Projekt TRIO

Collaboration between Elementary School and Kindergarten – Language Education in Early Child Care Centers

The project TRIO aims at improving kindergarten and primary school teachers’ competence in providing language support to children. This way it will contribute to a better quality of language education for young children.

TRIO addresses the following research questions:

• How can language support in everyday settings and in small-groups be successfully implemented into practice?
• Does the training program improve educators’ and teachers’ competence to offer language support to preschool children?
• Does the training of educators and teachers have positive effects for children’s language development?
• Is this effect strongest for children who acquire German as a second language?

The project TRIO comprises a joint training program for kindergarten and primary school teachers. The training program focuses on two aspects (a) language support in everyday settings, and (b) language support in small-groups for children with specific language needs. In both cases the target groups are children between the ages of 4.5 and 7. In addition to the training program, participating educators and teachers will attend in individual coaching sessions. The effectiveness of this training program will be evaluated by assessing changes in competence of educators and teachers and by tracking the language development of the children.

The project TRIO is part of the state-federal initiative “Bildung durch Sprache und Schrift” (“Education through Language and Literacy”). Co-operation partner is Julia Kerner auch Körner at the Helmut-Schmidt-University Hamburg.