Which questions should we ask to measure Early Years educators’ confidence in supporting young children’s language development?

We developed LangQuest-EY, a self-report questionnaire for early years educators which aims to accurately assess their confidence in their use of language-supporting strategies with children between the age of two and four. This new tool should be helpful to researchers to evaluate if training helps educators to use effective strategies consistently – over time, with all children, and across all staff members in a setting. This is important, because we cannot assume that training is always successful. Early childhood education systems are under-resourced, staff shortages are rising, and children’s needs are increasing. Under these circumstances, we expect that it will be challenging for educators to use newly learned strategies. While there is research that shows training for early years educators can improve child outcomes, much less is known about the extent to which improvement in practice is sustained.

To guide the development work of LangQuest-EY, we first reviewed existing research evidence and current UK guidance on curriculum and pedagogy for communication and language. The next step was a Delphi review with a panel of twelve experts to help reach consensus on which practices the questionnaire should ask educators about, and how questions should be asked. We then developed a questionnaire with 29 questions, which asked educators to rate their levels of confidence. This included for example ‘prompting multiple turns to keep conversations going’. Each question included practice examples, e.g. for prompting, ‘to comment, explain, ask questions, and add ideas related to the child’s play’. We also added some feedback questions (e.g. what is your opinion about the length of the questionnaire), and then tested our questionnaire with 79 educators to explore how well the questionnaire worked, and to further refine its questions.

We found that educators’ responses to questions on their confidence levels related to their experience, their level of qualifications, their role in the setting, and the size of the setting in the expected ways. For example, if educators had more years of experience working in early years, they reported higher levels of confidence. These findings support the validity of the tool. Correlations between the items in the questionnaire were high, suggesting the tool is reliable. We explored the ways in which questions grouped together, and found that the data grouped into four domains that were conceptually meaningful: i) engaging children in conversations and extending their language (8 items), ii) planning for language everywhere (5 items), iii) practicing and modelling words and sounds (4 items), iv) working with others to assess and support language (5 items). Importantly, those questions with a focus on adapting language-supporting practices to the skills of individual children, and those facilitating narrative skill development did not group together in the expected ways. These two areas however are also highly important for language support, and more work here is needed.

We found that educators’ reported confidence in language-supporting strategies was generally high. Despite this fact, there was sufficient variation to investigate and identify significant correlations, for example to educators’ years of experience. Feedback from educators suggested the questionnaire was easy to complete, and not many comments suggested any changes that should be considered.

Our self-report questionnaire will be useful for researchers who want to evaluate the effects of training on educators’ confidence in their use of language-supporting practices. Its questions cover a wider range of areas that we know are important for effective language support. With some adaptations, the questionnaire can also be useful for educators seeking to improve their own practice. As a self-auditing tool, the questionnaire will pinpoint areas of strength and weaknesses in practice, and it can be used to monitor change once improvement strategies have been put into place.

A larger-scale study should be carried out to explore how accurate and truthful the tool is in capturing educators’ confidence – e.g. by comparing educators’ confidence scores to their observed practices and knowledge. We hope that following further development and testing, the new tool will be useful to establish which CPD programmes can be most effective for improving language-supporting practices– over time, and for individual educators as well as teams within early years settings.