Building Capacity of Early Childhood Providers to Promote Language Learning of Infants and Young Children from Underserved Communities

Given the pivotal role that experience with language has for early language and vocabulary development later reading and school proficiency ensuring that infants and young children have ample opportunities to learn language is of primary importance. Language-learning opportunities can have long-term advantages for young children's language early literacy social-emotional outcomes which can impact later school and later economic outcomes. Ongoing systemic inequity compounded by the pandemic may decrease these opportunities for some particularly children from underserved communities. While evidence-based strategies to enrich language-learning experiences in homes and schools are available most have not been tested rigorously to document their impact on outcomes for diverse populations of infants and young children who may experience discrepancies in access to high quality learning opportunities. With over 12 million children receiving child care services there is the potential to improve developmental outcomes and school readiness of large numbers of children from underserved communities.

Goals and objectives:

This project documents the efficacy of implementing the Promoting Communication: Tools for Advancing Language in Kids (PC TALK) an applied translational intervention with infants/young children from underserved communities attending programs under MCH Title V. Through this project we address Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) Strategic Research Issues: Principle 1- Incorporating social determinants of health equity frameworks; Accelerating the coordination translation and implementation of evidence-based research and Promote the Healthy Development and Well-Being of Infants and Children and Build the Evidence Base for MCH Practice and Measurement Capacity. TARGET POPULATION: This research will take place in 30 classrooms across 8 MCH Title V affiliated urban licensed Child Care Aware and Early Head Start programs. We will recruit 60 early childhood teachers serving approximately 200 infants and young children and their families to participate. Participating teachers children and families will reflect the diverse race ethnicity and linguistic backgrounds of the communities where programs are located.

Products:

The PC TALK intervention is a fully developed naturalistic intervention that includes a set of language-promoting strategies and intervention support tools to guide early interventionists educators and caregivers in promoting children's communication skills through interactions across daily activities. Products include testing the PC TALK intervention to strengthen language interactions and build the capacity of adults to promote children's language development. The PC TALK intervention is uniquely situated to address the challenges for MCH Title V program affiliates to improve outcomes for children with and at risk for disabilities and culturally and linguistic diverse dual-language learners through actionable and timely results.

Evaluation:

A cluster randomized controlled trial with a business-as-usual waitlist control group will be implemented in a mixed model framework to test the efficacy of the PC TALK intervention. Key Measures related to intervention implementation child language and social-emotional outcomes will be used to document impact along with teacher and parent surveys and focus groups. Multilevel individual growth curve modeling will be used to examine change over time of the repeated measures nested within programs. Cost-effectiveness analyses will be used to measure costs associated with the application of the intervention.