Kia Tīmata Pai (The Best Start Study): Effects of an Oral Language Professional Development Program (ENRICH) on Educator-Toddler Conversations

This study investigates the impact of a professional development (PD) initiative, ENRICH, on educator and toddler language quality and quantity. Data comes from a larger randomized control trial, Kia Tīmata Pai (The Best Start Study), aimed at enhancing young children’s language and self-regulation. A subset of 24 centers (110 educators and 183 children) took part in video observations at baseline and a one-year follow-up. Educator-child interactions were video-recorded across five target activity settings: book-reading, diapering/toileting, group, play, and mealtime. Educators’ child-directed talk was coded for temporal reference (past, present, future) and function (conversation-eliciting and conversation-directing utterances). Analyses showed that centers in the ENRICH condition had educators who used more conversation-eliciting language over time in video-recordings of book-reading and diapering/toileting compared to centers in an Active Control. Further, children in ENRICH centers talked more frequently over time during book-reading relative to children in Active Control centers. These findings highlight the potential impact of professional development programs, such as ENRICH, in enhancing both educator practices and child language use within early childhood education and care settings.