The purpose of the study is to examine music’s place and function in the pedagogical activities at two music preschools. I address the following questions. • Which factors have influenced the development of a music profile at these preschools? • How do the preschool teachers relate to music in their profession? • What is thought important in the preschools’ musical activities? • How do singing and other musical activities stimulate multilingual children’s language and social participation? The study is an ethnographic study interpreted in a hermeneutic tradition, informed by a socio-cultural theory. Fieldwork was conducted over a period of two years. The principal methods used are interviews with preschool teachers and observations of preschool children and teachers in action. The study’s findings highlight that preschool principals have great impact on the didactic choices made: they have supported all the preschool teachers in developing the musical competence to teach music in a preschool setting. This has been crucial for the development of these music preschools. The study also shows that various musical activities widen the children’s aspiration and confidence about participation. Communication with sound and motion is a form of expression that is open to all, even in times when children’s spoken language is not sufficient. At these preschools music therefore has a function of stimulating the Swedish language development. Music also creates a sense of community at these preschools. Musical activities give the children examples of how to act in various situations. Musical activities also transcend boundaries. Listening to different types of music is part of the preschools’ own culture. Finally, music has an aesthetic function that provides musical experiences. However, this function is not particularly obvious in the preschool teachers’ discussion of the didactics of the musical activities. It is more important to express the fact that the music-making itself is key. Such an argumentation will manifest the place of music at these preschools, and perhaps will also support the development of the music practice as such. The study shows that it takes time for many preschool teachers to be confident in teaching music, and since the national curriculum says that music should be a part of the preschool agenda, it is important that music should become a standard subject in the preschool teacher education programme.

Number words or numerals are built using a compositional system, wherein a small number of words can be combined in multiple ways to represent many different numbers. Children not only have to learn the rules for combining numerals, but must also map certain combinations to specific arithmetic functions. One such combination involves a class of words called multipliers that are used in a multiplicative structure (e.g. “two hundred” maps to “two times one hundred”). How and when do children learn this mapping? There have been two contrasting theories of acquisition: (1) That the compositional rules themselves provide all the necessary tools in order to create the mapping (Hurford, 1975) or (2) the rules are learned by rote and children only make the mapping via explicit instruction and experience with real world objects (Fuson, 1990). To test these theories, 99 children between 4.5 and 6.5 years old were trained on a novel numeral phrase that either did (Experiment 1) or did not (Experiment 2) use a multiplier structure. With all other stimuli remaining the same, more children (43% vs. 10%) were able to determine the novel word was a multiplier when in the correct structure. Other possible avenues for learning this mapping, including being taught the place value system (Experiment 3) and experience counting (Experiment 4), did not fully explain why children did better with the correct syntax. Although the results of these experiments cannot entirely discount the theory put forth by Fuson, they do support Hurford’s theory that it is the rules themselves which allow children to map meaning onto complex numerals.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur barns språk främjas och utvecklas hos förskolans yngsta barn och på vilket sätt detta genomförs i praktiken på förskolan. Studien genomförs med fokus på innehållet i samlingar. Samlingarnas innehåll analyseras med Vygotskijs teori i åtanke genom att intervjua förskollärare och observera samlingar med fokus på de tre teoretiska begreppen involvering, delaktighet och autonomi. Resultatet visar att förskollärarna använder sig av principerna involvering, delaktighet och autonomi genom samlingarnas olika återkommande aktiviteter såsom upprop, högläsning, ramsa, sånglek och avslutning. Studien visar även att förskollärarna följer två olika modeller som består av Bornholmsmodellen och förskollärarnas egen modell. Samlingens grundläggande funktion visar sig vara att barnen involveras i den sociala gemenskapen. Det framkommer även att samlingarna har en blandad status hos de intervjuade förskollärarna då det råder olika åsikter om samlingens funktion och relevans för barns språkutveckling bland förskollärarna. Under studien visar sig även att samlingar som följer Bornholmsmodellen är mer innehållsrik än samlingar som genomförs enligt förskollärarnas egen modell. Om detta beror på den blandade status som samlingar har bland de intervjuade förskollärarna eller om det är planeringsbrist skulle vara en bra utgångspunkt för framtida forskning. / The aim of this essay is to examine how children’s language is supported and developed at the kindergarten and how it is done in reality. This study has its focus on gatherings. The content of the gatherings is analyzed with the Vygotskij’s theory in mind by interviewing kindergarten teachers and observing gatherings while focusing on the three theoretical expressions involvement, participation and autonomy. The result shows that teacher use the principles of involvement, participation and autonomy by activities like reading, songs etc. The study shows even that kindergarten teachers follow two different models consisting of the Bornholmsmodel and an own model. The main function of a gathering is to involve children into a social society. It shows that gatherings have a mixed status amongst kindergarten teachers because of having different opinions about gathering’s function and relevance for developing children’s language skills. It shows that gatherings using the Bornholmsmodel do have more content than gatherings done by kindergarten teachers with their own model. To examine if this occurs because of the mixed status or because of planning-issues would be a good start to begin with in future research.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references. Online version available on the World Wide Web.

Number words or numerals are built using a compositional system, wherein a small number of words can be combined in multiple ways to represent many different numbers. Children not only have to learn the rules for combining numerals, but must also map certain combinations to specific arithmetic functions. One such combination involves a class of words called multipliers that are used in a multiplicative structure (e.g. “two hundred” maps to “two times one hundred”). How and when do children learn this mapping? There have been two contrasting theories of acquisition: (1) That the compositional rules themselves provide all the necessary tools in order to create the mapping (Hurford, 1975) or (2) the rules are learned by rote and children only make the mapping via explicit instruction and experience with real world objects (Fuson, 1990). To test these theories, 99 children between 4.5 and 6.5 years old were trained on a novel numeral phrase that either did (Experiment 1) or did not (Experiment 2) use a multiplier structure. With all other stimuli remaining the same, more children (43% vs. 10%) were able to determine the novel word was a multiplier when in the correct structure. Other possible avenues for learning this mapping, including being taught the place value system (Experiment 3) and experience counting (Experiment 4), did not fully explain why children did better with the correct syntax. Although the results of these experiments cannot entirely discount the theory put forth by Fuson, they do support Hurford’s theory that it is the rules themselves which allow children to map meaning onto complex numerals.

Linguistic dysfluencies known as mazes have been interpreted clinically as reflecting breakdown in language formulation. Nevertheless, the relatively limited available research has suggested that maze frequency increases with linguistic complexity and that mazes are produced more frequently by children with specific language impairment (SLI) than normal language (NL) peers. This study examined the hypothesis that greater maze production by children with SLI results from their processing limitations. Language samples of school-age children with SLI (n = 9) and NL (n = 11) were collected in contexts varying in task demands: conversation, narration and expository discourse. Both groups produced significantly more mazes in the more demanding contexts than in conversation. However, no significant group effect was noted for age-matched or MLU-matched groups. These results suggest that mazes should not be viewed primarily as an indication of processing limitations or a clinical marker for SLI, but more appropriately as a byproduct of linguistic complexity across groups.

Abstract This study investigates the impact of storytelling for children's language development in preschool from a sociocultural perspective. The purpose is to find what narrative methods teachers use to promote children's language development. I also want to examine whether the children are involved in the storytelling. To get answers to my questions which include what methods teachers use, narrative meaning and function, and their children's participation, I have used qualitative interviews with four preschool teachers at four different preschools. The results of my survey show that teachers use a variety of methods at storytelling. The most common methods were reading, rhymes and daily storytelling while eating. The teachers agreed that storytelling is very important for children's language development and that it plays an important role in the daily activities. The children are involved in various ways, including being activated during reading or sharing their experiences during meals. / Sammanfattning Den här undersökningen handlar om berättandets betydelse för barns språkutveckling i förskolan utifrån ett sociokulturellt perspektiv. Syftet med denna studie är att ta reda på vilka metoder pedagogerna använder sig av vid berättande för att främja barns språkutveckling. Jag vill också undersöka om barnen involveras i berättandet. För att få svar på mina frågeställningar som innefattar vilka metoder pedagogerna använder sig av, berättandets betydelse och funktion, samt barnens delaktighet, har jag använt mig av kvalitativa intervjuer. Jag valde att intervjua fyra olika förskollärare på fyra olika förskolor. Resultatet av min undersökning visar på att pedagogerna använder sig av en rad olika metoder vid berättandet. De vanligast förekommande metoderna är högläsning, rim och ramsor samt vardagsberättande vid matbordet. Pedagogerna var eniga om att berättandet har stor betydelse för barns språkutveckling och att den fyller en viktig funktion i förskolans dagliga verksamhet. Barnen involveras på olika sätt, bland annat genom att vara aktiva under läsning, dela med sig av sina erfarenheter vid matbordet eller välja en ramsa att lära sig.

To date, no studies have established the relationship between early communication characteristics for young children with significant disabilities and later language development. This study characterized communication for toddlers (n = 60) fitting this profile and their parents prior to a language intervention utilizing an observational coding scheme and tested whether child and parent communication characteristics were predictive of performance on oral language measures. Language transcripts were coded for child mode and pragmatic function and parent response to the utterance child utterances. Results indicated that children used contact gestures, answering and commenting at the highest rates relative to other communication characteristics. Parents utilized a related response type for 52% of child utterances. Hierarchical regressions revealed that sophisticated gesture usage, word usage, and sophisticated function rate were predictive of expressive oral language performance. Sophisticated gesture usage, sophisticated function rate, and parent MLU were predictive of receptive oral language performance.

The purpose of this study was to see how the teacher works with children´s language and what working methods they use to develop language, as well as knowledge, among the children in a multilingual school. The main questions for the essay: • What reasons the interviewed teachers about language development? • What approach do the interviewed teachers describe that they use in their multi-lingual children’s group? In order to collect empirical data to my study I chose to use a qualitative method, which consisted of interviews with four teachers in a multilingual class. The study is based on a socio-cultural perspective where social interaction, blocking, communication and language use is the main tool for children's learning and development. The results of my study revealed that teachers realize that when they involve teamwork in class it enhances the activity among the children. In particular when the bilingual children use the language actively in different contexts where they communicate and discuss with each other in the teaching subject. When the children use language in different contexts it also enables them to develop linguistically and in terms of knowledge. The earlier the teacher introduces teamwork in different contexts, the more instructive it is for the children to develop linguistically with their skills. Through this they will be able to achieve the objectives of their various subjects.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references. Online version available on the World Wide Web.