A major challenge to students learning science is the academic language in which science is written. Academic language is designed to be concise, precise, and authoritative. To achieve these goals, ...it uses sophisticated words and complex grammatical constructions that can disrupt reading comprehension and block learning. Students need help in learning academic vocabulary and how to process academic language if they are to become independent learners of science.
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This paper provides an overview of the features of caregiver input that facilitate language learning across early childhood. We discuss three dimensions of input quality: interactive, linguistic, and ...conceptual. All three types of input features have been shown to predict children's language learning, though perhaps through somewhat different mechanisms. We argue that input best designed to promote language learning is interactionally supportive, linguistically adapted, and conceptually challenging for the child's age/level. Furthermore, input features interact across dimensions to promote learning. Some but not all qualities of input vary based on parent socioeconomic status, language, or culture, and contexts such as book-reading or pretend play generate uniquely facilitative input features. The review confirms that we know a great deal about the role of input quality in promoting children's development, but that there is much more to learn. Future research should examine input features across the boundaries of the dimensions distinguished here.
Transcending the low status of educational research will require demonstrating its relevance to improvements in practice. Educational progress is most likely to emerge from approaches to research ...that create an equal footing for practitioners and researchers, recognizing that though these groups accumulate and curate knowledge in different ways, they both have a role in creating tools (curricula, practices, professional development approaches) that can be used to forge lasting improvements. A brief history of the ongoing shift toward practice-embedded educational research (PEER) demonstrates its increasing acceptance and popularity and suggests modifications to the future selection of research topics, funding mechanisms, and professional preparation of both practitioners and researchers.
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How does literacy develop in children's early years, and what programs or practices promote adequate literacy for all children? These are the questions Catherine Snow and Timothy Matthews tackle in ...this article. Fundamental literacy skills can be grouped into two categories, Snow and Matthews write. The first category is constrained skills, which are readily teachable because they're finite: for example, the 26 letters of the alphabet, or a set of 20 to 30 common spelling rules. These skills have a ceiling; young children can and do achieve perfect performance. As they grow older, though, children need to understand words rarely encountered in spoken language and to integrate new information they encounter with relevant background information. Vocabulary and background knowledge are examples of unconstrained skills—large domains of knowledge acquired gradually through experience. Unconstrained skills are particularly important for children's long-term literacy success (that is, success in outcomes measured after third grade). Compared to constrained skills, they're also more strongly predicted by children's social class or their parents' education, and more difficult to teach in the classroom. And because of their open-ended nature, unconstrained skills are also much harder to test for. Snow and Matthews write that a drop in literacy scores we see as US children move from elementary to middle school suggests that our schools may be focusing too much on constrained skills—and too little on unconstrained ones—in the early grades. The authors review promising programs and practices for enhancing both constrained and unconstrained skills, ranging from comprehensive school-improvement programs to efforts to improve curricula and teachers' professional development—although they note that vast differences in programs' scope, cost, targets, and theories of change make comparing them difficult. Another challenge is that it's hard to maintain quality and consistency when implementing complex programs over time. Snow and Matthews suggest that to improve young children's success with literacy, it might be better to introduce and evaluate promising practices that can be mixed and matched, rather than complex programs that are implemented as a package.
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Few hypotheses in the field of literacy have proven as robust as the Simple View of Reading (SVR). Two studies included in this special issue use large participant samples and sophisticated ...quantitative analyses to confirm the basic claim of the SVR, that decoding and listening comprehension together predict reading comprehension. One also demonstrates a developmental shift from decoding to language as the primary predictor after about Grade 3. A third paper challenges the adequacy of the SVR for older readers, offering evidence that the nature of the text being read also must be taken into account in predicting comprehension outcomes. All three studies, though, use rather simple comprehension outcomes. I argue that reader skills in academic language, in perspective taking, and in argumentation are additional important predictors of comprehension when readers are confronted with 21st century literacy tasks, which require analysis, synthesis, and critique, not just literal inferences and summaries.
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Previous reviews of the nature and consequences of adult-child book reading have focused on seeking impacts of interactive reading on the acquisition of vocabulary and emergent literacy skills. In ...this systematic review we examined to what extent there has been systematic study of the effects of interactive reading on four less frequently studied developmental outcomes important to children's academic and life prospects: socio-emotional and socio-cognitive (SEL) skills, narrative skills, grammar, and world knowledge. We identified 67 studies of interactive reading that met the inclusion criteria and that examined the targeted outcomes, using either experimental, quasi-experimental, correlational, or single-group intervention methods. We found that studies of effects on grammar and world knowledge outcomes were very sparsely represented; though narrative was often studied as an outcome, the wide variation in conceptualizing and assessing the construct hampered any clear conclusion about book-reading effects. The most robust research strand focused on SEL skill outcomes, though here too the outcome assessments varied widely. We speculate that better instrumented approaches to assessing vocabulary and emergent literacy have led to the persistent emphasis on these domains, despite robust evidence of only modest associations, and argue that work to develop sound shared measures of narrative and SEL skills would enable cross-study comparison and the accumulation of findings. In addition, we note that the various studies implicated different explanatory principles for the value of reading with children: specific interactional features (open-ended questions, following the child's lead, expanding child utterances) or content features (emotion-enhanced books, talk about mental states, science topics), raising another topic for more focused study in the future.
•Most book reading studies have addressed vocabulary and literacy outcomes.•67 studies have examined effects on four generally neglected developmental outcomes.•Grammar and world knowledge outcomes were investigated in only few studies.•Narrative and SEL measures varied widely, reducing comparability across studies.•Interactional and/or content features were hypothesized predictors of outcomes.
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Use of screen devices has become a standard practice in modern parenting. Research has shown that screen devices can be strategically used as tools, either for babysitting or for educational support. ...We surveyed 4,907 parents of preschool children from China to investigate how different devices (including TV, tablet, computer and paper-based books) may channel parental efficacy (or the lack of it) to home literacy practices. We found that parents with low parental efficacy were more likely to give their children all three kinds of screen devices, among which TV and tablet were detrimental to home literacy practices whereas computers, like books, were complementary to home literacy practices. Latent profile analysis showed that parents who allowed their children a high frequency of TV or tablet use had the poorest home literacy practices. In comparison, parents who provided fewer books but allowed high frequency of computer use while restricting TV or tablet use came from the lowest SES backgrounds in the sample, but they reported average levels of parenting efficacy and an average amount of home literacy practices. Only parents who felt efficacious about their parenting capabilities provided more paper-based picture books, thus generating optimal home literacy practices. Given the evidence from our finding that parents’ lack of efficacy is a predictor of increased child TV and tablet viewing time and decreased home literacy practices, we need to consider whether such practices arise from a chronic sense of anxiety about parenting effectively rather than efforts to temporarily soothe or entertain the children. More effort is needed to help parents manage their anxiety and to teach parents how to realize and exploit the educational values afforded by the advancing media technology.
•Parental inefficacy was positively associated with children's screen time.•TV and tablet use were associated with fewer home literacy practices.•Book and computer use were associated with more engagement in home literacy practices.•The findings suggest parents strategically manage children's screen time as a response to their lack of parenting efficacy.•Parents need help to manage their parenting anxiety and use screen technology in educationally productive ways.
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Science Literacy Dibner, Kenne A; Snow, Catherine E
National Academies Press,
10/2016
eBook, Book
Open access
Science is a way of knowing about the world. At once a process, a product, and an institution, science enables people to both engage in the construction of new knowledge as well as use information to ...achieve desired ends. Access to science?whether using knowledge or creating it?necessitates some level of familiarity with the enterprise and practice of science: we refer to this as science literacy.
Science literacy is desirable not only for individuals, but also for the health and well- being of communities and society. More than just basic knowledge of science facts, contemporary definitions of science literacy have expanded to include understandings of scientific processes and practices, familiarity with how science and scientists work, a capacity to weigh and evaluate the products of science, and an ability to engage in civic decisions about the value of science. Although science literacy has traditionally been seen as the responsibility of individuals, individuals are nested within communities that are nested within societies?and, as a result, individual science literacy is limited or enhanced by the circumstances of that nesting.
Science Literacy studies the role of science literacy in public support of science. This report synthesizes the available research literature on science literacy, makes recommendations on the need to improve the understanding of science and scientific research in the United States, and considers the relationship between scientific literacy and support for and use of science and research.
This cluster‐randomized controlled study examined dual language learners (DLLs) in Norway who received a book‐based language intervention program. About 464 DLLs aged 3–5 years in 123 early childhood ...classrooms participated in the study. The children were acquiring Norwegian as their second language in preschool and spoke a variety of first languages at home. They received a researcher‐developed intervention that was organized around loosely scripted, content‐rich shared reading in school and at home. Receiving the intervention had significant impacts on the children’s second‐language skills (effect sizes of d = .25–.66). In addition to supporting second‐language vocabulary and grammar, the program with its focus on perspective taking during shared reading resulted in impacts on children’s ability to shift perspectives and understand others’ emotional states.
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We assessed impacts on classroom quality and on 5 child language and behavioral outcomes of a 2-year teacher professional-development program for publicly funded prekindergarten and kindergarten in ...Chile. This cluster-randomized trial included 64 schools (child N = 1,876). The program incorporated workshops and in-classroom coaching. We found moderate to large positive impacts on observed emotional and instructional support as well as classroom organization in prekindergarten classrooms after 1 year of the program. After 2 years of the program, moderate positive impacts were observed on emotional support and classroom organization. No significant program impacts on child outcomes were detected at posttest (1 marginal effect, an increase in a composite of self-regulation and low problem behaviors, was observed). Professional development for preschool teachers in Chile can improve classroom quality. More intensive curricular approaches are needed for these improvements to translate into effects on children.
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