Ep.160

Does Teacher Talk Really Matter? What the Evidence Shows with Dr. Yan Jiang

In this episode of The Literacy View, we sit down with Dr. Yan Jiang, Postdoctoral Scholar at the Stanford Center on Early Childhood and coauthor of a major meta analysis published in Review of Educational Research.

Her study analyzes more than one hundred studies examining the relationship between teachers’ language practices and children’s language development from preschool through third grade.

There is growing conversation in education about the role of classroom talk, oral language, and teacher interactions in shaping language development. But what does the research actually show?

We take a close look at how researchers approached this question, how teacher language practices are studied across classrooms, and what patterns begin to emerge when the evidence from many studies is examined together.

Value

In this episode we explore

• What researchers mean when they talk about teacher language practices

• How studies attempt to capture and measure classroom talk

• Why the distinction between quantity of talk and quality of interactions matters in research

• How large scale meta analyses combine findings across many different studies

• What educators should think about when hearing claims about language rich classrooms and oral language instruction

This conversation helps unpack how research in this area is conducted and why interpreting findings about classroom language requires nuance.

Promise

In this episode we promise to take you inside a new meta analysis that examines more than one hundred studies on teacher language practices and children’s language development.

Together we unpack how researchers study classroom talk, what they actually mean when they talk about teacher language practices, and why measuring something as complex as classroom interaction is not as straightforward as it might sound.

You will walk away with a clearer understanding of how this research was conducted, what kinds of teacher language practices researchers are examining, and how educators should think about claims connecting teacher talk and student language growth.

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