Sobre la identidad

The results of the within and cross-case analysis in the current investigation revealed both expected and unexpected results that shed light on the ways teachers and children in the four classrooms co-created relational spaces that promoted or inhibited the use and learning of conceptual relational words (CRWs). The analysis revealed four themes that addressed the research questions about the nature of teacher instructional language and the learning opportunities that impacted students’ use and learning of CRWs within naturally occurring routines. Each of the four themes encapsulates a combination of characteristics that place them on a continuum of more or less supportive of students’ using and learning CRWs. The first section of this chapter describes the thematic continuum and the three primary characteristics that make up each of the four themes along the continuum. The remaining sections of the chapter present each of the four themes using participant quotations, scene descriptions, and narratives punctuated by supportive and explanatory photographs.

The Dynamic Continuum

Thematic analysis revealed a continuum-based understanding of the ways that classrooms (people, spaces, materials, and learning opportunities) impacted the use and learning of CRWs. The overlapping circles along this continuum (see Figure 4.1) are meant to help illustrate the dynamic and complex relationship between the tools, tactics and human behaviors that were least to most supportive of CRWs. The tools (Bodrova & Leong, 2007) were the physical objects, classroom materials, natural artifacts and mediums that people engaged with during solitary or

(Bodrova & Leong, 2007) included how teachers used their verbal and nonverbal language, how teachers employed the available materials and tools to scaffold or stimulate concept learning, and how the teachers planned and prepared activities that promoted the learning of CRWs.

Figure 4.1 Continuum of characteristics impacting CRWs

The thematic circles also show that neither the teachers nor the classrooms could be represented as discrete points situated on a static line. Rather, the circles denote the

encapsulation of characteristics that were more or less evident in each classroom. This suggested there was a continuum of engaged moments between instructors, children and available tools within each classroom that impacted the use and learning of CRWs. Importantly, these thematic circles do not represent a fixed frame of reference, instead, they reflect the fact that some range of movement existed along the continuum as instructors and children learned and changed together.

These exemplary teachers existed on a continuum of skill regarding their ability to address the curricular objectives for teaching basic concepts to the children with minimal language. The teachers who were most supportive could mesh child Individual Education

LEAST SUPPORTIVE MOST SUPPORTIVE

of

CONCEPTUAL RELATIONAL WORDS Movement is Possible Along the Continuum

Program (IEP) goals with PreK curricular goals for addressing basic concepts. For example, in the classroom that was most supportive of using and learning CRWs, both the teacher and the special educators made sure the students with CCN (Lucy, John, Nick) had access to their aided AAC system across classroom learning activities, in addition to having access to a variety of materials, tools and hands-on experiences that supported basic concept instruction.

A continuum of skill could also be attributed to the paraprofessionals and special

educators who were primarily responsible for teaching the children with the most intense needs, including those with CCN. The ways that the paraprofessionals did and did not synchronize their instruction with the lead teacher, provide aided language modeling (ALM) on the available aided AAC systems, or included their students with CCN into the routines and actions of the class, impacted the students’ learning and usage of CRWs.

There was a continuum of knowledge in how teachers and special educators combined IEP and preschool curricular goals to address students’ vocabulary acquisition, expressive and receptive communication, and language development needs. The students who had IEPs, but still used speech as their primary mode of communication, had a wider range of language

development goals. These included goals for understanding and using basic concepts, expressing four primary language functions (socializing, seeking information, giving information, or

refusing), and expanding expressive and receptive vocabulary. The children with CCN did not have the same wide range of language development goals.

For the students with CCN who required aided AAC, vocabulary acquisition goals were separate from functional language or communication goals. In addition, none of their IEP goals addressed expanding their use of graphic symbols or expanding the length of utterances

core concepts during regular class routines. Some IEP goals did address using core vocabulary on aided AAC systems, but there was no evident instructional connection between teaching core vocabulary for communication and the student’s learning of basic concepts.

As it turned out, only three out of six students with CCN (i.e., Lucy, John, and Joey) had objectives for learning basic concepts listed on their IEP. These objectives primarily addressed each student’s receptive knowledge of concepts, with few expressive expectations beyond labeling. For example, these students’ IEP objectives required them to point to/identify, name, match, and sort colors, shapes, sizes, and letters, along with classifying things, such as animals, foods, and clothes. Each of these students reportedly had intact visual-perceptual skills,

functional fine-motor skills, and emergent speech skills so they were able to perform the task expectations as written into the IEP goals. Adaptations or alternative ways to perform these tasks and demonstrate receptive knowledge of basic concepts were not documented or observed for the three children with CCN who also had cerebral vision impairment or physical challenges.

Influential teacher characteristics on a continuum. There were three primary characteristics common to the teachers that were least to most influential of student use,

enactment, understanding, and learning of CRWs. They were the teachers’: (a) verbal discourse characteristics and nonverbal behaviors, (b) effective use of external mediators and aided AAC systems to support basic concept learning, and (c) ability to offer particular opportunities with objects, tools, and natural mediums to serve as catalysts for learning basic concepts. It should be stated however that, even at the higher end of the continuum, students with CCN had fewer opportunities to use and learn CRWs than their peers without communication disorders across the classrooms.

The ways that teachers orchestrated these three characteristics and made-meaning through their intentional communication was an overt sign of each teacher’s awareness of how messages should be transmitted and how they might be interpreted. An empathic and inclusive climate was observed when the teachers intentionally shifted their verbal and nonverbal

behaviors to meet the diverse needs of all their students and took charge of arranging activities to meet the needs of the student(s) with the most intense needs. The more inclusive and harmonious the learning environment, the more conducive it was to relational language, which was the “language of familiars” as described by the Principle of Communication Relevance (Sperber & Wilson, 1986, 1995, 2002) and further adapted and described by Wharton (2009).

In the field of pragmatics and nonverbal language, Sperber and Wilson (1986, 1995, 2002) forwarded the principle of communication relevance. This principle essentially states that humans naturally look for relevant information during interactions with other persons. Moreover, people efficiently select and attend to information that is “relevant enough in order to attract and hold another’s attention compatible with the communication partners own abilities and

preferences” (Wharton, 2009b, p. 39). Communication relevance is based on shared memory and assumptions, and in a familiar environment such as a preschool classroom, where two or more people are constantly calibrating and readjusting verbal and nonverbal communication, utterance meaning may be rapidly and efficiently understood without having to repeat or reassign explicit information (Wharton, 2009b, 2009c). Hence, the use of non-specific words (such as

demonstrative pronoun “it”) may be an indicator of assumed knowledge about a shared referent between familiar communication partners in a shared environment (Wharton, 2009b).

Characteristic 1: Teachers’ verbal and nonverbal language. Results suggested that the