Discourse strategies employed by Latina mothers and a bilingual kindergarten teacher in multi-party interaction with Latino kindergarteners of varying communicative abilities

This investigation sought to explore the construct of mismatch between home and school discourse environments for young language minority children of varying native language proficiency. Although discourse transitions may be more extreme for children who are linguistically handicapped upon school entry with respect to their peers, it may be particularly so for children who are minimally proficient in the dominant language of bilingual school environments. Most research in this area has failed to operationalize or control for linguistic proficiency as well as for multiparty group configuration. Four Latino kindergarten males, assessed as highest or lowest in bilingual language proficiency in their class on school administered language assessments, interacted with their mothers and their Latina bilingual kindergarten teacher in a small group wordless storybook task.; Conversational interaction was videotaped over repeated sessions and coded for participation structure, topic content, and topic control. Significant differences were observed between Same mothers, Other mothers, and Teacher, on all measures. On all measures, both high and low proficiency children's initiations were highest in the presence of their own mother. Participation structure and topic content measures revealed significant main effect differences between mothers and the teacher. Topic control measures also revealed main effect differences between adult categories. Interaction effects were evident for Same mother vs. Other Mother and Teacher and level of proficiency on frequency and length of dyadic interaction within the multiparty configuration.