators' rate of use of different LSTs. Several teacher-directed and child-directed activity contexts were videotaped in 14 classrooms. Adult utterances were coded for group size, activity context, and use of LSTs. A total of 5,017 utterances were analyzed. Descriptive analyses were used to determine frequency of LST use, and logistic regressions were used to predict the likelihood of LST use based on group size and activity context. About one third of adult utterances were classified as LSTs, and there was significant variation in educators' rate of use of LSTs. LSTs were more likely in small-group child-directed contexts than other contexts. Educators' use of child-dependent LSTs was relatively less frequent in relation to child-independent LSTs in teacher-directed contexts than in child-directed contexts.  Practice or Policy:  Results suggest that preschoolers attending at-risk classrooms are exposed to modest amounts of high-quality language, with some variability in exposure reflective of activity context and group size. These findings suggest the importance of professional development for educators to provide high-quality language learning environments within their classrooms.