Effective differentiation Practices: A systematic review and meta-analysis of studies on the cognitive effects of differentiation practices in primary education.

In this paper, we investigated whether student reading comprehension could be improved with help of a teacher Professional Development (PD) program targeting goals, data use, and instruction. The effect of this PD program on 2nd-and 3rd-grade student achievement was examined using a pretest-posttest control group design. Applying propensity score matching, 35 groups in the experimental condition were matched to 35 control groups. Students in the experimental condition (n = 420) scored significantly higher on a standardized assessment than the control condition (n = 399), the effect size being d = .37. No differential effects of the PD program were found in relation to initial reading performance or grade. Different model specifications yielded similar albeit smaller effect sizes (d = .29 and d = .30). At the end of the program, students in the experimental condition were more than half a year ahead of students in the control condition.

Teacher-child interactions are the most important factor that determines the quality of early-childhood education. A systematic review was conducted to gain a better understanding of the nature of teacher-child interactions that multilingual children are exposed to, and of how they differ from teacherchild interactions of monolingual children. Thirty-one studies were included. The included studies (a) mainly focused on multilingual children with low language proficiency in the majority language and (b) hardly compared between monolingual and multilingual children. The review shows that teacher-child interactions of multilingual children are comparable to the interactions of monolingual children, although teachers do adopt different strategies to facilitate the development of multilingual children, such as the use of the home language and nonverbal communication to support understanding. Worryingly, several studies indicate that multilingual children are exposed to unequal learning opportunities compared with their monolingual peers.

We explored links between complexity of teacher-child verbal interaction and child language and literacy outcomes in fifteen whole-class read-aloud sessions in Chilean kindergarten classrooms serving children from low socioeconomic backgrounds. We coded teacher and child turns for function (initiation, response, and follow-up), type (e.g., open vs. closed questions), and complexity (literal vs. inferential initiations/responses; evaluative vs. elaborative follow-ups). Almost half of the teacher-child talk was inferential, and elaborative follow-ups occurred only occasionally. Repeated patterns of verbal interaction were detected, typically with a teacher initiation/child response/teacher follow-up format; these could be either consistently literal, consistently inferential, or mixed (containing a shift up/down in complexity). The proportion of inferential teacher-child talk and the occurrence of mixed patterns was positively related to child vocabulary and symbolic understanding. Results highlight the relevance of inferential talk during read-alouds, and of the adjustment of language complexity to the child's level of understanding.

The aim of the study was to explore teacher-child interaction in 24 whole-class read-aloud sessions in Chilean kindergarten classrooms serving children from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Fifteen sessions focused on story meaning, and nine focused on language coding/decoding. We coded teacher and child turns for their function (i.e., teacher initiation, child response, teacher follow-up), type (e.g., open/closed questions, directives; confirmation, elaboration), and complexity (i.e., literal/low vs. inferential/high language). We found considerable variability in reading approaches. Teachers in meaning-oriented sessions initiated more inferential conversations, whereas in code-oriented sessions the majority of initiations had low complexity. Confirmations were the most recurrent follow-up type, while elaborations occurred mainly during inferential conversations. Overall, teachers strongly determined the complexity of the conversation by means of their initiations. The study expands Anglo-American and European findings to the Latin American context, illustrating the commonality of read-alouds as early childhood education practice and underscoring that teachers can engage children from low socioeconomic backgrounds in cognitively challenging conversations.