Context effects of preschools: children's language skills at school entry

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Nina Hogrebe
• Subject Area: General and Domain-Specific Teaching and Learning
• Term: from 2015 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 272964636

The research project explores the relationship between preschool composition and children's language skills at school entry. Children with deprived backgrounds, uneducated parents or an ethnic minority status are especially at-risk of having specific developmental disorders of speech and language or poor language proficiency. This refers to the critical role of the ecological context in which children grow up and the respective quantity and quality of exposure to linguistic input in these contexts. Against this background, observed segregation processes in early childhood education and the subsequent concentration of at-risk children in some preschool settings might impact children's developmental and educational outcomes. The proposed study investigates a) if the proportion of at-risk children in preschool settings affects the language skills of all children and, if so, which composition factors are decisive, and b) if differential effects can be observed for subgroups of children. Using the example of a medium-sized city in North Rhine-Westphalia (Muenster, which has a population of about 300,000), data are taken from the school entry examination (SEE) in the years from 2010/11 to 2014/2015 (n = 12,500 children). The SEE does not only measure children's language competencies but also collects information on various individual-level background characteristics such as family background, migration or biological risk-factors. As it is known which preschool a child attends, it is possible to aggregate the data on setting level. Paper-and-pencil interviews generate additional information on the settings' structural quality and language-oriented activities (n = 172 preschools). Multi-level analyses allow the identification of preschool composition effects on all children's language skills. Further subgroup-analyses are employed to detect differential effects for subpopulations like children without sufficient parental support or bilingual children. Research findings will provide empirical evidence regarding the potentials and limitations of early language education in preschools.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants