11.14 LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN FROM LOW-INCOME BACKGROUNDS Flashcards
What does research suggest about the amount of money needed to meet a families basic needs?
families need an income approximately two times greater than federal poverty levels
Research:
What does the National center for children in poverty, 2006 state re: level of parents education?
for children from low income families, 26% live w/ parents who have less than a high school education; 35% live with parents who have a high school diploma, and 39% live with parents who have some college or more.
(over 1/3 have some college or more!–know that)
In terms of race and ethnicity, which races have the highest % of children living in low SES homes?
Hispanics and African Americans
- 27% white
-30% asian
-61% African American
-63% Hispanic
(lowest income statistically-are african americans and hispanics–don’t need specifics)
Research:
According to the Forum on Family and Child Statistics, 2006 said what about single income homes?
- children in single-parent homes are much more vulnerable to poverty
- in 2004, children living in single householder families with no husband present experienced a higher poverty rate (42%) than children living in married-couple families (9%)
Research
according to www.nwlc.org (2011) said what about jobs & minimum wage?
- last year 7.7% of African American & 8.5% of Hispanic women worked in jobs that paid at or below minimum wage, as compared to 4.3% of white men
- African American and Hispanic women are more likely to be heads of households
- Married household’s median income was $71,830, while female-headed households earned $32,597
Research
2008 United States Estimates, facts, and figures said what about industry type jobs?
-standard of living for those in bottom 10% is lower in U.S. than any other developed nation except the United Kingdom
U.S. shifting from manufacturing industrial society to service-oriented, high tech society, many blue collar jobs requiring little education but paying well are disappearing/being outsourced.
Research
2008 statistics show how much (%) of a household’s income is spent on food?
poor families with three or more people spend about 1/3 (33%) of their income on food
Research Time Magazine (1/7/11) said what regarding jobs and degrees held?
- In 2012, 37.6% of jobs will require a bachelor’s degree or higher
- 26.2% of jobs will require a high school diploma with no college
- 8.5% of jobs will require less than a high school diploma
What is happening in terms of blue-collar positions?
- are decreasing
- adults with low literacy skills there are fewer choices
- in many countries like the Philippines, many jobs such as fishing and farming that do not require literacy skills
- The U.S. offers very few of those jobs
Research What does Neuman, 2009-pg. 11--state about the class system in America?
-perhaps for the first time in its history, America now has a caste-like underclass of unskilled and illiterate persons with no counterpart in the western world
What do homeless children and youth lack?
a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence
Where do homeless youth live?
cars, parks, public places, abandoned buildings, or bus & train stations
Research
What is homelessness according to the natinoal alliance to end homlessness, 2012?
Inability of people to pay for housing, impacted by both income and affordability of available housing
What happened to the number of low SES households that spent more than 50% on rent?
increased by 6% from 5.9 million in 2009 to 6.2 million in 2010
What was found abut families making an annual income of $9,400?
(national alliance to end homlessness, 2012)
The average real income of working poor people increased by less than 1% from 2009 to 2010.
-There was not a single county in the nation where a family with an average annual income of $9,400 could afford fair market rent for a 1-bedroom unit
What are potential negative effects of problems on children? –(13)
- homlessness–>irregular attendance
- lack of food–>learning problems, and stunted physical growth
- neighborhood problems such as increased exposure to crime and violence, post traumatic stress syndrome
- inferior schools
- fewer safe places for children to learn, play, and explore
- fewer learning resources such as books, quality child care, good libraries
- family stress, including parental depression, fighting, potential neglect, and abuse of children
- home and work responsibilities take priority over school
- Fewer extracurricular activities, travel opportunities
- asthma
- exposure to lead
- prematurity
- lack of access to health care, including dental care
Research
What does Hepp, 2011-ASHA leader “protecting children from neurotoxicants say?
- low SES children have increased exposure to neurotoxicants than middle-SES children (e.g., cigarette smoke, lead)
- these neurotoxicants linked to things such as mental retardation and learning disabilities
When it is dangerous outside, what are the effects on the children?
- children stay indoors, watch TV
- Some low-SES children watch up to 11 hrs. of TV a day
What is generational poverty?
poverty affects family for 2 or more generations
what are characteristics of generational poverty?
- usually welfare lifestyle
- lack of planning for future, it’s all about the present
- “the world owes me”
What kind of locus of control do people who are experiencing generational poverty have? and what are it’s characteristics?
- they have an external locus of control
- my future is determined by luck and chance
- “there’s nothing I can do–why fight city hall? “
- why bother with therapy
What is situational poverty?
- usually result of a particular set of circumstances
- occurs for a shorter time
- people may have a lot of pride
- may refuse offers of help
What kind of locus of control is in situational poverty? and what are it’s characteristics?
there is an internal locus of control
- they can influence the future by making good choices now
- people believe they can shape their own fate
- open toward intervention
What has research found is more critical to a child’s language development than ethnic background?
SES
What is the factor most highly related to SES?
the mother’s educational level
Research
What did Nelson, 2010 state about early communication and SES predictions?
research: early communication experiences differ based on family income to such a degree that SES can predict a child’s academic performance during the school age years
Low SES caregivers who have little education tend..
tend to provide less oral language stimulation for their children
Research
Hart & Risley (1995, 2003) studied children from professional, working-class, and welfare homes, what did they find?
- they found that in a 365 day year, chidlren from professional families heard about 4 million utterances; children from welfare families heard about 250,000 utterances
- in order for the welfare children to gain a vocabulary equivalent to that of children from working class homes, these welfare children would need to attend a preschool program for forty hours per week where they heard language at a level used in professional homes
What has Other research found about the different levels of SES caregivers and problem solving?
- Middle & upper SES caregivers engage in more discussion, verbal problem-solving
- low SES caregivers give more commands and orders
How do low SES caregivers deal with discipline?
- are also more likely to slap or spank their children rather than use verbal discipline
- these children then grow up to solve problems by means of physical aggression rather than discussion
Low SES children tend to have:
- low vocabulary skills
- poorer grammar
- pragmatic problems (e.g., being “rude, interrupting, not using conventional manners or saying things such as “please” and “thank you”)
Research
According to Nelson, 2010 low SES children tend to be more engaged in what type of talk?
- immediate, daily living concerns (food, clothes) rather than discussions that extend beyond practical concerns
- negative effect on development of abstract language
Characteristics of literacy skills of low SES children
- families may be too poor to buy books
- parent’s low educational levels leads to less reading
- also, reading style is affected. research shows that low SES parents use lower level language, tell children to pay attention without interrupting, and ask very basic, straightforward questions that don’t require much thought
Research According to Moran (2010; parenting.com) how many books will middle class and low income kids own
- a child growing up in a middle class neighborhood will own an average of 13+ books
- low income communities average about one book for every 300 children
research
according to Moran, 2010, having reading difficulties…
-increase odds a child will drop out of school, have a criminal record
-states like california and indiana factor in the # of 3rd graders not reading at grade level when planning future jail construction
Thus…
-reading & writing skills are often low–very basic and concrete
-there is difficulty with decontextualized language
Many low SES children have substantial difficulty with what?
phonological awareness skills
Who gets overreferred to special education?
low SES children
what are biased against low SES children? and why?
- many standardized tests
- there can be grammatical bias
- test tasks are often highly decontextualized
- at home, many low SES children are not encouraged to take verbal risks. When asked to guess, they shut down.
- Many low SES children have not been exposed to “school” or “test type” tasks such as verbal display of knowledge with an unfamiliar adult
In order to validly evaluate the language skills of low SES children what can we use?
- portfolio assessment
- assessment of information processing skills
- language samples
- Dynamic assessment
what is Dynamic assessment?
the ability to learn over time when provided with instruction
How can we help low SES parents help their children with language stimulation?
- reach out to families, by giving them lists of resources
- we can also send books home
- we can send home short DVDs that demonstrate language stimulation techniques
What do we need to focus on developing for low SES children?
- pragmatics:solving problems verbally, being polite
- correct grammar: morphology & syntax
- vocabulary: social and academic
- phonological awareness skills
- literacy skills: reading, writing
Research
Lovelace & Stewart (2009, p. 168) state what about children from low SES backgrounds and their vocabulary?
- are often limited in experiences needed to build background knowledge for vocabulary growth because individual choices and experiences provided to these children overall are more limited than for groups with greater economic resources
- Because experiences are limited, the potential for gaining word knowledge from a variety of opportunities is predictability reduced for these children. These early differences in children’s vocabulary knowledge have shown that even a small disadvantage grows into a larger one and becomes difficult to ameliorate without intervention
it is important to start building low SES children’s _____ and then moving into ______
it is important to start building low SES children’s conceptual bases and then moving into oral and literate language
what is another things we need to teach children with low SES skills?
basic safety
in terms of increasing executive functioning skills, low SES students..
- are vulnerable in this area due to environmental and physiological factors
- they have a lot of chaos in their lives
What does executive functioning involve?
- the problem-solving processes that are utilized at the outset of a novel, nonautomatic task
- goal-directed behavior that we engage in to be successful in life
- thinking about and planning for the future, and considering our choices and their consequences
how do we help children develop executive functioning skills?
- initially providing a lot of structure
- giving choices and consequences
- helping them stop and think before they act (STAR: stop-think-act-review)
- teaching delayed gratification
In terms of executive functioning how must we help students think?
- the choice i made was_____.
- the consequence for this choice was_____.
- next time, i could choose to ______.
- I could also choose to____.
What can we do to help students move out of poverty?
we can be caring involved role models
