Small group times in the nursery setting : a forum for developing children’s speech, language and communication?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The importance of research on the unique nature of the communication supporting environment in nurseries has been heightened by growing evidence of the significance of early language skills for later academic and social development. This study focussed on children’s language use during small group times. Opportunities to hear and practise language were examined, to uncover variation in conversational experiences for children with differing language needs. \nParticipants were a nursery key worker and 19, three- to four-year olds in two cohorts. In this mixed-method study, different measures were used to examine the relationship between participation and language level. Quantitative analysis of interaction rates was made from video recordings of small group conversations. This was followed by detailed qualitative examination of talk during episodes of more sustained conversation. Children’s language levels were measured using the CELF Pre-school (2) UK and a narrative assessment. Questionnaires about children’s verbal participation were also completed by practitioners and parents. \nDifferences were revealed in affordance of opportunity for children according to language level. Children’s interaction rates were positively correlated with scores on the CELF Pre-school (2) UK at the start and 18-months later. Topic of conversation, patterns of turn-taking and repair were associated differently with participation for children according to language level. Analysis showed patterns of both formal and informal talk. Combining features from each was found to be associated with episodes of sustained conversation. Questionnaire responses confirmed differences in children’s likelihood of participation in small group conversations. \nFindings support the role for small group times as a forum for development of speech, language and communication, facilitating opportunities for children differently according to their language needs. This has important implications for practice in supporting children to make the transition from informal to formal talk in the educational setting.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.016 | 0.040 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.008 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.030 | 0.006 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".