Chapter 12. Using a storytelling/story-acting practice to promote narrative and other decontextualized language skills in disadvantaged children

The Impact of Center-Based Childcare Attendance on Early Child Development: Evidence From the French Elfe Cohort

Demography ◽

10.1215/00703370-8977274 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Lawrence M. Berger ◽

Lidia Panico ◽

Anne Solaz

Keyword(s):

Child Development ◽

Motor Skills ◽

Negative Impact ◽

Positive Impact ◽

Language Skills ◽

The United States ◽

Small Scale ◽

High Quality ◽

Disadvantaged Children ◽

The Impact

Abstract Proponents of early childhood education and care programs cite evidence that high-quality center-based childcare has positive impacts on child development, particularly for disadvantaged children. However, much of this evidence stems from randomized evaluations of small-scale intensive programs based in the United States and other Anglo/English-speaking countries. Evidence is more mixed with respect to widespread or universal center-based childcare provision. In addition, most evidence is based on childcare experiences of 3- to 5-year-old children; less is known about the impact of center-based care in earlier childhood. The French context is particularly suited to such interrogation because the majority of French children who attend center-based care do so in high-quality, state-funded, state-regulated centers, known as crèches, and before age 3. We use data from a large, nationally representative French birth cohort, the Étude Longitudinale Français depuis l'Enfance (Elfe), and an instrumental variables strategy that leverages exogenous variation in both birth quarter and local crèche supply to estimate whether crèche attendance at age 1 has an impact on language, motor skills, and child behavior at age 2. Results indicate that crèche attendance has a positive impact on language skills, no impact on motor skills, and a negative impact on behavior. Moreover, the positive impact on language skills is particularly concentrated among disadvantaged children. This implies that facilitating increased crèche access among disadvantaged families may hold potential for decreasing early socioeconomic disparities in language development and, given the importance of early development for later-life outcomes, thereby have an impact on long-term population inequalities.

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Teaching Reading and Language to the Disadvantaged— What We Have Learned from Field Research

Harvard Educational Review ◽

10.17763/haer.47.4.51431w6022u51015 ◽

1977 ◽

Vol 47 (4) ◽

pp. 518-543 ◽

Cited By ~ 190

Author(s):

Wesley Becker

Keyword(s):

Positive Affect ◽

Language Skills ◽

Field Research ◽

Educational Programs ◽

Compensatory Education ◽

Teaching Reading ◽

Distinctive Features ◽

Disadvantaged Children ◽

Conceptual Reasoning ◽

The University

In late 1967, Project Follow Through was reorganized to select, test, and evaluate promising but different educational programs for disadvantaged youngsters in the first three grades. Now, nearly ten years later, the completed evaluations of Follow Through suggest that one of these programs, the University of Oregon's Direct Instruction Model, has produced significant gains in measures of positive affect, basic skills, and conceptual reasoning. In this article, Wesley Becker discusses the distinctive features of this model—its underlying assumptions and basic teaching components. He then explores the implications of teaching reading and language skills to economically disadvantaged children and advocates that immediate steps be taken to teach vocabulary systematically throughout the school years. Viewing this goal as essential for compensatory education, he concludes with an analysis of how vocabulary instruction might best be implemented.

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Early talk boost: A targeted intervention for three year old children with delayed language development

Child Language Teaching and Therapy ◽

10.1177/0265659018755526 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 34 (1) ◽

pp. 53-62 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Louisa Reeves ◽

Mary Hartshorne ◽

Rachael Black ◽

Jill Atkinson ◽

Amanda Baxter ◽

...

Keyword(s):

School Readiness ◽

Language Skills ◽

School Education ◽

Evidence Based ◽

Disadvantaged Children ◽

Socially Disadvantaged ◽

The United Kingdom ◽

Socially Disadvantaged Children ◽

And Control ◽

Delayed Language Development

Pre-school education has been greatly expanded in the United Kingdom in the last two decades and further expansion is planned. Its provision allows parents to take up employment thus increasing family incomes and it is expected to narrow the gap between socially disadvantaged children and their peers. The latter is important as studies have shown that many children start school with poor language skills which threaten their attainment. Studies of the effects of pre-school education on the progress of disadvantaged children have shown inconsistent results and nurseries have been criticised by Ofsted for failing to prepare children for school entry. Nurseries and their staff have been found to vary in quality and in the level of qualifications they have. The provision of evidence based programmes which nursery staff may be trained to use may represent one means of improving their ability and improving the outcomes for pre-school children. We report an effectiveness study of Early Talk Boost a programme for use by nursery staff to improve language skills in three year olds. Nurseries were randomly assigned to use the programme or to act as waiting controls (who received the intervention in the following term). Children were assessed before and three months later after the completion of the programme. The progress of treated and control children differed significantly. Age equivalent scores showed treated children had gained 4.93 months, control children had gained only 2.33 months. We conclude that Early Talk Boost can be effective in advancing the language skills of socially disadvantaged children and improve their school readiness.

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