These kids might be in the same classroom. Their individual experiences, however, are different from each other, as this new study suggests. To see how the class would look like from the children’s perspective, the researchers had the children wear a video camera on their head for two hours a day.
In this study, published recently in PLOS ONE, the researchers were interested in the linguistic environment – how were children exposed to language in the class?
“We found that the duration and frequency of kids’ interactions with teachers and peers was very different among kids,” said Leydi Johana Chaparro-Moreno, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in educational psychology at The Ohio State University.
“Overall, children interacted more with the teacher than their peers, but for some kids their peers were an additional source of hearing language.”
According to Chapparo-Moreno, the findings could not be easily learned from traditional studies, as most studies before this focused on how teachers behaved in class, such as how they interacted with children.
“What was missing was the perspective of the kids. Especially in preschool classrooms, each child may not be listening to the teacher at the same time or interacting in the same way,” Chaparro-Moreno said.
Know more details about this study over at Ohio State News.
(Image Credit: Ohio State News)