Supporting early language in nurseries

About the study

Learning Language and Loving It™ – The Hanen Program® for Early Childhood Educators (Hanen LLLI) is a training programme for Early Years (EY) practitioners to promote language and literacy learning in nurseries as well as supporting the development of social skills. The training programme is designed to provide staff with practical strategies to enhance children’s communication and language skills, through specialised ways of interacting and communicating with children during normal daily routines.

The evaluation was a two-armed randomised controlled trial (RCT) with an implementation and process evaluation (IPE). It included 962 pupils from 70 treatment settings and 889 pupils from 68 control settings. The primary outcome measured was the receptive language using the British Picture Vocabulary Scale (BPVS-3). Additionally, expressive language was measured using the Renfrew Action Picture Test (RAPT) and socio-emotional development was measured using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire - Teacher version (SDQ-T). The IPE explored what was considered to work well and challenges in delivery from a range of perspectives, including practitioners who took part in the training, the delivery team, and nursery staff members who did not take part in the training. Methods used in the IPE evaluation included  surveys with trained and non-trained practitioners, interviews trained practitioners as well as the delivery team, nursey managers, and non-trained practitioners, focus group discussions, and observations of Hanen LLLI training sessions. Attendance was registered and these data were used to evaluate compliance, dosage, and the intervention’s reach. Finally, a cost evaluation assessed how much it costs to deliver the intervention. Data on costs were collected from settings management, trained practitioners, and the delivery team.

Findings

Children in the settings where Hanen LLLI was delivered made, on average, the equivalent of one months’ additional progress in language development, measured by the BPVS-3 and the RAPT, compared to children in the controlled settings. These results had a moderate to high security rating on the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF)’s padlock system. There is statistical uncertainty regarding these findings that are consistent with small negative impacts or higher positive impacts. As a result, we cannot conclude if this was a genuine effect of the intervention. No evidence of impact was found on socio-emotional development as measured by the SDQ-T.

The implementation and process evaluation found evidence of improvement in nursery practitioners’ practice and an increase in both the quantity and quality of interactions with children. The programme was generally perceived positively by practitioners and was largely delivered with fidelity. The extent which trained practitioners cascaded their learning to non-trained practitioners varied across the settings, however the evaluation did find that cascading was viewed positively as a vehicle to enhance the interventions impact. 

The cost evaluation found that Hanen LLLI is a low-cost intervention. The per pupil per year cost of delivering Hanen LLLI was found to be £43.50 (excluding pre-requisites) or £48.56 (including prerequisites).