| Eight teachers/assistant teachers were videotaped in their toddler child care classrooms during five caretaking and play settings: diapering, snack, freeplay, transition, and structured play activities. Approximately 90 minutes of videotaped interaction for each teacher were subsequently transcribed, coded, and analyzed for referent, type of questions, utterance length, turn-taking, adult self-repetition, adult expansion, topic switching, and teacher dominance in conversations with individual children. Differences in discourse features across teachers and due to type of adult-child activity are discussed. Variation in adult-child interactions due to caregiving and play activity revealed distinct patterns of communication and accompanying teaching roles for adults who work with toddlers during a typical day in child care. Recommendations for strengthening specific adult language features are offered to further enrich the language environment of toddler classrooms. Specific suggestions for follow-up research, training child care teachers, and developing program evaluation and regulatory materials are proposed. |
