The "'Literacy Octopus' Dissemination Trial" aimed to test the impact on pupil outcomes of disseminating research summaries and evidence-based resources to schools. The materials aimed to support teaching and learning of Key Stage 2 literacy and were created by leading organisations with experience of engaging schools in evidence use.…

Digital media and electronic toys are changing the landscape of childhood. How does this change impact language learning? In this chapter, we explore potential alignment between six established principles of language and children's engagement with digital media and electronic toys. We argue that electronic toys and digital media are not solely…

Advanced theory-of-mind (AToM) development was investigated in three separate studies involving 82, 466, and 402 elementary school children (8-, 9-, and 10-year-olds). Rasch and factor analyses assessed whether common conceptual development underlies higher-order false-belief understanding, social understanding, emotion recognition, and…

Restrictive language policies for education have been passed in several states in the United States. In 1998, 2000, and 2002, California, Arizona, and Massachusetts passed the most restrictive of these policies, impacting 4.4 million students classified as English language learners (ELLs). This study examines how these policies are currently…

Early childhood teachers play a key role in addressing the needs of young English Language Learners, and a vast body of research is dedicated to assessing best practices for teachers. However, less research addressing the role of policymakers, program directors and administrators is available. Although teachers can make a difference in the lives…

This article examines some of the challenges that the notion of a (monolingual) native speaker faces in a global context of increasing awareness that bilingualism and multilingualism are the norm rather than the exception. It also discusses the distinction between two child language acquisition environments, bilingual first language acquisition…

Research has indicated differences in prosodic expression for infants-at-risk-of-autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and it has been proposed that caregiver speech to these infants may also be moderated prosodically. In typical development, the pitch range of maternal infant-directed speech (IDS) narrows and utterance intensity decreases with infant…

Synonymy is important but difficult for language learners to grasp. Using a forced-choice question instrument, along with corpus data as reference, this study examines the use of four sets of synonyms by intermediate/advanced Chinese EFL/ESL learners and native English speakers. The data analyses reveal several key findings, including a general…

This paper introduces an open learner model approach to learning analytics to combine the variety of data available from the range of applications and technologies in language learning, for visualisation of language learning competences to learners and teachers in the European language context. Specific examples are provided as illustrations…

This study analyzes how others engage rural and urban Mozambican infants during naturalistic observations, and how the proportion of time spent in different engagements relates to infants' language development over the second year of life. Using an extended version of Bakeman and Adamson's (1984) categorization of infant engagement, we…

Background: The developmental relationships between executive functions (EF) and early language skills are unclear. This study explores the longitudinal relationships between children's early EF and language skills in a sample of children with a wide range of language abilities including children at risk of dyslexia. In addition, we investigated…

This article describes a study on mutuality in mother-child interaction during reading and playing sessions. Within mother-child interaction, mutuality is seen as important in language acquisition. The study was executed within a group of Netherlands Antillean mother-child dyads who participated in an intervention programme. Mutuality was…

Education systems around the world have experienced a rise in the number of newly arrived students. This article explores the manner in which the Swedish education system responds to the diverse needs of these students. Using the concept of post-migration ecology, the authors outline and critically discuss the legal, organisational, and…

This study investigated whether vocabulary delays in toddlers with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) can be explained by a cognitive style that prioritizes processing of detailed, local features of input over global contextual integration--as claimed by the weak central coherence (WCC) theory. Thirty toddlers with ASD and 30 younger,…

This study reports on the acquisition of quantity contrasts in Guina-ang Bontok, an indigenous language spoken in the Philippines. Four-year-old and 5-year-old children's perception and production of quantity contrasts were examined using a pair of names that contrast in the quantity of the medial nasal. Frequencies of the quantity contrast were…