Do peers matter? Peer effects on young children’s vocabulary gains in German classrooms.

Abstract

Children in early childhood education and care (ECEC) spend a considerable amount of time interacting with their peers. However, open questions remain on whether and how children influence their peers' language development. The present study examined effects of peers' German receptive vocabulary (n = 1,871) on individual children's (n = 431) receptive vocabulary gains. Target children were between 30 and 48 months old at the beginning of the study. Findings revealed no links between peers' vocabulary skills and individual children's vocabulary gains, neither for all children nor depending on children's prior vocabulary skills. However, for children with lower prior skills, there was a negative association between the percentage of dual language learners in the classroom and children's vocabulary gains. This link was not attributable to peers' vocabulary skills. A number of possible mediators and moderators for peer effects were examined but none of them proved to be significant. In sum, these (null-) findings inform future research on compositional and peer effects as well as their underlying processes. Moreover, they have important practical implications for policymakers and ECEC professionals. Educational Impact and Implications StatementA current issue for policy and practice is how the distribution of children from differing backgrounds in early childhood education and care classrooms affects children's development. This study found that children's language development was not linked to the language skills of their peers in early childhood education and care classrooms. However, children with low societal language skills showed less improvement in their language skills if they attended a classroom with a high percentage of bilingual children (children exposed to another language at home). While our findings provide no evidence that peers' language skills relate to individual children's language skills, they suggest that classroom composition may be relevant to language development under certain circumstances. Additional research on the specific mechanisms and risk factors is needed in order to provide clear implications for policy and practice.

The influence of classroom language contexts on dual language learners’ language development.

“…Similarly, peer language skills in the fall had the greatest influence on those preschoolers whose initial language skill was one standard deviation lower than the class mean (Justice et al, 2011). The null effect of the interaction between peer language skills and DLL status on the growth of English expressive vocabulary is consistent with other studies (e.g., Kohl et al, 2022), suggesting that emergent and FBs’ English language growth is influenced by classroom language contexts the same way as EMs. One possible explanation is that DLLs are more heterogeneous in their linguistic, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds than they are in their English expressive vocabulary.…”

“…Contrary to the abovementioned studies, other studies such as Weiland and Yoshikawa’s (2014), Choi, Castle, et al (2018), and Kohl et al (2022) did not show a significant association between peer language skills and DLLs’ language development. These studies reported a null effect of peer language skills on the growth of receptive vocabulary in young toddlers and preschool children, after controlling for child-level (e.g., baseline language skills, self-regulation), peer-level (e.g., proportion of DLLs, proportion of low-income children, mean maternal education) and classroom level (e.g., classroom quality) factors.…”

“…Atkins-Burnett et al (2017) found that greater DLL composition was negatively associated with 4-year-olds’ expressive language skills for both DLL and non-DLL children, after controlling for the positive effect of classroom peers’ language skills. Kohl et al (2022) studied peer effects in early childhood programs serving 2- to 3-year-old children in Germany and found that DLL composition was negatively linked to receptive vocabulary gains for all children, especially children with lower skills at pretest. Other studies (e.g., Choi, Castle, et al, 2018; Garcia, 2021), however, did not find a significant relationship between DLL composition and child outcomes.…”

“…To date, however, extant research on the roles of the classroom language context for DLLs in early childhood has mostly focused on teacher input, such as language of instruction, teacher–child verbal interactions, and teachers’ syntax (Duncan et al, 2020; Farrow et al, 2020; Jiménez-Castellanos & García, 2017), whereas the role of peers has been examined by only a few studies with mixed findings (Choi, Rouse, & Ryu, 2018; Garcia, 2018; Kohl et al, 2022; Mashburn et al, 2009). In addition, research has highlighted the great diversity of DLLs (Espinosa, 2013; Kim et al, 2018), calling for the need to account for the heterogeneity among DLLs instead of considering them as one homogenous group (Branum-Martin et al, 2014; Castro, 2014).…”

Do Peers Matter? Unhealthy Food and Beverages Preferences among Children in a Selected Rural Province in China

“…Our results are consistent with the existing literature, given that fried chicken, burgers and other fast food are typically meat-based. Secondly, although it has been found in the literature that younger students are more susceptible to peer effects [ 66 ], this difference is more present in peer effects on cognitive abilities such as academic performance [ 79 ]. In terms of food consumption, older students are more likely to be influenced by peer effects because they may have more money available to them.…”