Thammasat University students interested in education, linguistics, media and communication studies, and related subjects may find it useful to participate in a free 25 July Zoom webinar on Supporting Young Children’s Language Development in Childcare and Early Childhood Education.
The event, on Thursday, 25 July 2024 at 3pm Bangkok time, is presented by the Center for Early Childhood Development, Education, and Policy Research (CEDEP), the University of Tokyo and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
The TU Library collection includes several books about language development in childhood.
Students are invited to register at this link:
https://www.cedep.p.u-tokyo.ac.jp/registration-20240725seminar/
The event announcement notes:
The Center for Early Childhood Development, Education, and Policy Research (CEDEP) is collaborating with Professor Lynn Ang and the early years team at University College London, Institute of Education (UCL IOE) to examine effective practices to support the language development of children who speak different languages from their home languages in childcare and early childhood education settings.
In this seminar, we will briefly introduce the joint research and discuss how to support young children’s language development in childcare and early childhood education settings.
The speaker will be Professor Lynn Ang, who teaches early childhood education at the Institute of Education, University College London, the United Kingdom.
Her research has focused on conceptualizing children’s learning and education, and the social, cultural, policy, and macropolitical environments that mediate and shape children’s experiences from early childhood through primary education.
Among others participating in the event will be CEDEP Associate Professor Sachiko Nozawa (moderator); CEDEP Assistant Professor Yu Ishii; and Professor emeritus Mikiko Tabu, Seitoku University.
Last year Professor Ang coauthored a report for The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Technology and Learning for Early Childhood and Primary Education.
It is available for free download at this link:
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10174240/
The report’s Abstract:
Educational software and apps offer a potential solution for the global learning crisis in maths and literacy. When designed, implemented, and integrated effectively, these programmes can offer accessible and personalised learning experiences for young children at school and at home.
This paper synthesises current evidence evaluating the use of educational software and apps with young children aged 0-8 years in early childhood and primary education, including those from disadvantaged and marginalised groups across a range of low-, middle- and high-income countries.
Based on this evidence synthesis, recommendations for system-wide conditions in the EdTech ecosystem to achieve optimal outcomes for all children are discussed, including potential avenues for effective pedagogy, implementation, and integration.
The report’s Introduction begins:
Over 55% of children around the world do not have the minimum proficiency levels in mathematics (383 million children) and reading (387 million children.
Data also suggests the Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated longstanding inequalities that are affecting the poorest and most vulnerable children. This has limited progress towards the Education Sustainable Development Goal (SDG).
Early childhood and primary education make a vital contribution for attaining the Education SDG4.
Although it is not the only important period for meaningful educational investment, evidence suggests ensuring that young children have the foundations in basic maths and literacy skills supports later educational, economic, and social success.
For example, research shows the mastery of early maths skills at age four predicted long-term schooling success.
Likewise, successful reading interventions implemented before children were eight years old reduced the chance of them developing later reading difficulties, compared to when the reading interventions were implemented with children over eight years.
As such, evidence-based interventions are needed during early childhood and primary education to ensure young children have strong foundations in maths and literacy skills.
Educational technology (EdTech) has been identified as a potential solution for raising attainment and addressing some of the educational inequalities.
EdTech offers opportunities for personalised learning and can reach disadvantaged and marginalised groups when it is “designed and implemented in an ethical, inclusive, and equitable manner”.
This paper focuses on educational software and applications (apps) used on laptop or desktop computers, hand-held touch-screen tablets, or smartphone devices. Based on a rapid review conducted by the authors, this paper synthesises current evidence relating to the use of these forms of EdTech for young children aged 0-8 years in formal and informal settings across different countries. In doing so, this paper addresses two questions:
RQ1): What do we currently know about good practices in the use of educational software and apps for supporting access, equity, and inclusion for young children around the world?
RQ2): What recommendations can be drawn from the evidence base relating to the system-wide conditions required to promote optimal outcomes, including the pedagogy underpinning educational software and apps, and how they can be most effectively implemented and integrated in different learning environments?
Impact of educational apps on maths and literacy
2.1. Typically developing children
A recent systematic review of 35 randomised control trials (RCTs) and quasi-experimental designs (QEDs) found using interactive educational apps benefitted the maths and literacy skill development of children aged 0-6 years.
Furthermore, a separate meta-analysis of 36 RCTs and QEDs reported an overall effect size of +0.31 on maths and literacy outcomes following educational app use by typically developing children aged 4-9 years, compared to a range of control groups.
However, there is mixed evidence as to whether these benefits may be restricted to the specific number and literacy skills targeted by the educational software and apps and may not always transfer to broader measures of mathematics, reading, and language development.
This may be because educational software and apps often focus on basic aspects of maths and literacy development, such as number and letter recognition, respectively. These basic skills are often presented in isolation, and do not always embed the learning content in meaningful ways that promote generalisation to novel contexts.
In cases where generalisation to broader measures and/or secondary benefits have been observed, the educational software and apps have included a broad and detailed curriculum.
Nevertheless, these educational technology results are similar to other meta-analyses synthesising the benefits of traditional one-to-one tutoring and small-group instruction, which reported overall effect sizes of +0.38 for maths and +0.35 for literacy. Greater effect sizes were also seen for younger children before (+0.45) or at the start of primary education (+0.42), compared to children over 7 years of age (+0.29) (Nickow et al., 2020).
2.1.1.Conclusion and recommendation
Evidence suggests educational software and apps have the potential to provide young children with supplementary learning opportunities that can support their acquisition of basic maths and literacy skills. Reported effect sizes are similar for maths and literacy and are broadly comparable with other forms of individual and small group intervention.
This suggests this form of educational technology can provide meaningful learning opportunities, without the additional, time-consuming teaching demands associated with other intervention approaches.
However, it is important to remember that technology is not a replacement for high-quality teaching and its success is influenced by a number of factors, which are discussed in this paper.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)