Language development Home environment The environment of low SES children is characterized by less dialogue from parents, minimal amounts of book reading, and few instances of
joint attention, the shared focus of the child and adult on the same object or event, when compared to the environment of high SES children. In contrast, infants from high SES families experience more child-directed speech. At 10 months, children of high SES hear on average 400 more words than their low SES peers. Language ability differs sharply as a function of SES, for example, the average vocabulary size of 3-year-old children from professional families was more than twice as large as for those on welfare. Children from lower income households had greater media access in their bedrooms but lower access to portable play equipment compared to higher income children. This eventually leads children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds to be at a disadvantage when comparing them with their counterparts in terms of access to physical activities.
Parental interactions In addition to the amount of language input from parents, SES heavily influences the type of
parenting style a family chooses to practice. These different parenting styles shape the tone and purpose of verbal interactions between parent and child. For example, parents of high SES tend toward more
authoritative or
permissive parenting styles. These parents pose more open-ended questions to their children to encourage the latter's speech growth. In contrast, parents of low SES tend toward more
authoritarian styles of address. Their conversations with their children contain more
imperatives and yes/no questions that inhibits child responses and speech development. An
authoritarian style of address prepares children for these types of roles, which require a more accommodating and compliant personality. Therefore, low-SES parents see the family as more hierarchical, with the parents at the top of the power structure, which shapes verbal interaction. This power differential emulates the circumstances of the working class world, where individuals are ranked and discouraged from questioning authority. Conversely, high-SES individuals occupy high-power positions that call for greater expressivity. High-SES parents encourage their children to question the world around them. The effects of SES on vocabulary extend from childhood to adolescence and even into early adulthood according to a large socioeconomically diverse study. A lack of joint attention in children contributes to poor vocabulary growth when compared to their high SES peers. Joint attention and book reading are important factors that affect children's vocabulary growth. With joint attention, a child and adult can focus on the same object, allowing the child to map out words. For example, a child sees an animal running outside and the mom points to it and says, "Look, a dog." The child will focus its attention to where its mother is pointing and map the word dog to the pointed animal. Joint attention thus facilitates word learning for children.
Syntax Syntax refers to the arrangement of words and phrases to form sentences. SES affects the production of sentence structures. Although 22- to 44-month-old children's production of
simple sentence structures does not vary by SES, low SES does contribute to difficulty with
complex sentence structures. Complex sentences include sentences that have more than one
verb phrase. An example of a complex sentence is, "I want you to sit there". The emergence of simple sentence structures is seen as a structure that is obligatory in everyday speech. Complex sentence structures are optional and can only be mastered if the environment fosters its development.
Phonology Phonological awareness, the ability to recognize that words are made up of different sound units, is also affected by SES. Children of low SES between the second and sixth grades are found to have low phonological awareness. The gap in phonological awareness increases by grade level. This gap is even more problematic if children of low SES are already born with low levels of phonological awareness and their environment does not foster its growth. Children who have high phonological awareness from an early age are not affected by SES.
Positive outcomes of low SES Given the large amount of research on the setbacks children of low SES face, there is a push by child developmental researchers to steer research to a more positive direction regarding low SES. The goal is to highlight the strengths and assets low income families possess in raising children. For example, African American preschoolers of low SES exhibit strengths in oral narrative, or storytelling, that may promote later success in reading. These children have better narrative comprehension when compared to peers of higher SES. Since 2012, there has also been some research on the
Shift-and-persist model, which attempts to account for the counterintuitive positive health outcomes that can occur in individuals who grow up in low SES families.
Literacy development A gap in reading growth exists between low SES and high SES children, which widens as children move on to higher grades. Reading assessments that test reading growth include measures on basic reading skills (i.e., print familiarity, letter recognition, beginning and ending sounds, rhyming sounds, word recognition), vocabulary (receptive vocabulary), and
reading comprehension skills (i.e., listening comprehension, words in context). The reading growth gap is apparent between the spring of kindergarten and the spring of first-grade, the time when children rely more on the school for reading growth and less on their parents. Initially, high SES children begin as better readers than their low SES counterparts. As children get older, high SES children progress more rapidly in reading growth rates than low SES children. These early reading outcomes affect later academic success. The further children fall behind, the more difficult it is to catch up and the more likely they will continue to fall behind. By the time students enter high school in the United States, low SES children are considerably behind their high SES peers in reading growth.
Home environment Home environment is one of the leading factors of a child's well-being. Children living in a poor home with inadequate living conditions are more likely to be susceptible to illness and injuries. The fact that many students go to school outside of their home to learn does not mean that it is the only determinant of their literacy growth. Parenting at home plays a role in shaping emotional, physical and mental health, all things that are extremely important to educational success in the classroom. This is a crucial factor that must be acknowledged by educators because boundaries such as constant
parenting stress and approach to learning, for example, have a major impact on the students' literacy development. A parent's involvement in their child's reading literacy performance progress is often overcome by demographic factors such as poverty, racial and ethnic identity, family and parenting stress, and the parent's educational level. Studies show that when parents become involved in reading-related activities with their children outside of school, reading performance, literacy, love for reading and language skills are more likely to improve. Parent involvement in students' education is a large factor in their literacy achievement, but the way they parent has a large impact on the overall development of the child. These kinds of involvements are often determined by
privilege and the level of stress that a parent must endure, especially when of low socioeconomic status. The reading literacy gap has been further exposed by the enhancement of these already existing inequalities. Studies have found a direct link between Family Processes (including parenting stress and discipline practices), Social-Emotional Readiness (including approaches to learning and self control), and Reading Literacy. Limited access to the correct school resources affects a child's literacy level dramatically, even more so during the switch to
online learning, given the combination of decreased parent involvement and access to outdoor play. Low to lower-middle class households had the highest rate of employment change during the pandemic, which includes loss of employment, reduced hours and/or reduced pay. Comparing this 2013 report to the occurrences existing in 2020 are not very different given that the demographic students still experience this "digital gap" and disproportionate lack in access to the internet and/or technological equipment necessary. Additionally, the summer setback disproportionately affects African American and Hispanic students because they are more likely than White students to come from low SES families. Also, low SES families typically lack the appropriate resources to continue reading growth when school is not in session. After the long summer break, it is found that the reading literacy gap between middle and lower class students is about 3 months long. When comparing different social statuses of families, the environment of a neighborhood turns out to be a major factor in contributing to the growth of a child.
School influence School characteristics, including characteristics of peers and teachers, contribute to reading disparities between low and high SES children. For instance, peers play a role in influencing early reading proficiency. In low SES schools, there are higher concentrations of less skilled, lower SES, and minority peers who have lower gains in reading. The number of children reading below grade and the presence of low-income peers were consistently associated with initial achievement and growth rates. Low SES peers tend to have limited skills and fewer economic resources than high SES children, which makes it difficult for children to grow in their reading ability. The most rapid growth of reading ability happens between the spring of kindergarten and the spring of first grade. Teacher experience (number of years teaching at a particular school and the number of years teaching a particular grade level), teacher preparation to teach (based on the number of courses taken on early education, elementary education, and child development), the highest degree earned, and the number of courses taken on teaching reading all determine whether or not a reading teacher is qualified. Low SES students are more likely to have less qualified teachers, which is associated with their reading growth rates being significantly lower than the growth rates of their high SES counterparts. ==See also==