Some thoughts about my research...
General Topic: Literacy, Language,
Play and Social-Emotional Development in Early Childhood
I. Question and Hypothesis
Question #1: What is the impact of a child’s socioeconomic status on their literacy development, as evidenced by activities during play?
Hypothesis: I believe that this study will show a correlation between a child’s SES and their oral and linguistic patterns during play activities. It is my contention that children will “script” their play according to personal events, school experiences and daily occurrences in their lives (Schank and Abelson, 1977). Their linguistic and conversational patterns, along with their oral language, will reflect their backgrounds. There will also be a causal connection between the nature of a child’s environment and the characteristics of their language development. I hope that one of the implications of this kind of study would be increased research and funding directed towards the field of play (specifically links between play and literacy). The oral language and linguistic patterns during play will provide greater information about a child’s background and what s/he is bringing culturally to the classroom; ultimately, these findings have a great potential to provide a more thorough literacy profile of children and thus inform instructional decisions made by teachers.
II. Background
After teaching children ages four-eight for about nine years, I became very interested in literacy development. These years are foundational in terms of language and cognitive development. Children are not only learning to decode and encode words; they are learning to interpret, “decode” and make sense of the world around them (Cohen, 2004). Although the classroom is a multi-faceted framework in which to explore these issues, the school playground provides a more natural environment in which to observe the communicative and social tendencies among students. While I was a teacher, I observed play activities; during these observations, I saw more varied dimensions to each child than I had in the classroom. For my students and others, the playground was a social gathering place of varied discourse. It was during recess that I was able to record these authentic, relatively unstructured literacy activities and discourse. Many of the observed “playground literacies” served to inform some of my instructional decisions. Some of these “playground literacies” were: letter writing between students, designing of playground maps or using new vocabulary and/or syntactic structures when calling to each other from the slide. These events contributed to the literacy profiles I created for each student in my class. It made me realize that, when viewing students as readers and writers, it is critical to understand the ways in which they weave language into their worlds of play. Social and recreational activities give a very different (and perhaps more authentic) view of a child’s communicative skills.
According to Macoby and Jacklin (1974), oral language “scripts” are co-constructed and tell observers a great deal about a child’s world. To this effect, they write that, “Children use their personal and cultural knowledge of events (shopping, cooking, weddings, street scenes, and television settings) to build scripts together. Using the outline of their daily life experiences, children create new scripts through shared predictability and collaborative novelty” (116). This notion inspired me to further research the ways in which these “scripts” can be studied during play, to further understand language development as it relates to a child’s background and SES status.
III. Constructs and Variables
There are four essential constructs within this study: socioeconomic status (SES), literacy development, play and impact. SES is being defined as the interaction between social and economic factors in a child’s home environment. “Literacy development” is being defined as linguistic patterns, oral and written language as they relate to a student’s cognitive development. “Play” is being defined as a period of time during or after school in which children are engaged in unstructured activities (relative to classroom lessons). Play can be suggested by an adult or it can be completely child governed; it can be functional, real, game-related or imaginative in nature. “Impact” is being defined as the degree to which elements of a child’s SES influences their language and literacy during play. Specifically, this study will look at the ways in which these factors contribute to the vocabulary and background that a child brings to school. Within SES, the following are the variables: parent/guardian job(s) (or access to jobs), parent/guardian educational level, and income. Within the construct “literacy development,” the variables are: home language, any learning disabilities and classroom curriculum (in terms of the way it governs students’ academic language or subject matter).
Two constructs are critical in terms of specifically measurement. Socioeconomic status will be measured by school records and/or parent self-reports of income, education and job. Literacy development measurements will be discussed below.
IV. Design of Investigation
This investigation will study children’s “playground literacies” in 4 different schools. Two schools will be located in a low SES community and two will be from a high SES community. The study will encompass between 80-100 children. Teachers and researchers will have coding sheets to record the different kids “playground literacies.” Researchers will also use the Oral Language Acquisition Inventory: Linking Research and Theory to Assessment and Instruction. & The Oracy Instructional Guide, Pre-K - Grade 3. This is a research-based assessment, aimed specifically at gauging a child’s developing oral language. Oral language will also be measured through analysis and measurement of Mean Length Utterances.
V. References
Cohen, Jonathan. (2001) Introduction. In Jonathan Cohen (Ed.), Caring
Classrooms/Intelligent Schools: The Social Emotional Education of
Young Children (3-29).
Gentile, L. The Oral Language Acquisition Inventory (OLAI): Linking Research and
Theory to Assessment and Instruction,
Maccoby, E.E. and C.T. Jacklin. The Psychology of Sex Differences.
Oliver, S. and Klugman, E. (2007) “Building a Play Research Agenda: What Do
We Know About Play? What New Questions Do We Need to Ask?” Exchange, 14-17.
Roskos, K., and Christie, J. (2004). “Examining the play-literacy interface: A critical
review and future directions” in Edward Zigler, Dorothy G. Singer, and
Sandra J. Bishop-Josef’s Children’s play: the roots of reading.
DC: Zero to Three Press. 116.
Schank, R. and R. Abelson. Scripts, plans, goals and understanding: An inquiry
into human knowledge.
I. Question and Hypothesis
Question #2: Is there a relationship between social-emotional learning (SEL) programs in schools and the literacy development of children that attend those schools?
Hypothesis: My hypothesis is that there will be a correlation between schools that are successfully implementing SEL curriculum and the literacy development of children who engage in this curriculum. I believe that the study will show that the use of SEL curriculum will strongly influence classroom and school culture, which will then impact literacy development. Many key ideas within SEL curriculum involve perspective taking, reflection and self-monitoring; these values/skills directly correlate with skills needed for many literacy tasks.
II. Background
As a teacher for almost nine years, I became highly attuned to the classroom culture—both with my students and in other classrooms. As a teacher, I worked hard to co-create a positive, safe and vibrant classroom culture where students felt comfortable taking academic and intellectual risks. This classroom culture was one of my strengths as a teacher. I think most teachers crave this kind of classroom culture. However, I also think that many teachers fall into power struggles with students. Sometimes, I think that teachers tend to alienate the “bad behaved kids,” instead of figuring out how to integrate them back into the classroom as leaders. This has a direct impact on the academic (specifically literacy) progress of students. At a number of schools, I saw a direct correlation between the kinds of social-emotional culture established in a classroom and the literacy achievement of those students. However, I would like to turn these casual observations into a more systematized investigation.
I hope that one of the implications of this kind of study would be increased attention to the seminal importance of SEL curriculum. I hope that this kind of investigation would encourage teachers and practitioners to realize the symbiotic relationship between literacy development and social-emotional development. A major implication of this study could be the requirement of these kinds of programs in schools, as well as funding for the required teacher training.
III. Constructs and Variables
The central constructs in this study are social emotional learning (SEL) educational programs, students’ SEL competence and literacy development. Jonathan Cohen (2001), director of The Center for Social and Emotional Education at Teachers College, believes that, “SEL refers to the process and methods with use to promote social and emotional competence” (4). This is measured by the ability to “understand process, manage, and express the social and emotional aspects of our lives” (Cohen, 2001, 5). This is the operational definition for the SEL construct. The “literacy development” construct will be measured by 3 research-based literacy assessments. This will vary depending on the ages of students and the developmental levels.
One of the key variables in this study will be teacher training and effectiveness (in terms of how well they are implementing SEL curriculum). Another variable will be kids who are non-verbal or who have just entered school. Often, these kids have a particularly hard time integrating rapidly into the classroom community. The last variable will be the school leadership since the administration often directs the overall implementation of programs, as well as the general culture of the school.
IV. Design of Investigation
This investigation will take place at five schools located in urban areas. Three schools will have an identified and “required” SEL curriculum. Two schools will not have these curriculums (although teachers may choose to create their own, which could be a variable). Ideally, this would be a two year study so that researchers could track the development of the students over more than one academic year. Ideally, this would be a longitudinal study over the course of ten years.
In conducting this study, parent, teacher, administrator and student interviews will be conducted in order to understand the adult concept of SEL at the school sites. These interviews will also ask the adults to reflect on the SEL of the school community. Researchers will have coding sheets to guide the observations at schools (especially in terms of looking for certain language or behavior characteristics. As stated in section III, the “literacy development” construct will be measured by 3 research-based assessments that will correspond to the academic level of the child (e.g.: an alphabet sound assessment for Kindergarteners but a comprehension assessment for 4th graders).
V. References
Cohen, Jonathan. (2001) Introduction. In Jonathan Cohen (Ed.), Caring
Classrooms/Intelligent Schools: The Social Emotional Education of
Young Children (3-29).
Mungo, D., and Rosenblitt, D. (2001) “Helping Emotionally Vulnerable Children:
Moving Toward and Empathetic Orientation in the Classroom.” In Jonathan
Cohen (Ed.), Caring Classrooms/Intelligent Schools: The Social Emotional Education of Young Children (59-76).
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