|
Field
Trial Start Date
|
Before
May 01, 2019
|
After
July 01, 2021
|
|
Field
Trial End Date
|
Before
December 31, 2020
|
After
December 31, 2022
|
|
Field
Last Published
|
Before
September 23, 2019 04:16 PM
|
After
October 22, 2021 08:53 AM
|
|
Field
Intervention (Public)
|
Before
Intervention
Talking Time is an oral language intervention with, as a primary outcome, the language and communication development of preschool children. In this study it is delivered by appropriately trained educational professionals who have received specific professional development (PD) from the research team. There is also strong evidence to suggest that oral language skills impact on social, emotional development (SED) and so we examine this possibility by including a measure of SED as a secondary outcome.
The Talking Time arm of the study will be compared with a "Business as usual" arm. It is predicted that there will be no differential impacts on the non-targeted skills (non-verbal ability and phonology).
The intervention will run from January to April 2020.
Intervention Content: The manualised component of the intervention will be based on Talking Time. Three main activities will be included in the trial:
1. Acting Out involves a series of dramatic activities and games using target vocabulary.
2. Story Talk supports children in talking about the pictures in a book to draw inferences using language and to develop complex vocabulary and grammar.
3. The Hexagon Game provides children with a visual stimulus to support the construction of personal oral narratives.
Acting out and Story talk will be implemented over the full intervention period. The Hexagon game, which emphasises narrative language, will be added to the range of activities in week 8 of the intervention period (as per original protocol).
The PD element of the trial will include three components:
1. Materials and training to prepare practitioners to use the intervention activities and materials, and make the language-learning principles behind them explicit. TT already includes training guidance and videos of staff carrying out the activities and this will serve as the starting point, supplemented by additional DVD footage to be developed and piloted.
2. Support sessions from mentors to provide feedback on TT practice, with a focus on recognition and acknowledgement of specific language supporting behaviours, with the aim of increasing both teachers’ understanding of the principles behind these behaviours and the likelihood that they will apply them within their practice with other activities.
3. In addition to mentor-supported analysis of practice, teachers will also be encouraged to discuss and share practice with each other, to build a strong "community of practice" using the TT intervention.
Delivery: In the autumn term (2019) all classes will be provided with a whole school CPD session on the impact of early oral language delivered by the PIs. This session will also outline the assessment measures that will be used in the classes. The intervention group will receive a further three delivery sessions (one covering each of the three activities and associated principles) and will be provided with exemplar materials to support the activities. Training will be provided by independent appropriately qualified trainers.
Posttest data will be collected in the summer term (2020) on completion of intervention. This provides the necessary time gap to conform with test restrictions for the standardised measures.
End of intervention:
To acknowledge their involvement all participating schools will be given a book token following successful collection of the follow-up data. Following the post-test data collection BAU classes will be provided with the intervention materials and the option of a training session by both the PI or CoIs. A final interactive conference will be held for all participating schools in the north and the south.
|
After
Intervention
Talking Time is an oral language intervention with, as a primary outcome, the language and communication development of preschool children. In this study it is delivered by appropriately trained educational professionals who have received specific professional development (PD) from the research team. There is also strong evidence to suggest that oral language skills impact on social, emotional development (SED) and so we examine this possibility by including a measure of SED as a secondary outcome.
The Talking Time arm of the study will be compared with a "Business as usual" arm. It is predicted that there will be no differential impacts on the non-targeted skills (non-verbal ability and phonology).
The intervention will run from January to May 2022.
Intervention Content: The manualised component of the intervention will be based on Talking Time. Three main activities will be included in the trial:
1. Word Play involves a series of dramatic activities and games using target vocabulary.
2. Story Conversations supports children in talking about the pictures in a book to draw inferences using language and to develop complex vocabulary and grammar.
3. The Hexagon Game provides children with a visual stimulus to support the construction of personal oral narratives.
Acting out and Story talk will be implemented over the full intervention period. The Hexagon game, which emphasises narrative language, will be added to the range of activities in week 8 of the intervention period (as per original protocol).
The PD element of the trial will include three components:
1. Materials and training to prepare practitioners to use the intervention activities and materials, and make the language-learning principles behind them explicit. TT already includes training guidance and videos of staff carrying out the activities and this will serve as the starting point, supplemented by additional DVD footage to be developed and piloted.
2. Support sessions from mentors to provide feedback on TT practice, with a focus on recognition and acknowledgement of specific language supporting behaviours, with the aim of increasing both teachers’ understanding of the principles behind these behaviours and the likelihood that they will apply them within their practice with other activities.
3. In addition to mentor-supported analysis of practice, teachers will also be encouraged to discuss and share practice with each other, to build a strong "community of practice" using the TT intervention.
Delivery: In the autumn term (2021) all classes will be provided with a whole school CPD session on the impact of early oral language delivered by the PIs. This session will also outline the assessment measures that will be used in the classes. The intervention group will receive a further three delivery sessions (one covering each of the three activities and associated principles) and will be provided with exemplar materials to support the activities. Training will be provided by independent appropriately qualified trainers.
Posttest data will be collected in the summer term (2022) on completion of intervention. This provides the necessary time gap to conform with test restrictions for the standardised measures.
End of intervention:
To acknowledge their involvement all participating schools will be given story books following successful collection of the follow-up data. Following the post-test data collection BAU classes will be provided with the intervention materials and the option of a training session by both the PI or CoIs. A final interactive conference will be held for all participating schools in the north and the south.
|
|
Field
Intervention Start Date
|
Before
January 01, 2020
|
After
January 01, 2022
|
|
Field
Intervention End Date
|
Before
April 30, 2020
|
After
May 27, 2022
|
|
Field
Primary Outcomes (End Points)
|
Before
Child level: Oral language (vocabulary, narrative and receptive language) will be measured by a battery of standardised assessments that are commonly used in the literature and administered to children individually. These measures have been standardised on a representative UK population and the BAS3 provides Rasch ability scores to ensure that progress can be benchmarked in relation to item difficulty. Using the BAS3 for both verbal and nonverbal outcomes has the added benefit of consistency of standardisation across key targeted and non-targeted skills.
The battery consists of: Naming Vocabulary and Verbal Comprehension subtests from the British Ability Scales: 3rd edition (BAS3; Elliot & Smith, 2012); a bespoke list of vocabulary words taken from the Object and Action Naming Battery (Druks & Masterson, 2000), sentence repetition from the Grammar and Phonology Screening test (GAPS; Gardner, Froud, McClelland & van der Lely, 2006) and the Bus Story test (Renfrew, 1995).
Additionally, parent report of child language will be measured by a shortened version of the Language Use Inventory (LUI; O’Neill, 2009)..
Setting level: Quality of classroom language learning environment, interactions and opportunities measured by observation using the Communication Supporting Classroom Observation Tool (CSCOT) (Dockrell et al., 2012), and the language scales of the Early Childhood Environment Rating (ECERS) scales (ECERS-3; Harms et al., 2015), the ECERS-E (Sylva et al., 2011) and the Sustained Shared Thinking and Emotional Wellbeing (SSTEW) scale (Siraj et al., 2015). Staff knowledge and attitudes will be measured by a bespoke questionnaire
SECONDARY OUTCOMES
Setting measures: Following previous work (Mathers et al., in progress), a subset of relevant scales from the ECERS-3, ECERS-E and SSTEW rating scales will be complemented by the communication supporting classrooms tool (Dockrell et al., 2015) which examine language-learning opportunities and interactions.
Social emotional behavioural development: The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1997) is our proposed measure given its strong psychometric properties and availability in the range of languages. Parents and teachers will be asked to complete the questionnaire.
|
After
Child level: Oral language (vocabulary, narrative and receptive language) will be measured by a battery of standardised assessments that are commonly used in the literature and administered to children individually. These measures have been standardised on a representative UK population and the BAS3 provides Rasch ability scores to ensure that progress can be benchmarked in relation to item difficulty. Using the BAS3 for both verbal and nonverbal outcomes has the added benefit of consistency of standardisation across key targeted and non-targeted skills.
The battery consists of: Naming Vocabulary and Verbal Comprehension subtests from the British Ability Scales: 3rd edition (BAS3; Elliot & Smith, 2012); a bespoke list of vocabulary words taken from the Object and Action Naming Battery (Druks & Masterson, 2000), sentence repetition from the Grammar and Phonology Screening test (GAPS; Gardner, Froud, McClelland & van der Lely, 2006) and the Quick Interactive Language Screener (QUILS; Golinkoff, de Villiers, Hirsh-Pasek, Iglesias, Wilson, Morini & Brezack, 2017). The Bus Story test (Renfrew, 1995) is administered at follow-up only.
Additionally, parent report of child language will be measured by a shortened version of the Language Use Inventory (LUI; O’Neill, 2009).
Setting level: Quality of adult-child interactions in the classroom will be measured by audio recording of small group book sharing and toy playing sessions. Staff knowledge and attitudes will be measured by a bespoke questionnaire.
SECONDARY OUTCOMES
Setting measures: Following previous work (Mathers et al., in progress), a subset of relevant scales from the ECERS-3, ECERS-E and SSTEW rating scales will be complemented by the communication supporting classrooms tool (Dockrell et al., 2015) which examine language-learning opportunities and interactions.
Social emotional behavioural development: The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1997) is our proposed measure given its strong psychometric properties and availability in the range of languages. Parents and teachers will be asked to complete the questionnaire.
|
|
Field
Experimental Design (Public)
|
Before
The overall aim of the study is to ascertain whether, in areas of disadvantage, training staff to use a manualised intervention in combination with PD about language development improves children’s oral language skills in comparison with business-as-usual (BAU); and whether it can impact on overall quality of the language-learning environment beyond the intervention sessions themselves.
The project started in May 2019, nurseries were identified in June/July 2019. Parental consent will be gained in September/October 2019. Data collection will run from September 2019 to November 2019. Initial training sessions will start in December 2019. The intervention and mentoring will run in the Spring term of 2020 (January to March). The children will be retested in the summer term of 2020. The data analysis, report writing and dissemination will take place between July and December 2020.
|
After
The overall aim of the study is to ascertain whether, in areas of disadvantage, training staff to use a manualised intervention in combination with PD about language development improves children’s oral language skills in comparison with business-as-usual (BAU); and whether it can impact on overall quality of the language-learning environment beyond the intervention sessions themselves.
The project started in July 2021, nurseries were identified in June/July 2021. Parental consent was gained in September/October 2021. Data collection will run from October 2021 to December 2021. Initial training sessions will start in December 2021. The intervention and mentoring will run in the Spring term of 2022 (January to May). The children will be retested in the summer term of 2022. The data analysis, report writing and dissemination will take place between July and December 2022.
|
|
Field
Planned Number of Observations
|
Before
640 participants with 320 in each of the two locations, 36 classes, split equally between the two sites (London and the Teesside) with each child being assessed before (September to December 2019) and after (April to July 2020) the study.
|
After
640 participants with 320 in each of the two locations, 36 classes, split equally between the two sites (London and the Teesside) with each child being assessed before (October to December 2021) and after (April to July 2022) the study.
|
|
Field
Keyword(s)
|
Before
Education
|
After
Education
|
|
Field
Intervention (Hidden)
|
Before
General Approach:
A broad set of language skills, including vocabulary, narrative and language comprehension, need to be targeted to support language skills in vulnerable populations. Talking Time was designed to explicitly combine three core oral language skills, detailed below, in a manualised approach to support implementation in nursery classes. The activities were all designed to be fun, engaging and developmentally appropriate. The manual contains details of activities, suggestions for developing context specific games, worksheets to develop activities, examples of ways to talk with children to extend their language and a DVD of these activities in practice in nursery classes.
Vocabulary Support: Meta-analyses have consistently demonstrated large effects for acquisition of targeted vocabulary, although effects on standardised vocabulary tests are smaller but also significant. Moderator analyses indicate that there are greater effects when adults are trained in providing vocabulary support that combines pedagogical strategies including explicit and implicit instruction (Marulis & Neuman, 2010). TT provides staff with specific game like activities to reinforce and extend children’s vocabulary. Core vocabulary items are identified in discussion with staff.
Narrative Children’s vocabularies support their ability to create oral narratives, an important means of communication reflecting the academic language used in schools. The ability to recount an activity or describe a situation provides children with the basis for negotiating social situations and developing written language. Personally themed stories that are age appropriate can strengthen children’s use of expressive language and story grammar (Petersen & Spencer, 2016). There is no current meta-analysis of the impacts of narrative interventions but individual studies typically report small effect sizes. Narrative activities are explicitly embedded in TT through a hexagon game where children can recount and extend descriptions of familiar events. TT provides staff with exemplars and the ability to develop their own events to reflect the children’s personal contexts.
Comprehension: Meta-analyses have demonstrated that interactive (dialogic) book reading is effective in improving both expressive and receptive oral language with moderate to large effect sizes (Mol, Bus & de Jong, 2009). Moreover shared book reading generates more grammatically rich constructions than toy play. The impact of book reading is influenced by book type where books with no words generate more oral discussion and expository texts generate greater grammatical variety. TT includes interactive book reading to support oral language comprehension with books identified to extend vocabulary and the use of grammatically rich constructions. These are introduced in the training.
The three activities were produced together as an oral language intervention called ‘Talking Time, designed for all children in small groups twice a week for a 15 minute period. Tasks were designed to foster communicative exchanges with the children using activities appropriate to the children’s developmental needs, cultural contexts and to staff constraints. The aim was to use talk that focused on what the child was doing, was relevant and related to what the child was saying and that acknowledged the child’s utterances.
To support the teachers’ language use, specific emphasis was placed on the use of evidence based ways of effective talking with children. These were:-
(1) contrasts that highlighted differences in lexical items and in syntactic structures,
(2) open questions and expanding or recasting the children’s utterances,
(3) modelling language structures that the children were not yet producing and
(4) event casting where the adult provided a description of the activity to take place.
Since the initial trial of TT a modified version was used as the early years intervention for the EEF Talk of the Town project, demonstrating the feasibility of using the approach in a large-scale trial. Although the impact of the intervention on oracy skills in the early years was not assessed as part of the main evaluation it was included in the external narrative review. Changes in language, language learning environment and staff practices were reported (Menzies, 2016) supporting a wider trial. In addition, the review identified a number of features that are relevant to such a wider trial. Staff noted the need for flexible, practical support to enhance their ability to implement the activities. As such, we have enhanced the trial with a PD development component.
The proposal in this study is to embed PD within the TT materials in three ways. Firstly to act as a vehicle for developing knowledge and skills, given the evidence that practitioners need a solid foundation of knowledge about oral language to be effective in helping children develop these skills (Schachter, 2015) and on the basis that high quality content is an important characteristic of effective PD (Desimone, 2009). Secondly, to include feedback opportunities to staff, through live observations and video feedback. Video feedback has been shown to be an effective method of improving interactions skills resulting in more sensitive and verbally stimulating behaviour from teachers (Fukkink & Tavecchio, 2010). Analysing classroom videos may help practitioners apply positive practices to their classroom. Thirdly, practitioners will be encouraged to form professional learning networks to further analyse and reflect on their practice, building on theories of professional learning networks and communities of practice.
a) Language skills (operationalised as vocabulary, oral language comprehension and expressive narrative) (primary outcome)
b) Social, emotional and behavioural competencies of children in the intervention group (secondary outcome).
c) There will be no differential impacts on the non-targeted skills (non-verbal ability and phonology)
|
After
General Approach:
A broad set of language skills, including vocabulary, narrative and language comprehension, need to be targeted to support language skills in vulnerable populations. Talking Time was designed to explicitly combine three core oral language skills, detailed below, in a manualised approach to support implementation in nursery classes. The activities were all designed to be fun, engaging and developmentally appropriate. The manual contains details of activities, suggestions for developing context specific games, worksheets to develop activities, examples of ways to talk with children to extend their language and a DVD of these activities in practice in nursery classes.
Vocabulary Support: Meta-analyses have consistently demonstrated large effects for acquisition of targeted vocabulary, although effects on standardised vocabulary tests are smaller but also significant. Moderator analyses indicate that there are greater effects when adults are trained in providing vocabulary support that combines pedagogical strategies including explicit and implicit instruction (Marulis & Neuman, 2010). TT provides staff with specific game like activities to reinforce and extend children’s vocabulary. Core vocabulary items are identified in discussion with staff.
Narrative Children’s vocabularies support their ability to create oral narratives, an important means of communication reflecting the academic language used in schools. The ability to recount an activity or describe a situation provides children with the basis for negotiating social situations and developing written language. Personally themed stories that are age appropriate can strengthen children’s use of expressive language and story grammar (Petersen & Spencer, 2016). There is no current meta-analysis of the impacts of narrative interventions but individual studies typically report small effect sizes. Narrative activities are explicitly embedded in TT through a hexagon game where children can recount and extend descriptions of familiar events. TT provides staff with exemplars and the ability to develop their own events to reflect the children’s personal contexts.
Comprehension: Meta-analyses have demonstrated that interactive (dialogic) book reading is effective in improving both expressive and receptive oral language with moderate to large effect sizes (Mol, Bus & de Jong, 2009). Moreover shared book reading generates more grammatically rich constructions than toy play. The impact of book reading is influenced by book type where books with no words generate more oral discussion and expository texts generate greater grammatical variety. TT includes interactive book reading to support oral language comprehension with books identified to extend vocabulary and the use of grammatically rich constructions. These are introduced in the training.
The three activities were produced together as an oral language intervention called ‘Talking Time', designed for all children in small groups twice a week for a 15 minute period. Tasks were designed to foster communicative exchanges with the children using activities appropriate to the children’s developmental needs, cultural contexts and to staff constraints. The aim was to use talk that focused on what the child was doing, was relevant and related to what the child was saying and that acknowledged the child’s utterances.
To support the teachers’ language use, specific emphasis was placed on the use of evidence based ways of effective talking with children. These were:-
(1) contrasts that highlighted differences in lexical items and in syntactic structures,
(2) open questions and expanding or recasting the children’s utterances,
(3) modelling language structures that the children were not yet producing and
(4) event casting where the adult provided a description of the activity to take place.
Since the initial trial of TT a modified version was used as the early years intervention for the EEF Talk of the Town project, demonstrating the feasibility of using the approach in a large-scale trial. Although the impact of the intervention on oracy skills in the early years was not assessed as part of the main evaluation it was included in the external narrative review. Changes in language, language learning environment and staff practices were reported (Menzies, 2016) supporting a wider trial. In addition, the review identified a number of features that are relevant to such a wider trial. Staff noted the need for flexible, practical support to enhance their ability to implement the activities. As such, we have enhanced the trial with a PD development component.
The proposal in this study is to embed PD within the TT materials in three ways. Firstly to act as a vehicle for developing knowledge and skills, given the evidence that practitioners need a solid foundation of knowledge about oral language to be effective in helping children develop these skills (Schachter, 2015) and on the basis that high quality content is an important characteristic of effective PD (Desimone, 2009). Secondly, to include feedback opportunities to staff, through live observations and video feedback. Video feedback has been shown to be an effective method of improving interactions skills resulting in more sensitive and verbally stimulating behaviour from teachers (Fukkink & Tavecchio, 2010). Analysing classroom videos may help practitioners apply positive practices to their classroom. Thirdly, practitioners will be encouraged to form professional learning networks to further analyse and reflect on their practice, building on theories of professional learning networks and communities of practice.
a) Language skills (operationalised as vocabulary, oral language comprehension and expressive narrative) (primary outcome)
b) Social, emotional and behavioural competencies of children in the intervention group (secondary outcome).
c) There will be no differential impacts on the non-targeted skills (non-verbal ability and phonology)
|
|
Field
Secondary Outcomes (End Points)
|
Before
Parent reported social behaviour will be measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ; Goodman, 1997).
Setting measures: Following previous work (Mathers et al., in progress), a subset of relevant scales from the ECERS-3, ECERS-E and SSTEW rating scales will be complemented by the communication supporting classrooms tool (Dockrell et al., 2015) which examine language-learning opportunities and interactions.
|
After
Parent reported social behaviour will be measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ; Goodman, 1997).
|
|
Field
Secondary Outcomes (Explanation)
|
Before
The secondary measures relate to aspects of the classroom communication environment and the socio-emotional development of the children.
|
After
The secondary measure relates to the socio-emotional development of the children.
|
|
Field
Building on Existing Work
|
Before
|
After
No
|