Are ECE Degree Programs Preparing Teachers to Work with DLLs?

Dual language learners (DLLs), young children who are in the process of learning English while still mastering their home language, now make up close to one-third of all children under the age of eight and nearly 30 percent of children enrolled in Head Start. As states seek to increase the credential requirements necessary to teach in early childhood education (ECE) programs, a strong focus should be paid to teachers’ preparation to work with DLLs.

A new report suggests that many programs may not be providing their students with instruction on how to work effectively with DLLs. The report, Understanding Many Languages Preparing Early Educators to Teach Dual Language Learners, published by Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) uses data from their Early Childhood Higher Education Inventory to answer several questions including:

1. How are early educators being prepared to work with DLLs?
2. How prepared do faculty members feel to teach content related to teaching DLLs?
3. What challenges do programs face in preparing educators to work with DLLs?

Inventory studies were conducted in 13 states, but the majority of the findings for this report were concentrated in six states (Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Oregon, Tennessee and Washington). Data from the National Institute of Early Education Research shows that the pre-K (3-and-4-year-old) DLL population in these states ranges from a low of 4 percent in Mississippi to a high of 29 percent in Florida. None of the six states require that pre-K teachers have specific qualifications or training related to working with DLLs.

To that end, the report reveals that only half of teacher preparation programs, across the six states, require content related to working with pre-K age DLLs. This content ranges from strategies to support their language development, the value of bilingualism, role of home language in supporting their acquisition of English, and family engagement practices among others. Even fewer programs, (40 to 45 percent of programs) require content related to working with infant and toddler DLLs (birth to 3) and English learners (ELs) in grades K-3 or higher. In other words, to the extent that programs are requiring content specific to working with DLLs, the majority are focusing on children in pre-K. This focus may be due to the fact that students enrolled in ECE teacher preparation programs may largely be working in pre-K settings and that historically, there has not been a strong emphasis on ensuring that teachers of infants and toddlers have bachelor’s degrees.

Only 25 percent of programs require students to work with DLLs in their practicum and student teaching experience and around 60 percent provide students with the option of working in classrooms that serve DLLs. These data are troubling given that student teaching provides hands-on experience in the classroom under the guidance of a lead teacher and can provide students with opportunities to learn additional skills and strategies for supporting DLL children in practice. However, these findings may also relate to the distribution of DLL children within the studied states — it may be that there simply are not sufficient numbers of DLLs within that particular region.

Interestingly, the study also examines the capacity of faculty members in teacher preparation programs to provide students with content related to working with DLLs. Close to 30 percent of faculty members, on average, reported that they lacked the capability to prepare teacher candidates on the knowledge and strategies necessary to support DLLs’ cognitive and social development. These findings may be related to the lack of diversity found among faculty in early childhood education degree programs. Just over 80 percent of faculty members in the studied states are white, while only six percent are Black and five percent are Latino. In addition, faculty members reported a need for more linguistic diversity among their ranks and reported a lack of supports in their preparation programs for students who speak English as a second language.

These findings have implications not only for whether ECE preparation programs provide content related to working with DLLs, but also who they are recruiting into their programs. An earlier study by CSCCE documents the stratification of the early childhood workforce in California: “In both family child care homes and child care centers, diversity is stratified by educational level: the higher the educational level of a given group, the less ethnically and linguistically diverse it is.”

If teacher preparation programs lack capacity to effectively serve program candidates who are not native English speakers, then this stratification will likely persist. Given the increased focus on ensuring that early childhood educators have a bachelor’s degree, states need to take action to ensure that linguistically diverse early educators -- who have the language skills and competencies to support DLLs -- are provided with financial, academic and other supports to persist and earn necessary credentials to advance in the field.

Taken together, the report highlights key gaps in teacher preparation programs and provides suggestive evidence that teachers in the studied states are entering early childhood classrooms without sufficient preparation to work with DLLs. Closing these gaps will take coordination among multiple systems to help make the policy changes necessary to ensure all teachers are effectively prepared to work with DLLs.