Language promotion in preschools – Enhancing instructional support through different training formats

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Improving the effectiveness of language promotion in kindergarten is necessary for enhan-cing the language development of children and thereby for increasing equal opportunities. Thus, in-service-trainings play a central role in enhancing their instructional support. Although the results of the long-term effects of the in-service-training approach "Mit Kindern im Gespräch" ("Talking to children", Kammermeyer et al. 2017) (MKG) are quite promising, it has not yet been possible to raise the instructional support to a high level of quality. Individual coaching could possibly prove to be a key variable (Lipowsky 2011). However it is unclear how this format influences the improvement of instructional support because this format has always been implemented in combination with other formats. In addition, little is known about the impact of other personal and contextual factors on instructional support after further trai-ning. The findings of the prior conducted DFG-project ("Language Promotion in Daycare Centers. Evaluation of a Qualification Concept for Preschool Teachers for Intensifying the Teacher-Child Interaction") are the starting point for this study. Results showed that the MKG-Approach had long-term effects on preschool teachers’ instructional support (Kammermeyer, Leber et al., 2019) but that these effects were not yet in the necessary range of high quality. In-service-training and individual coaching were combined so that it remains unclear how the effects can be interpreted. Aims of the present study are (a) to find out whether there are differences in the improvement of instructional support, depending on how high the proportion of individual coaching is in further training. (b) to investigate which part of the increased instructional support depends on delivery format and personal (verbal intelligence) and context variables (manager and team support) and (c) to clarify which person and context variables moderate the correlation between instructional support and delivery format. Furthermore, it will be analyzed whether (d) pedagogical content knowledge and pedagogical content beliefs after further training differ significantly between the three delivery formats. To achieve these aims an experimental ran-domized two-cohort field study with a pre-post-follow-up-design will be conducted. Quality of instructional support will be assessed using the internationally recognized CLASS observation method (Pianta et al. 2008). In contrast to previous studies special feature of the study is that key influencing factors such as learning time and content are kept constant in the individual treatments.