Final Report: Implementation and Pilot Study
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There also is a need to understand the classroom contexts more broadly; however, the current study did not examine key contextual factors. This includes factors like classroom language use, support, and overall classroom quality. For example, studies demonstrate that use of Spanish in DLL classrooms is associated with greater math, language, reading, and social-emotional skills (Burchinal et al., 2012; Chang et al., 2007; Franco et al., 2019; Raikes et al., 2019). Within the context of the current study, teacher language ability and classroom instructional and non-instructional language use were not measured. Future studies examining the impacts of the PKOMW curriculum should investigate the efficacy of the curriculum with teachers who have varying levels of language proficiency or use differing levels of Spanish/English to determine if results replicate across a range of classroom contexts. Additionally, one teacher in the comparison classrooms stated that they used Guided Language Acquisition Deconstruction (GLAD) strategies to support language development for DLLs. These strategies could drive differences or make it difficult to detect differences in PKOMW and comparison classrooms. Therefore, future studies examining the impacts of PKOMW curriculum on students ’ outcomes should account for other strategies PKOMW or comparison teachers are using to facilitate DLL learning. In addition, the current study did not measure global classroom quality. While teachers were asked whether they used the curriculum, our team was unable to quantify what specific components of the curriculum were used and how well teachers delivered it. Classroom observation tools like the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (Pianta et al., 2008), detects aspects of overall classroom quality including Emotional Support, Classroom Organization, and Instructional Support that have been shown to be important predictors of students early learning outcomes across a large body of studies (Burchinal et al., 2012; Downer et al., 2012; Limlingan et al., 2020; White et al., 2020). Examining classroom quality in conjunction with fidelity to PKOMW implementation could be a critical piece for understating how PKOMW impacts monolingual English-speaking and DLL students alike. Finally, this study found that the greatest differences in scores across groups occurred in students ’ receptive vocabulary followed by math and expressive vocabulary. This aligns with findings in the implementation study, in which teachers appeared to favor materials that supported language (as opposed to literacy and math). A preponderance of evidence demonstrates that changes in receptive vocabulary, or the words that students understand, often precedes changes in expressive vocabulary, or the words that students use when speaking (Maier et al., 2016; Mancilla-Martinez et al., 2020). This is true for both monolingual and DLL students. These findings further demonstrate the need for support in enacting other areas of the curriculum but also demonstrate that PKOMW curriculum could be a great tool for supporting students ’ language development.
Conclusion The PreK On My Way ™ (PKOMW) pilot study has shed light on the challenges and successes associated with the implementation process and offer crucial recommendations for improving the curriculum's effectiveness.
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