Project Activities
The research team will test the efficacy of PC TALK on child language outcomes in a cluster randomized controlled trial in classrooms serving a diverse sample of infants and young children with and without disabilities.
Structured Abstract
Setting
The research will take place in classrooms in the Educare Early Head Start/Head Start (EHS/HS) National Learning Network—a program designed to provide enhanced, high-quality education for children birth through age 5 from low-income families—located in Colorado, Nebraska, Louisiana, Georgia, and Maine.
Sample
Approximately 180 teachers and 540 infants and toddlers (9 to 33 months of age) will participate across 60 classrooms and 5 schools. All children will be from families who meet the income threshold to qualify for participation in EHS/HS. Participating children will reflect the population of children in the participating Educare schools, including children with and without disabilities who are Black, Latino(a), and White, as well as those who are dual-language learners (DLLs). Approximately 12% of the children recruited will have an identified delay or disability.
Intervention
The PC TALK intervention is a fully developed naturalistic language intervention that includes a set of language-promoting strategies and intervention support tools to guide early educators in promoting children's communication skills through interactions across daily activities. PC TALK coaches (mentor teachers) will conduct professional development sessions with teaching teams and meet with the teaching teams twice monthly to support their implementation, with approximately 16 to 18 coaching sessions during the school year. The PC TALK intervention is designed to be flexible and embedded in home and center-based programs serving children with and without disabilities, including DLLs.
Research design and methods
The research team will use a cluster randomized controlled trial to test the impact of the PC TALK intervention. In two cohorts, one starting in each of the first 2 years of the project, classrooms at each participating school will be randomized to one of two groups&emdash;PC TALK or wait-list control, with the wait-list group receiving intervention the following year. During the maintenance phase, the year following each successful completion of the training by both groups in a cohort, the research team will collect data on teachers' maintenance of intervention practices to identify critical implementation issues and inform later scaling up of the intervention. Finally, the following year after maintenance, the sustainability phase for each group will begin. In this phase, the coaches will provide professional development and ongoing coaching support for teachers as part of their regular educator coaching activities while the research team examines the sustainability of the intervention at the program level.
Control condition
The control group will receive the regular Educare EHS/HS curriculum, including high-quality teaching and interactions, coaching and ongoing professional development, monitoring of child progress, data utilization, and school-family partnerships.
Key measures
The Promoting Communication Observation System(PC-Obs) app will be used to document teacher strategy use, and the Classroom Assessment Scoring System and Infant/Toddler Environment Rating Scale will be used to assess child classroom quality Child language outcomes will be measured with the Preschool Language Scale-5 English/Spanish, the Early Communication Indicator, and child communication observed through the PC-Obs. Participating teachers will also be asked to report on their satisfaction with the goals, processes, and outcomes of the intervention through focus groups and questionnaires, and families will complete a checklist to report on whether teachers shared communication promotion strategies with them.
Data analytic strategy
Multilevel individual growth curve modeling will be used to examine change over time in children's language outcomes (with repeated measures nested within children and classrooms), whether the impact of PC TALK on children's language outcomes is mediated by classroom quality/support for learning language and teaching team sharing of strategies with families, and the maintenance of teacher practices over time.
Cost analysis strategy
The research team will conduct an incremental cost analysis to determine the total opportunity cost of all resources needed to implement PC TALK relative to the control condition using the ingredients method, estimating both start-up and recurring implementation costs. The team will calculate a cost-effectiveness ratio, use a cost-effectiveness plan to visualize cost and effect data, model the data using net benefit analysis, and perform a sensitivity analysis.
Products and publications
Products: Products from this project include evidence of PC TALK's impact on teacher strategies to support infant and toddler language development and child language outcomes, including children with disabilities and who are DLLs. The project will also result in a final dataset to be shared, peer-reviewed publications and presentations, and additional dissemination products that reach education stakeholders such as practitioners and policymakers.
ERIC Citations: Find available citations in ERIC for this award here.
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Supplemental information
Co-Principal Investigator: Bigelow, Kathryn
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