Linking Teacher Instruction and Student Achievement in Mathematics: The Role of Teacher Language

Although high-quality early educational environments are thought to be related to the growth of children’s skills in mathematics, relatively little is known about specific aspects of classroom instruction that may promote these abilities. Data from a longitudinal investigation were used to investigate associations between teachers’ language while teaching mathematics and their students’ growth in mathematical skill during the 2nd grade. Specifically, the extent to which mathematics lessons included cognitive-processing language (CPL)—instruction that is rich in references to cognitive processes, metacognition, and requests for remembering—was related to changes in students’ math achievement. Demonstrating the role of the language of instruction, the findings indicated that children whose 2nd-grade teachers included greater amounts of CPL during instruction evidenced greater growth in math fluency and calculation than did their peers whose teachers employed lower levels of CPL.     

Addition in kindergarten: The role of mothers’ and teachers’ language

Data from a longitudinal investigation were used to examine the effects of mothers’ and teachers’ language on children’s developing mathematical competencies during the kindergarten year. Specifically, 1) mothers’ use of metamemory talk, or references to the process of remembering, and 2) teachers’ use of cognitive processing language (CPL), or instruction that encourages deep levels of processing and metacognition, were related to students’ addition skills in kindergarten. The findings indicated that while maternal metamemory talk was associated with children’s mathematical competencies at school entry, teachers’ use of CPL was associated with the amount of growth that students demonstrated across the year, especially regarding strategy use. The results highlight the need for additional research that examines students’ academic trajectories longitudinally as a function of the language to which they are exposed at home and school.     

Accounting for Movement between Childcare Classrooms: Does it Change Teacher Effects Interpretations?

Child care studies that have examined links between teachers' qualifications and children's outcomes often ignore teachers' and children's transitions between classrooms at a center throughout the day and only take into account head teacher qualifications. The objective of this investigation was to examine these traditional assumptions and to compare inferences made from these traditional models to methods accounting for transitions between classrooms and multiple teachers in a classroom. The study examined the receptive language, letter-word identification, and passage comprehension skills of 307 children enrolled in 49 community-based childcare centers serving primarily low-income families in Colorado. Results suggest that nearly one-third of children and over 80% of teachers moved daily between classrooms. Findings also reveal that failure to account for daily transitions between classrooms can affect interpretations of the relationship between teacher qualifications and child outcomes, with the model accounting for movement providing significant improvements in model fit and inference.     

Maternal provision of structure in a deliberate memory task in relation to their preschool children's recall

Strategic remembering emerges gradually during the preschool years. Socialization practices, specifically mother–child social interactions, might provide the foundation for the development of skills necessary for effective organization of information in memory. In the current study, 48 mothers and their 40-month-olds were engaged in the process of remembering (i.e., study and recall) categorically related picture stimuli in a laboratory context. Children’s recall was reliably predicted by the way in which mothers structured both the study and recall periods of the deliberate memory task. Specifically, maternal verbal and physical behaviors that focused on organization of items, such as sorting items into distinct groups and providing the name of a category, were most beneficial in supporting children’s memory. Moreover, some mothers employed a number of different mnemonic techniques that emphasized categorical connections among items, suggesting systematic approaches in the manner in which mothers help children to learn effective ways of remembering.     

The effect of the Preparing Pequeños small-group cognitive instruction program on academic and concurrent social and behavioral outcomes in young Spanish-speaking dual-language learners

Academic achievement for young dual language learners (DLL) is a critically acknowledged problem of national significance that has been understudied. To address this shortage, this study evaluated the effectiveness of Preparing Pequeños, an integrated small-group instruction program designed to promote increased learning for Spanish speaking DLL in language, literacy, and math. The DLL in the randomized Preparing Pequeños intervention classrooms were compared to control DLL with comparable Spanish language delays and in which the school district's core curriculum was being implemented. Intervention teachers and paraprofessionals, as part of Preparing Pequeños, implemented new classroom and time management systems in order to conduct 90 min of small-group instruction four days each week across the school year. In total, 51 control and 52 intervention classrooms participated; pre-test measures were completed with 829 children, with 777 of these children also completing post-test measures (7% attrition). Results showed that intervention teachers and paraprofessionals, as compared to control, showed greater increases in most of the targeted areas of cognitive instruction (d range = 0.60–2.38) and in the use of small groups (d range = 3.32–4.46), progress monitoring (d = 0.17) to inform instruction, and team teaching (d = 1.94). Intervention children, as compared to control, showed significantly greater gains in Spanish oral language, print knowledge, phonological awareness, and phonics with small to large effect sizes (d range = 0.14–0.52). Also, potentially as a result of greater attention to children's individual needs and support for managing their behavior, intervention children, as compared to control, showed greater decreases in school avoidance, anger, and aggression with small effect sizes (d range = −0.22 to −0.29). Results are discussed in relation to the need for greater attention in teachers' training in effective approaches for small-group instruction.     

Teachers' reports of the problem behavior of children in their classrooms

Research examining teachers' judgments of children's behavior has typically used archival data, staged videos, or written vignettes describing children's behavior. The main advantage of using staged videos and written vignettes has been that those methodologies have led to well-controlled studies. The main disadvantage is that little is known about teachers' perceptions of the problems of children in their own classrooms. In the current study. 111 first-, second-, and third-grade teachers described children in their classrooms whose behavior concerned them. Teachers identified significantly more children with externalizing problems than internalizing problems and significantly more boys than girls as having problems that concerned them. However, when teachers identified children as having internalizing problems, they were just as likely to judge them as needing referral as children with externalizing problems. Similarly, when teachers judged children to have problems that concerned them, they were just as likely to judge girls as needing referral as boys.     

Teacher practices as predictors of children's classroom social preference

Students who do not get along with their peers are at elevated risk for academic disengagement and school failure. Research has predominantly focused on factors within such children that contribute to their peer problems. This study considers whether teacher practices also predict social preference for children in that classroom. Participants were 26 elementary school teachers and 490 students in their classrooms followed for one school year. Results suggested that teachers who favored the most academically talented students in the fall had classrooms where children had lower average social preference in the spring after statistical control of children's fall social preference and externalizing behavior problems. Teachers who demonstrated emotionally supportive relationships with students in the fall had classrooms where children had greater possibility of changing their social preference from fall to spring. Although children with high externalizing behaviors tended to experience declining social preference over the course of the school year, teachers' learner-centered practices attenuated this progression. However, teachers' favoring of the most academically talented accentuated the negative relation between externalizing behaviors and social preference. Implications for school psychology practitioners are discussed.     

Using mnemonic images and explicit sound contrasting to help Japanese children learn English alphabet sounds

Although mnemonics have been shown to be effective in remembering letter-sound associations, the use of foreign words as cues for English phonemes had not been investigated. Learning phonemes in Japan is challenging because the Japanese language is based on a different sound unit called mora (mostly consonant-vowel combinations). This study investigated the effectiveness of using mnemonic images utilizing Japanese words as cues for the phonemes, and explicit sound contrasting of phonemic sounds with morae they could be confused with, in facilitating children's acquisition of knowledge about alphabet letter-sound correspondence. The participants were 140 6th-grade Japanese students who were taught phoneme-consonant correspondence, with or without the use of mnemonics or explicit sound contrasting. Analysis of the students’ pre- and post-instruction assessments revealed significant interaction effects between types of instruction provided and instruction phase, indicating better performance in letter-sound association as a consequence of the inclusion of both mnemonics and explicit sound contrasting.     

Mnemonic strategy instruction in coding, processing, and recall of movement-related cues by mentally retarded children

The purpose of study was to examine the differential coding and processing characteristics of two movement cue types in the investigation of the short-term memory of mentally retarded and nonretarded children. The central focus of the study was to determine the effects of formal instruction in the use of a mnemonic versus no instruction with both types of cues in a memory for movement paradigm. The investigation was conducted across two experiments. The main conclusion drawn from Exp. 1 was that movement 'location' cues were coded, processed, and retained by both the mentally retarded and the nonretarded children, but only the former required instruction in the use of a mnemonic to achieve accurate recall. Exp. 2 was fundamentally a replication of Exp. 1 with the exception that movement 'extent' cues were maintained reliable. The results were similar but not exactly the same as those of Exp. 1. Only the mentally retarded children given mnemonic instruction appeared to code, process, and retain movement 'extent' cues over time. The net result of the two experiments was that formal instruction in the use of a mnemonic was of benefit to the mentally retarded subjects and was not necessary for nonretarded subjects to achieve the same level of movement accuracy.     

Preschool language exposure and use: A comparison study of dual-language learners and English monolingual children

This study explored the language experiences of dual language learners (DLL; n = 19) and English monolinguals (EM; n = 13) in preschool classrooms where English is the primary language of instruction and many home languages are present. Using the Language ENvironment Analysis™ system as a primary tool, we quantitatively analysed an average of 34 hours of recordings collected over 5–8 days for each participating child (M_age = 52 months) in six classrooms. Results showed that, during a typical preschool day, DLLs spoke as much as EMs but received less adult talk overall and had more 5-min segments with zero adult–child conversations than their EM peers. Follow-up analyses revealed that teachers generally talked less when children initiated the conversations than when adults initiated the conversations, and this pattern was particularly evident for DLLs. Study implications and future research are discussed.     

Teachers' and students' verbal behaviours during cooperative and small‐group learning

Background. Teachers play a critical role in promoting interactions between students and engaging them in the learning process. This study builds on a study by Hertz‐Lazarowitz and Shachar (1990) who found that during cooperative learning teachers' verbal behaviours were more helpful to and encouraging of their students' efforts while during whole‐class instruction, their verbal behaviours tended to be more authoritarian, rigid, and impersonal. Aim. This study seeks to determine if teachers who implement cooperative learning engage in more facilitative learning interactions with their students than teachers who implement group work only. The study also seeks to determine if students in the cooperative groups model their teachers' behaviours and engage in more positive helping interactions with each other than their peers in the group work groups. Samples. The study involved 26 teachers and 303 students in Grades 8 to10 from 4 large high schools in Brisbane, Australia. Methods. All teachers agreed to establish cooperative, small‐group activities in their classrooms for a unit of work (4 to 6 weeks) once a term for 3 school terms. The teachers were audiotaped twice during these lessons and samples of the students' language, as they worked in their groups, were also collected at the same time. Results. The results show that teachers who implement cooperative learning in their classrooms engage in more mediated‐learning interactions and make fewer disciplinary comments than teachers who implement group work only. Furthermore, the students model many of these interactions in their groups. Conclusions. The study shows that when teachers implement cooperative learning, their verbal behaviour is affected by the organizational structure of the classroom.     

Teachers’ Use of and Attitudes Toward Informational Text in K–5 Classrooms

The purposes of this research were (a) to understand the frequency with which K–5 teachers use informational text in their routine classroom instruction, (b) to understand the percentage of informational text in classroom libraries, and (c) to explore teachers’ attitudes about informational text. Survey data of 318 participants indicated that K–5 teachers used an average of 31.55 minutes (SD = 22.24) of informational text per day and that classroom libraries consisted of an average of 32.77% (SD = 14.16) of informational text. Participants were overwhelmingly positive about the instructional value of informational text but also reported that a lack of time, a lack of resources, and curricular limitations restricted their use of informational text. Implications on how to increase the use of informational text in K–5 classrooms are provided.     

South African Teachers' Experiences of Children in their Classrooms who may have ADHD

This study focused on understanding and explaining how teachers experience children in their classrooms who may have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The study was a qualitative study in which 17 teachers from three different schools in Gauteng, South Africa, were interviewed. Content theme analysis was conducted on the textual data. Findings from the study indicate that (1) the teachers kept children who might have ADHD busy with different activities in order to manage their classrooms more effectively, (2) the teachers believed that children who might have ADHD challenged them, and (3) the teachers believed that they needed to share information with other teachers on how to manage and support children who might have ADHD and also that they needed outside assistance from a specialist. The study points to the complex experiences of teachers who have to deal with children with ADHD in their classrooms and recommends increased collaboration between professionals and teachers.     

The relation between teachers' math talk and the acquisition of number sense within kindergarten classrooms

The aim of the present study was to investigate the relation between teachers' math talk and the acquisition of number sense within kindergarten classrooms. The mathematical language input provided by 35 kindergarten teachers was examined with 9 different input categories. The results of this study indicate that the role of each of these math talk categories is not as straightforward as was hypothesized. Although significant positive relations were found for math talk categories such as cardinality and conventional nominatives, the relations between the categories' calculation and number symbols and children's score on specific number sense tasks were negative. Moreover, a large diversity in math talk was negatively related to kindergartners' number sense acquisition. These results suggest that teachers should be careful and selective with the amount of math talk that they offer to young children.     

Class climate moderates peer relations and emotional adjustment in children with an early history of anxious solitude: a Child X Environment model

Classroom emotional climate was hypothesized to moderate psychosocial adjustment in 1st grade for children with an early childhood history of anxious solitude. Participants were 1,364 children in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and their mothers, child-care providers, and teachers. As anticipated, children with an early childhood history of anxious solitude were more rejected, poorly accepted (boys), and victimized (girls) by peers and demonstrated more depressive symptoms (girls) in 1st-grade classrooms with negative observed emotional climate. Results support a Child x Environment model of children's social and emotional adjustment.     

Learning the functional significance of mnemonic actions: A microgenetic study of strategy acquisition

How children learn to use memory strategies in a microgenetic investigation of learning and metacognition is examined. Seven- and eight-year-olds were given two memory trials with 24 pictures on each of 5 consecutive days. Days 1 and 2 were baseline, practice trials; Day 3 included strategy training; and Days 4 and 5 were unprompted tests of strategy maintenance. All children were taught how to label, rehearse, and group the pictures as well as to self-test their own memories and use blocked recall. Half of the children were shown the actions and told to do them; the other half received elaborated feedback on the usefulness and appropriateness of the techniques for remembering. The elaborated instructional group exhibited significantly greater recall, clustering, strategic study behavior, and metamemory regarding the mnemonic techniques than the other group. Path analysis provided evidence of a causal role of training and metacognitive awareness that mediated the use of sorting and higher recall. The study illustrates how learning the significance and utility of mnemonic techniques can influence children's acquisition of the tactics as self-controlled strategies. In addition, the microgenetic method affords patterns of data across time and experience that permit richer interpretations of strategy learning and memory development.     

Boosting Children's Memory by Training Mothers in the Use of an Elaborative Conversational Style as an Event Unfolds

An experimental methodology was adapted to examine children's language skills and mothers' conversational styles during a specified event as they are linked to the children's event memory. Thirty-nine preschoolers (mean age = 46.82 months) were pretested and grouped as having high or low language skills. Children in each group were then randomly assigned to either maternal-style training or no training conditions. Trained mothers were instructed to use 4 specific conversational techniques to enhance children's understanding of unfolding events: Wh- questions, associations, follow-ins, and positive evaluations. When observed engaging with their children in a specially constructed camping activity, trained mothers did indeed use these elements of style more than untrained mothers. Moreover, assessments of the children's memory after 1-day- and 3-week-delay intervals indicated substantial effects of both maternal training and children's language skills on remembering.     

Perceptual,language, and academic achievement of English,spanish, and navajo speaking children referred for special classes

The purpose of this study was to determine the perceptual language and academic achievement functions of English, Spanish, and Navajo children experiencing learning problems and referred for placement into special education classes. Those test variables which discriminated among the native English-speaking children and the children who spoke Spanish or Navajo natively were, as predicted, those tasks which involved knowledge of the linguistic rules of English. It would seem that, taken as a group, the school learning problems experienced by the native Spanish- or Navajo-speaking children were the result of their limited linguistic competence in English, the language of instruction in their classrooms.     

Microcomputers in schools: Impact on the social life of elementary classrooms

Microcomputers are becoming increasingly available to schools, but little research is available concerning the impact of this technology for children. Two studies were conducted to examine some possible social effects of the use of microcomputers in elementary school classrooms where children are learning to program in LOGO. First, the task-related interaction that children engaged in with each other was observed and recorded in two classrooms (8- to 9-year-old s, and 10- to 11-year-olds) as the children worked on both computer and non-computer tasks. The children in both classrooms were significantly more likely to collaborate with each other when they worked with the computers, when compared with their interaction over other classroom tasks. The second study examined children's perceptions of their peers as resources for help with a variety of classroom tasks. When compared with other work, the computer context was the one where children more consistently identified certain of their peers as resources for help.     

The relations between sex-typed play and preschoolers' social behavior

For decades toy choice has been a very popular measure of children's sex-role adoption. In the present study, the relations between choice of masculine, neutral, or feminine toys and other social behaviors (sex typed and non-sex typed) were examined. The social behaviors (socializing, requesting assistance, prosocial behaviors, aggressive/defensive behaviors) and toy choices of 33 preschool children were observed in their classrooms. Only two behaviors were found to be sex typed (socializing with peers and spontaneous prosocial behavior), and both of these behaviors were related to toy choice. Toy choice was also related to helping. Among boys, masculine toy choice was associated with requesting assistance from teachers. When toy choice was classified as masculine, androgynous, and feminine, only sociability toward peers was related to toy choice. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the continued use of toy choice as a measure of sex-role adoption.The authors wish to express their gratitude to Rene Dodez for her assistance in data analysis and to the children and teachers at the Child Study Laboratory. We also appreciate the contributions of Drs. Laurie Chassin, Jerry Harris, Susan Somerville, Sharlene Wolchik, and Antonette Zeiss. This research was completed by the first author in partial fulfillment of the masters of arts degree at Arizona State University.