Why and How a Community Can Work Together to Bridge the Word Gap

Judith Carta, Ph.D.Director, Bridging the Word Gap Research NetworkJuniper Gardens Children’s ProjectUniversity of Kansas

NWLA Early Childhood Policy Summit Shreveport, LouisianaSeptember 20, 2019

Today’s Topics1. Word Gap-What it is and why it’s important2. How it can be prevented3. What communities can do4. Suggestions from the Bridging the Word Gap Research Network

Using a Community-Wide Multisector Approach to Bridge the Word Gap

What is the Word Gap?

The disparity in the early language learning opportunities often experienced by children from lower socioeconomic groups compared to children from more advantaged families.

34% of American children entering kindergarten today lack the basic language skills they will need to learn to read

60 % of children from low-income

backgrounds

The 30-Million Word Gap in Adult Talk to Children by Age 4 (Hart & Risley, 1995)

30 Million Word Gap

The Disparity in Vocabulary Growth

Hart & Risley, 1995

Who were the Survey Respondents?

90%

10%

126

473

204114

It’s more than just the quantity of words.

The Achievement Gap: Inequality at the Starting Gate

Often results in a gap that extend into other areas and GROWS over time.

Language is the currency of education!

• Children missing basic literacy skills on school entry are 3 to 4 times more likely to drop out of high school.

• “Skills beget skills”: Children who have basic, foundational knowledge will find it easier to acquire more complex skills in the future (Heckman 2008).

• Children with stronger skills at school entry are on a more favorable pathway toward academic success than students with weaker initial skills.

The Good News!• We know what it takes to promote a child’s early

language development. • We have 20 + years of research pointing to the

specific types of behaviors that we can teach parents and caregivers to do to put children on a developmental pathway toward school readiness.

• These are behaviors that parents and family members, child care providers and early educators can do and embed into their everyday routines.

Funded to promote children’s readiness for school success by advancing research to enhance children’s

early language learning experiences

Judith Carta, Ph.D., Charles R. Greenwood, Ph.D. & Dale Walker, Ph.D.

University of Kansas

• A network of about 200 individuals working together to advance a national research agenda

• We represent: • Different disciplines• Different sectors

• We focus on intervention for diverse settings: • Homes, early education/child care, pediatric settings,

community settings, libraries, museum, supermarkets, laundromats

Who We Are

We have compiled more than 2000 studies to identify “what works” to bridge the word gap.

• Studies focused on:• Parent-implemented

interventions• Early educator/child care

provider interventions• Interventions for pediatric

settings• Interventions for communities• Interventions for

culturally/linguistically diverse children

Coming Fall, 2019

Focusing on the Science: What Works to Bridge the Word Gap?

• We have 20+ years of research pointing to effective ways of promoting children’s early language learning.

• These interventions point to behaviors that parents can do in their everyday interactions with young children.

• We know the “active ingredients” of these interventions: the secret sauce!

The “secret sauce”: Adult responsiveness and interactivenessFOLLOWING THE CHILD’S LEAD: Adult talk that follows a child’s interest (their lead) NARRATING CHILDREN’S EVERYDAY ROUTINES: Adult caregivers talk about what they are doing during daily activitiesTAKING TURNS: Adult follows up child’s response with another

We also have emerging evidence from neuroscience on the influence of conversational turns on brain development.

Rate of “Conversational Turns” Related to Enhanced Brain Development in Broca’s Area

Romeo, R., et al. (2018). Journal of Neuroscience 38 (36) 7870-7877; DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0484-18.2018

Bad News

• The word hasn’t gotten out how important it is to engage and interact and talk with children.

The Word Gap Should be Preventable, but….

We still haven’t been able to close the gap in the quality of early language environments for children from low- and higher SES households.

We need to “Move the Needle” on the Word Gap!

We need to create a culture shift around the importance of talking and interacting with young children.

Strategies for changing behaviors and creating a culture shift1. Craft the behavior change message: translate the

“active ingredients” into easy to understand language

2. Employ multiple messengers3. Create a village: Organize messengers around a

common goal 4. Go beyond the village: Develop multi-sector

partnerships

How Can We Move the Needle on the “Word Gap”?

1. CRAFT THE MESSAGE•Make the “Active Ingredients” of interventions easy to understand and rememberBy parentsBy the interventionists

•Make Sticky Messages!

30 Million Words Initiative Dana Suskind, M.D.

Helping Parents Learn Specific Language-Promoting Strategies

http://thirtymillionwords.org

/

ACTIVE INGREDIENTS

FOLLOWING THE CHILD’S LEAD: Adult talk that follows a child’s interest (their lead)

NARRATING CHILDREN’S EVERYDAY ROUTINES: Adult caregivers talk about what they are doing during daily activities

TAKING TURNS: Adult follows up child’s response with another

3 T’S

TUNE IN

TALK MORE

TAKE TURNS

2. ENGAGE MORE MESSENGERS

•Expand the reach of the message by enlisting more partners—especially non-traditional ones

WHO ARE THE MESSENGERS?Home visitorsEarly Educators/Child Care ProvidersPediatricians/Nurses/Public Health ProvidersLibrariansMuseums

Home Visitor as the Messenger

Home Visiting Interventions

Thirty Million Words: Home Visiting and More •Home visiting: a 12 module program with

video modeling and goal setting

•Provides parents with evidence-based strategies they can use in everyday settings.

•Interventions incorporate animation, parent-child videos, and “behavioral nudges” to support parent behavior change.

•Also available are materials for group parent training, early childhood educator training, and training for pediatric well-baby visits

TMW Home Visiting Results•Parents who received TMW intervention had a 44% increase in conversational turn-taking with their children, they provided more complex language than control group parents.

•Children who had more conversational turns with parents had stronger language skills one year after the intervention.

• Community-Wide Home Visiting Intervention

• Teaches Language Strategies

• Provides Parents with Feedback about Amount of Talk and Turns

• Uses LENA to Measure Home Language Environment

LENA PROVIDES FEEDBACK ABOUT QUANTITY OF TALK AND CONVERSATIONAL TURNSLENA: “Language Pedometer” Measurement of the Child’s Language Environment

Promoting Communication—Dale Walker

Helping Parents and Early Care Providers Learn Specific Language-Promoting Strategies Following Child’s Lead Commenting & Labeling/

http://www.talk.ku.edu/promoting-communication-with-infants-and-toddlers-project/

Child Care Providers/Early Educators as the Messenger

• Professional development and coaching using the LENA technology to provide feedback about teachers’ interactions with children

• 10 coaching sessions focused on teachers’ goals

• Aimed at giving teachers strategies for increasing their talk throughout classroom activities

Coaching and Feedback for Promoting Talk and Conversational Turns

Pediatricians/Pediatric Nurses/Public Health Nurses as

the Messenger

42

wellPediatrician

Guidance

Pediatricians speak to parents

about the importance of

reading aloud to their children

every day.

Prescribe a Book

At each regular checkup from 6 mos. through 5 yrs., the child

receives a new, culturally- and

developmentally-appropriate book.

Model Effective Reading Practices

Dialogic reading: Parent helps the child become the teller of

the story. Parent becomes the listener,

the questioner, the audience for the

child.

3. Create Synergy: Bring Community Sectors Together Working Toward a Common GoalCreating the “Village” through City-Wide Campaigns

Too Small to FailWeaving Early Brain and Language Development into the Fabric of Communities

Bus shelters Playgrounds Grocery StoresLaundromats

Finding Ways to Encourage Parent-Child Conversations In Places Where Parents and Children Go

<Gives parents and caregivers ideas for things to talk about while doing the laundry.

Collaboration between Too Small to Fail, the Clinton Foundation, and the Coin Laundry Association

Using Mobile Apps to Help Parents Provide a Rich

Language Environment for their Children

A Mobile phone app that sends location-based tips about things parents can be talking about when they’re out in the community

Spread the word!

4. Bring Together Multiple Community-Partners to Create Multi-Sector

Collaborative Partnerships

It Takes More than a Village

Cautions to Communitieson the Road to Achieving Population-Level Outcomes

The Challenge of Bridging the Gap

Only 10% of public health measures tracked by communities are met (Fawcett et al, 2010).

The Perils: What factors can contribute to poor results?1. Lack of shared responsibilities for achieving agreed upon population-level outcomes: Just getting together doesn’t work

2. Stakeholders often have differing goals or understanding of the problem: Having common goals is key.

3. Measurement of accomplishments is challenging: measures of success at the level of the whole community are lacking

4. Incentives for achieving population-level improvement are rare.

Among the 7 Recommendations for Building Collaborative Partnerships for Population Health (Fawcett et al., 2010)1. Establish systems to detect progress toward achieving population health outcomes and health equity

2. Develop and use action plans that assign responsibility for changing communities and systems.

3. Establish participatory evaluation systems for documenting and reviewing progress and making adjustments.

How do we coordinate multi-sector interventions and evaluate the process and the outcome?

How Our BWG Research Network is Developing a Community-Wide Multi-Sector Approach for Bridging the Word Gap

• Working with University of Kansas’ Center for Community Health and Human Development (Watson-Thompson, Fawcett, et al., 2019)

• Creating a community-wide action planning guide based on a on community-wide ecological theory of change (Fawcett, Collie-Akers, Schultz, & Cupertino, 2013) and the Institute of Medicine’s (2003) Framework for Collaborative Public Health Action

• Developing a system for monitoring change in actions taken within sectors focused on the word gap and linking it to population-level outcomes

Bridging the

Word Gap

Child Care/ Early

Learning Pediatric Primary

Care

Home Visiting

Govern-ment

Business

Libraries Museu

ms

Faith-Based

Media

Potential Sectors for a BWG Community-Wide Intervention

Your Community Action Planning Guide

for Bridging the Word Gap

BWG Action Guide: A Blueprint for Communities• Helps bring together community

leaders and grassroots organizations in activities designed to promote nurturing language environments for all children

• Provides a step-by-step blueprint for a community to plan, implement, and evaluate strategies for bridging the word gap

• For each potential sector, it outlines a range of programs, policies, and practices to guide community changes.

Tracking Community-Level Progress

• The online BWG Checkbox—allows for the tracking of accomplishments in each sector

• Each accomplishment/event is recorded, described, date and time documented, and coded by type and importance

• Coding accomplishments measures the implementation of the BWG action plan (changes in practices, programs, and policies in the community related to BWG)

• The Checkbox provides the community leadership data-based feedback for renewal and altering efforts toward the goals.

COMMUNITY CHECKBOX for recording and monitoring changes within sectors

Some questions we can address

• How extensively are BWG strategies implemented across prioritized sectors (e.g., pediatric health, childcare, home visiting, etc.)?

• What resources have been leveraged to support the BWG community initiative?

• What changes in practices, programs, and policies have resulted?• How are these community-level changes linked to child-family

BWG outcomes?

It Takes More than Evidence-Based Practices…It will take:• New approaches for making the practices easy to remember and

implement and embed into everyday lives.• New messengers for getting the practices out to all parents and

caring adults in innovative ways• New ways of getting partners from all across communities to

plan together, work toward achievable goals, monitor their progress toward the population-level outcomes they are trying to achieve.

Can We Bridge the Gap?

• It will take a village but much more than a village. • Yes, but it will take the commitment of partners working smart

and focused on common goals, learning from each other, and learning from data about what’s working to foster the success of collaborative partnerships.

• This is our vision for evidence-based prevention of the word gap.

In HOME Settings

Home Visiting Programs

Group Parent Training

Library Play Groups

Museum Programs

1. Get the message to parents about talking/interacting more with their young children during everyday routines

2. Encourage parents to read, talk about books and tell stories to young children.

3. Create access to books for all children.4. Encourage bilingualism in families who

are non-native English speakers.5. Invest in multi-generational literacy

programs.

In Early Care and Education Settings

Get Ready to Read

World of Words

Story Champs

LENA Grow

IGDIs and my-IGDIS for screening

1. Strengthen early educators/child care providers knowledge and skills for promoting children’s language across daily activities through coaching and feedback.

2. Enrich early learning environments with high quality books and evidence-based language/literacy focused curriculum.

3. Use screening tools to identify children who may need a higher tier of instructional support.

4. Monitor children’s progress to determine whether they are improving their skills in response to early language/literacy practices.

In Pediatric Settings

Talk With Me Baby

Reach Out and Read

Vroom

1. Encourage parents to “tune in, talk more, take turns, and turn off screens” in well-baby visits.

2. Model talking and interacting with child within well-baby visits.

3. Encourage book sharing and distribute books.

4. Screen children for first signs of language delay and find ways to get them appropriate services.

Across Community Settings

Bridging the Word Gap Community Action Planning Guide

BWG Community Tool Box

Talking is Teaching Toolkit for Community Campaigns

Mobile Apps: Talk Around Town

1. Employ a Community Action Planning Guide to assist each sector in developing a plan

2. Find an approach to monitor accomplishments within and across each sector

3. Track population-level indicators (changes in parents’ knowledge and skills, child outcomes, school readiness)

Contact the BWG Research NetworkCo-PIs◦ Dr. Judith Carta◦ carta@ku.edu

◦ Dr. Charles Greenwood◦ greenwood@ku.edu

◦ Dr. Dale Walker◦ walkerd@ku.edu

Project Coordinator◦ Dr. Alana Schnitz◦ aschnitz@ku.edu

www.bwgresnet.ku.edu

@BWGResNet

Bridging the Word Gap Research Network

HRSA Award #: UA6MC27762

https://www.google.com/search?q=georgia%27s+promise&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS792US801&oq=Georgia%27s+promise&aqs=chrome.0.0l6.11173j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Georgia’s Promise

Projects Represented

Project Contact

Too Small to Fail http://toosmall.org/Thirty Million Words-Dr. Dana Suskind

http://thirtymillionwords.org/

Promoting Communication-Dr. Dale Walker

http://www.talk.ku.edu/promoting-communication-with-infants-and-toddlers-project/

Talk with Me Baby-Drs. Ashley Darcy Mahoney & Jennifer Stapel-Wax

http://www.talkwithmebaby.org/about

Darcy Mahoney, A., McConnell, S. R., Larson, A. L., Becklenberg, A., Stapel-Wax, J. L. (2019). Where do we go from here? Examining pediatric and population-level interventions to improve child outcomes. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.escresq.2019.01.009.

Fawcett, S. B., Schultz, J., Collie-Akers, V., Watson-Thompson, J., & Francis, V. (in press). Participatory monitoring and evaluation of community health initiatives using the Community Check Box evaluation system. In Wallerstein et al. (Ed.), Community-based participatory research for heath (3rd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Fawcett, S., Schultz, J., Watson-Thompson, J., Fox, M, & Bremby, R. (2010). Building multisectoral partnerhships for population health and health equity. Preventing Chronic Disease: Public Health Research, Practice, and Policy, 7, (6), 1-7.

Greenwood, C. R., Carta, J. J., Walker, D., Watson-Thompson, J., Gilkerson, J., Larson, A. L., et al. (2017). Conceptualizing a public health prevention intervention for bridging the 30 Million Word Gap. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 20(1), 3-24. doi:10.1007/s10567-017-0223-8

Golinkoff, R. M., Hoff, E. , Rowe, M. L., Tamis‐Lemonda, C. S. and Hirsh‐Pasek, K. (2019), Language matters: Denying the existence of the 30‐Million‐Word Gap has serious consequences. Child Dev, 90: 985-992. doi:10.1111/cdev.13128

Hart, R., & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experiences of young American children. Baltimore: Brookes. Heidlage, J. K., Cunningham, J. E., Kaiser, A. P., Trivette, C. M., Barton, E. E., Frey, J. R., & Roberts, M. Y. (2019). The effects of parent-

implemented language interventions on child linguistic outcomes: A meta-analysis. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, htps://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2018.12.006 Radesky J.S., Carta J, Bair-Merritt M. (2016). The 30 Million–Word Gap: Relevance for pediatrics. JAMA Pediatrics. Published online July 05,

2016. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2016.1486 Suskind, D. L., Suskind, B., & Lewinter-Suskind, L. (2015). Thirty million words: Building a child’s brain—Tune in, Talk more, Take turns. New

York, NY: Dutton. Walker, D., et al., (2019). Language intervention research in early childhood care and education: A systematic survey of the literature. Early

Childhood Research Quarterly, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2019.02.010.