Dialogic classroom talk in early childhood education: The effect on language skills and social competence

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Dialogic classroom talk in early childhood education: The effect on language
skills and social competence
Article
in
Learning and Instruction · July 2021
DOI: 10.1016/j.learninstruc.2021.101522
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Classroom talk that contributes to students' social competencies
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Dialogic classroom talk in early childhood education
 
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Femke van der Wilt
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
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Renske Bouwer
Utrecht University
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Chiel Van der Veen
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
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Learning and Instruction xxx (xxxx) xxx
Please cite this article as: Femke van der Wilt,
Learning and Instruction
, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2021.101522
0959-4752/© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
).
Dialogic classroom talk in early childhood education: The effect on 
language skills and social competence 
Femke van der Wilt
*
, Renske Bouwer , Chiel van der Veen 
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Van der Boechorststraat 7, 1081 BT, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
A R T I C L E I N F O
Keywords: 
Dialogic classroom talk 
Early childhood education 
Social competence 
Oral communicative competence 
Language skills 
A B S T R A C T
The first purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of dialogic classroom talk on children
’
s language 
skills (i.e. oral communicative competence and receptive vocabulary knowledge). The second purpose was to 
examine the effect of this type of classroom talk on children
’
s social competence (i.e. theory of mind and social 
acceptance). A total of 17 teachers and 311 children (aged 4
–
7 years) participated in this study. Eight teachers 
participated in an 8-week intervention directed at dialogic classroom talk. Multilevel analyses revealed that the 
intervention had a significant effect on children
’
s oral communicative competence. No significant effects were 
found on children
’
s receptive vocabulary knowledge, theory of mind, and social acceptance. The results of this 
study indicate that dialogic classroom talk is beneficial for children
’
s oral communicative competence. Further 
research is required in order to investigate how dialogic classroom talk might affect receptive vocabulary 
knowledge and social competence as well.