Teachers’ application of communication supporting strategies in teacher-child verbal interactions

Introduction: Developing oral language skills is crucial to later school academic achievement. Children with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) struggle with their oral language due to various reasons. Teachers may provide rich opportunities for children with SLCN, and for all children to practice oral language in the regular classroom by using communication supporting strategies (e.g. open-ended questions and extending utterances) in their teacher-child verbal interactions. The aim of this study is to describe a professional development (PD) program designed to affect teachers’ verbal interactions with children in regular classrooms. The PD includes individual teacher coaching in using communication supporting strategies from the Communication Supporting Classroom Observation Tool (Dockrell et al., 2015). Method: The participants are two intervention teachers in year 2 in Swedish compulsory school, receiving a 10-week PD program. A third teacher participates for comparison purposes. An exploratory design with multiple observations is used to collect data. The setting is teacher-child structured small group conversations based on discussions of texts. Both children with SLCN and typically developing children participate in the groups. For the analyses, the conversations are video recorded followed by transcriptions and coding using the CHAT guidelines (MacWhinney, 2000). The frequency of strategy use is calculated over time. Results: Preliminary results indicate that the teachers develop individual patterns of strategy use. All three teachers appear to be skilled in using open-ended questions. Over time, the intervention teachers appear to develop skills in using other strategies. However, some of the strategies might be more challenging to implement and may need more coaching. Conclusions: Preliminary findings point to that individual coaching may support teachers in using more varied communication supporting strategies over time. However, text type appears to influence strategy use, suggesting that some strategies may be more important to apply within different contexts of the curriculum.