Abstract
In their excellent review paper, Abbot-Smith and colleagues call for an emphasis on whole-classroom, tier-1 intervention approaches to supporting conversational skills in the preschool and primary grades. In our commentary, we discuss the benefits of and challenges to classroom conversation, particularly during the school transition period (ages 2 through 6), and we highlight several pathways that might help teachers foster more conversation with young children.
The excellent review paper by Abbot-Smith et al. (2023) offers a thoughtful and thorough synthesis of the empirical literature on intervention strategies for building conversational skills among children. The authors discovered that most of the published research in this area has focused on relatively unique populations of children, but that even so, multiple different intervention approaches have effectively supported these skills. Consequently, the authors recommend a whole-classroom, tier-1 intervention approach to supporting conversational skills in the preschool and primary grades. We deeply agree with this recommendation, particularly during the school transition period (i.e. ages 2 through 6), when children’s classroom talk has emerged as the single strongest predictor of their language (Justice et al., 2018), which in turn supports myriad other outcomes (Dickinson et al., 2010). In our commentary, we address some essential questions around what would be needed to realize the promise of classroom conversation.
What kinds of classroom conversations are needed?
Recent research suggests that more extended exchanges, including at least four conversational turns (e.g. teacher remark, child response, teacher feedback, and child response), may be uniquely supportive of children’s language development in early learning classrooms (Cabell et al., 2015) because they afford the elaboration and exploration of ideas. Moreover, instructional conversations that help children learn and use new words, reflect on and share new ideas, and receive feedback on their understanding may be particularly essential for the mastery of vocabulary, text comprehension, and science and mathematics concepts (Chaparro-Moreno et al., 2023).
To what extent are early learning classrooms rich in conversations?
Unfortunately, extended, rich conversations on any topic are relatively rare in many early-learning classrooms (Cabell et al., 2015; Deshmukh et al., 2022). For example, national-level American data from Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) observations show minimal analytical talk, rich and descriptive language, or meaningful feedback in early learning classrooms, with average scores falling around a 2 on a scale from 1 to 7 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [DHHS], 2023). Teasing apart conversations, even during instruction, reveals that teachers generally prefer closed-ended prompts (i.e. one correct answer, responses generally one to two words) and managerial talk (e.g. ‘Please sit down’, ‘The marker needs to be in the cup’) to open-ended prompts (e.g. ‘Tell me more about the picture you’ve drawn’ (Gest et al., 2006). Furthermore, after teachers pose a prompt, they generally take answers from just one or two children, calling on children whom they expect will have the correct answer; this approach limits the visibility of misconceptions and misunderstandings (Hindman et al., 2019). And teachers’ feedback is fairly limited, often featuring a general evaluation (e.g. ‘Good job’) and very simple responses such as repeating children’s remarks; in contrast, feedback that expands children’s ideas or syntax, introduces new words, or poses follow-up questions is relatively rare (Hindman et al., 2021; Hindman, Farrow, & Wasik, 2022).
Why are extended conversations rare in early and primary classrooms?
Extended conversations are inherently difficult in early learning classrooms for many reasons. First, as Abbot-Smith and colleagues detail, young children are still building vocabulary and pragmatic knowledge as well as executive functioning skills (e.g. turn-taking and topic tracking). Consequently, children’s conversational turns may include long pauses, unnecessary repetition, omitted background information, and interruptions of others’ turns, complicating contingent give-and-take (Hindman, Wasik, & Anderson, 2022). Second, teachers serve many diverse children at once with a wide array of language skills among them. Teacher-child ratios generally range from 1 adult to 6 children for toddlers to 1 adult for 8 or 9 children for preschoolers, and 1 adult to 25–30 children in kindergarten; these classroom structures present many voices to integrate into conversations. Third, teachers – even at the 2-year-old level – often juggle multiple curricular goals and licensing standards in any given day, potentially limiting time for conversation.
How could conversations be better supported in early classrooms?
We see an enduring shift in the nature and extent of child talk in early learning classrooms as fundamentally resting on two pillars of classroom practice: teaching children how to talk together and offering rich content to talk about; supporting either would necessitate substantial investments and efforts to help early learning educators in this work. First, early learning educators would need to explicitly coach children on how to wait, listen, and share their own thoughts. Teachers would also need to move beyond common management routines (e.g. ‘Keep a bubble in your mouth’ or ‘Voices off’) that maintain classroom organization through restricting child talk toward those that instead foster productive participation. Second, teachers would need engaging content to discuss over time with children, sustaining child interest while building their background knowledge and vocabulary on the topic. Strategically coordinated books, hands-on manipulatives, and activities would be essential.
Professional development
Professional development (PD) can help early learning educators increase classroom conversations (e.g. August et al., 2023; Crawford et al., 2022; Marulis & Neuman, 2010; Pianta et al., 2017; Timperley et al., 2021; Wasik & Hindman, 2020). Effective PD models often provide ample child-friendly, culturally sustaining books and book-related activities as hubs for conversation because books can introduce children to information outside of their daily experience, through rich and complex language, often with pictures to support comprehension. PD typically involves workshops or coursework, and individualized coaching from a master educator, often over a half or full academic year (Schacter, 2015). As such, conversation-building teacher PD is resource-intensive and, if delivered at scale, will require a significant and sustained economic investment.
Workforce stabilization
However, without stabilizing the early childhood workforce in the United States (and internationally), the benefits of PD will be limited. Even before COVID, high levels of stress undermined teachers’ learning of new interactive strategies; for example, half of early learning teachers reported high-stress levels, and one-third noted meaningful levels of depression (Elharake et al., 2022; Hindman & Bustamante, 2019; Whitaker et al., 2015). Further, high year-to-year turnover meant the consistent loss of teacher knowledge and training. In one American state (Louisiana), one-third (37%) of early childhood educators and nearly one-half (46%) of lead childcare teachers left their program between the 2017–2018 and 2018–2019 academic years (Bassok et al., 2021). Since COVID, these challenges have only intensified; in one poll, most (69%) early educators surveyed felt the pandemic had exacerbated challenges around recruiting and retaining qualified staff (National Association for the Education of Young Children [NAEYC], 2020).
A key driver of this instability is that early learning teachers earn far lower salaries and fewer nonsalary benefits than K-12 teachers, even in the best-funded state prekindergarten programs (Caven et al., 2021; Kilander et al., 2022). In the United States, the median hourly wage for preschool teachers was $14.67 in 2022. Among childcare workers, the rate was even lower at $11.65 per hour (Sullivan, 2021), leaving half likely to be eligible for public assistance (National Academies Press, 2015). Thus, greater investment, especially economically, in this workforce is essential for enhancing elements of quality such as classroom conversation.
Conclusion
The effort to foster more teacher-child conversation in classrooms, and particularly more child talk, is an enduring one. The outstanding work by Abbot-Smith and colleagues draws additional attention to this important issue, and we hope that the time may be right for sizable and strategic investments to strengthen and stabilize this workforce.
Footnotes
Author contributions
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
