Early childhood educators’ understanding of early communication: Application to their work with young children

Abstract

Young children need rich learning experiences to maximize their potential. Early childhood educators (ECEs) working in childcare have knowledge of individual children as well as skills and professional knowledge that afford opportunities to provide language-rich environments for learning. To successfully work in partnership with ECEs, speech-language pathologists need to understand what they know about early communication development and how they apply it in their work. This study explored ECEs' understanding of early communication development in childcare contexts, and how they related this to the education and care they provided. In this exploratory study we conducted three focus groups with 19 ECEs who were employed in eight different childcare centres in low socio-economic areas in metropolitan Adelaide, South Australia. Data were analysed thematically revealing three core themes: 'Knowing and doing in context'; 'ECEs' role'; and 'ECEs' challenges'. Participants articulated understanding of early communication development and the importance of strong relationships between ECEs, children and their families. These ECEs' skills and knowledge of children in their care was the basis from which they provided language-rich learning environments with individually tailored educational programmes to support all children, including those experiencing communication difficulties. They highlighted challenges in delivering this care, including the need for more explicit support from speech-language pathologists. There is potential to further develop interdisciplinary partnerships between ECEs in childcare and other professionals, such as speech-language pathologists, to maximize early developmental opportunities for children attending childcare.

Evaluating the Elklan Talking Matters Programme: Exploring the impact of a training programme for early years professionals on pre-school children’s language development

“…The KCP was consistently on site with collaborative relationships with colleagues already in place. This supports Brebner et al (2016) in the value of consistent collaborative relationship between the trainer and trainees.…”

“…There was a statistically significant increase in the use of one communication facilitating strategy and a decrease in their use of one conversation-hindering behaviour. Brebner et al (2016) developed a professional development programme for early years practitioners across four childcare settings where the programme was delivered for two days a week over a period of eight weeks. The programme was individualized to the practitioners and the settings in terms of learning goals and support across knowledge of and practice in supporting all children in their language development.…”

The oral language and emergent literacy skills of preschoolers: Early childhood teachers’ self‐reported role, knowledge and confidence

“…The data suggest that our participants attach strong significance to their role in children's language development but lack confidence and do not consider that they have adequate knowledge about developmental language milestones to identify children with or at risk for language difficulties. Our findings support previous evidence (Brebner et al., 2017 , 2016 ; Mroz, 2006a ; Scarinci et al., 2015 ) that ECTs would like further training in identifying children whose language skills may not be developing as expected. An important finding in the current study was the apparent reticence of ECTs to raise apprehensions about a child's language ability with a parent.…”

“…International studies have also revealed limited content about children's language development in preservice training courses that provide ECTs with their initial preparation that qualifies them to work as an ECT (Letts & Hall, 2003;Mroz, 2006a,b). Consistent with this, research has demonstrated that ECTs desire more training about language development (Letts & Hall, 2003;Mroz, 2006b), atypical language development and specifically, how best to support and identify children with language and other communication difficulties (Brebner et al, 2016(Brebner et al, , 2017Mroz, 2006a;Scarinci et al, 2015). These perceived knowledge gaps have been reported to affect ECTs' confidence in their knowledge about children's language development (Letts & Hall, 2003;Mroz, 2006a,b).…”

Futuristic applications of voice user interference on child language development

“…For example, a VUI's dialogic interactions are pre-defined, and the efficacy of a user's interaction with the VUI is reliant on the child answering in a manner that is predictable by the VUIs designers. Thus, when a child responds in an unexpected way, the VUI cannot reliably provide comprehensible feedback [8].…”