Dillaha, Abigail
(2018)
Characteristics of preschool teachers' language input during a novel, spatially focused task.
Undergraduate Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
Language input is critically important for the development of children’s skills in many domains as the speech children hear shapes the way they think about the world. The goals of this study were to investigate how teachers spoke to their preschool students when presented with a novel, spatially related task and to analyze the relationships between qualitative aspects of the teachers’ speech and their own spatial skills and vocabulary. Thirty-four preschool teachers were recorded while playing with small groups of students with the materials to build a ball maze. Transcripts of teachers’ speech were coded using a coding scheme adapted from the Dyadic Parent-Child Interaction Coding System. Results revealed a substantial individual variation in the way teachers spoke during the ball maze task. Results also indicated that teachers with better vocabulary skills used more Praise and Problem Solving talk and teachers with better spatial skills used more Problem Solving talk. This suggests that teachers’ own cognitive abilities are related to the amount of certain types of speech that they use while engaging in a novel task with a small group of students. Future studies are suggested to examine these relationships more thoroughly.
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Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
|
| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
|
| ETD Committee: |
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| Date: |
25 April 2018 |
| Date Type: |
Publication |
| Defense Date: |
13 April 2018 |
| Approval Date: |
25 April 2018 |
| Submission Date: |
19 April 2018 |
| Access Restriction: |
No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately. |
| Number of Pages: |
37 |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
David C. Frederick Honors College
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > Psychology |
| Degree: |
BPhil - Bachelor of Philosophy |
| Thesis Type: |
Undergraduate Thesis |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
teacher-child interaction, teacher talk, preschool teachers, problem solving, spatial skills |
| Date Deposited: |
25 Apr 2018 17:39 |
| Last Modified: |
25 Apr 2018 17:39 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/34349 |
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