Week 5, October 16th + Portfolio 2.1

The first reading I chose this week was ‘Risk Factors for Children’s Receptive Vocabulary

Development from Four to Eight Years in the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children’. I found it via the DECD Policy Scan as recommended by Jessie, which I pursued as I was interested in finding an efficient way of finding useful readings without resorting to the ‘Can’t be bothered’ list.

Though the age range of the 4000+ children in the study was 4-8, I believe it was worth investigating for two reasons. Firstly, because it’s about how risk factors deemed to be present by age 4 affected vocabulary development in the following years. That is to say, these risk factors would then be present and in some cases, detectable, by an early childhood educator. Secondly, I thought the focus on vocabulary development was highly relevant to the current ‘Technician’ topic.

I found the article utterly confusing and user-unfriendly, but I was able to extract some meaning from it through sheer stubbornness.  

  

 Such odd formatting. Both on the same page.

As I understood it, the authors suggested that the study population was divided into those with and without various risk factors at age 4. By risk factors, they mean factors that were associated with a risk of lower receptive vocabulary growth. This is a problem because receptive vocabulary is “the foundation for language acquisition and literacy”.

Examples of these risks included Maternal Non- English Speaking Background, low school readiness, child not read to at home, as well as having four or more siblings.

The results in some cases were contrary to what could be expected. Many of these factors were actually correlated with an increased growth in receptive vocabulary. However, what was unsurprising to me is that the ‘risk’ group did not catch up with the non-risk group by age 8. To me, the key finding related to children growing up in a low socio-economic area. As I understood it, at age 8, the gap between children with and without this disadvantage was equivalent to the risk group being eight months behind in vocabulary development.

If nothing else, I learnt what receptive vocabulary means, essentially your vocabulary for reading and listening. In order to combat the issues highlighted in this paper, the authors recommend ‘a broad-based or universal ‘‘scaffold’’ of developmental opportunity and interventions able to address multiple risks’. This seems too vague and broad to be of much use to me at this stage. On an individual level however, one option would be working with children from low socio-economic backgrounds and offering as many opportunities for listening and reading comprehension as possible. The challenge, then, would be balancing this against the other, often equally important considerations of early childhood teaching.

On a lighter note, the author contributions section is very odd:

All 5 authors contributed to all 3 sections. Good.

Reference:

Taylor CL, Christensen D, Lawrence D, Mitrou F, Zubrick SR (2013) Risk Factors for Children's Receptive Vocabulary Development from Four to Eight Years in the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. PLoS ONE 8(9): e73046. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0073046

The reading I chose for numeracy this week was ‘Making sense of mathematical graphics: The development of understanding abstract symbolism’. I chose this because it related to the concept of the ‘technician’ through abstraction and symbols.

The authors state that ‘In this paper we develop our theory of ‘Bi-numeracy’ and show the importance of children's own invented symbolism’. Unfortunately, the idea of ‘bi-numeracy’ the authors developed was not explained clearly. I had to track down a transcript of a conference presentation where they said:

“through gradually ‘weaving’ their informal marks and the standard symbols of mathematics, [children] come to understand the ‘foreign language’ of written school mathematics . We term this ‘bi-numeracy’ since the children become competent in two graphical systems (their personal, informal mathematical graphics and standard abstract mathematical symbols and calculations)”.

My advice, if you’re trying to coin an academic phrase, come up with a short, clear definition and use it regularly, especially in future papers that are about the same topic. Case in point, the original paper has been available for 10 years, and a Google search for “bi-numeracy” results in 108 hits. Moving on.

The authors collected 700 samples of children’s symbols over 12 years and analysed them. Their feeling was that children using their own symbols was a good thing, as it allowed them to ‘bridge the gap’ towards the abstract mathematics of school.

There were two other key points. The first was that teachers in the UK are over-reliant on worksheets. That may well be the case. I believe that children should have a wide range of numeracy experiences, particularly involving problem solving with a real-world context.

However, the other suggestion was that teachers were not supportive enough of children’s personal symbols, and as I understood it, that teachers should respect and learn these symbols. In small class sizes, and within the birth-4 focus of this course, I can see how this could be a possibility. However, as children get older, or in classes with larger numbers of pupils, I think this is impractical.

In practice then, I would support children in discussing the mathematical symbols they create, and question them about their meaning.

Reference:

Carruthers, E., & Worthington, M. (2005). Making sense of mathematical graphics: The development of understanding abstract symbolism. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 13(1), 57-79. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/61890916?accountid=10910

Update: 21/11/2013

I am resubmitting this reading reflection as I believe it aligns with Outcome 2.1: Provides a thorough account of these developmental influences, supported by key theorists, frameworks, literature &/or research.

I have chosen this reflection in particular as both of the reflections relate to development. However, this is far more so the case with the former than the latter, as it relates specifically to research on a range of developmental influences.

As mentioned in a comment provided to me via email, I agree that the first paper is a useful starting point for investigating further how educators can work towards preventing or shortening the 'receptive vocabulary' gap from an early age.