English language learner preschool students with bilingual versus monolingual teachers: Early literacy outcomes

The student population in the United States is diversifying. With larger numbers of English language learners (ELLs), schools across the nation are struggling to meet their academic needs. The current study looked at retrospective data from an Early Reading First preschool program to measure the impact of teacher variables on literacy and receptive language outcomes for ELLs whose home language was reported as Spanish. The teacher variables of focus were lingual and ethnic backgrounds, level of education, and years of experience of both lead and assistant teachers. The literacy and receptive language measures used were two subtests from the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Third Edition (PPVT-III) and its Spanish version, the Test de Vocabulario en Imagenes Peabody (TVIP), which were administered three times across the school year. The relationship between teacher variables and reading and language outcomes was examined in 4-year-old ELL students within a literacy-rich preschool program. The study specifically looked at whether bilingual teachers and teacher aides had significantly more impact than nonbilingual teacher on increasing early literacy and receptive language outcomes in this 4-year old ELL population within the program. Results were examined using hierarchical linear modeling to consider within- and between-group differences, as well as moderating and interaction effects. Data analyses could not establish any significant relationships between teacher characteristics and literacy and receptive language outcomes for ELL students. However, supplementary analyses using regression demonstrated that there was a strong predictor relationship between initial English receptive language score (PPVT-III) and both end-of-year early literacy measures (DIBELS Letter Naming and DIBELS Initial Sound Fluency). The same strongly significant relationship did not hold true for initial Spanish receptive language scores (TVIP) for either end-of-year early literacy measure.