Evaluation of Talking Time: efficacy trial
| ISRCTN | ISRCTN84530173 |
|---|---|
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1186/ISRCTN84530173 |
- Submission date
- 19/07/2024
- Registration date
- 23/07/2024
- Last edited
- 23/07/2024
- Recruitment status
- No longer recruiting
- Overall study status
- Ongoing
- Condition category
- Other
Plain English Summary
Background and study aims
Children from economically disadvantaged households experience disproportionate language learning delays in comparison to their less disadvantaged peers. The development of language and communication skills can have a significant impact on children’s academic achievement, and their employment outcomes as adults. Talking Time© is a universal intervention targeting the oral language skills of children aged between 3 to 4 years. The intervention is designed to provide high-quality professional development to early years practitioners that will enable them to deliver a project of engaging structured activities to support the oral language skills of children in small groups in the nursery setting. The study will assess whether the Talking Time© programme has an impact on the oral language development of children.
Who can participate?
All children aged 3-4 years attending the selected State-maintained and private, voluntary and independent early years settings, for at least 15 hours per week can take part. Settings are recruited from the following local authority areas: North West: Liverpool, Sefton, Knowsley, parts of Lancashire (Burnley, Chorley and Rossendale); Yorkshire & Humber: Calderdale, Kirklees, Wakefield; West Midlands: Walsall, Shropshire, Stoke-on-Trent, Telford& Wrekin, Sandwell, Dudley, Wolverhampton; East of England: Hertfordshire, parts of Essex (Brentwood, Harlow, Epping Forest, Basildon, Castle Point), Thurrock, Bedford, Luton, Central Bedfordshire, Southend; London: Camden, Barking and Dagenham, Westminster, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, Enfield, City of London, Redbridge, Brent, Islington, Barnet, Haringey, Harrow, Havering, Kensington and Chelsea.
What does the study involve?
Talking Time is an intervention designed to provide high-quality professional development to early years practitioners that will enable them to deliver a programme of engaging structured activities to children aged 3-4 years in small groups in the nursery setting. The programme aims to develop supportive conditions for language development, specifically, meaningful and engaging structured small-group experiences which allow children to hear and rehearse language in the context of multi-turn conversations. The intervention has been designed by experts in child language acquisition and early years professional development based in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford and the Institute of Education at University College London. Trainer-mentors recruited by the University of Oxford delivery team will deliver the intervention to early years practitioners.
This evaluation will assess whether the Talking Time programme has an impact on the oral language development of children aged 3-4. The evaluation also involves an implementation and process evaluation, to understand the extent to which the programme is implemented as intended, perceived impacts on outcomes, and to add greater depth to the findings, including the extent to which there is support for the causal pathways set out in the underlying theory of change. Finally, the evaluation will also estimate the cost of the programme.
What are the possible benefits and risks of participating?
The potential benefits will include improved language-supporting practice among early years practitioners in the selected settings, and improved grammar and oral language skills among children in settings assigned to the intervention.
No potential harm is envisaged for children, some potential increase in workload and routine disruption is possible for staff employed in the participating settings.
Where is the study run from?
1. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (UK)
2. The University of Oxford (UK)
When is the study starting and how long is it expected to run for?
August 2023 to October 2026
Who is funding the study?
Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) (UK)
Who is the main contact?
Edoardo Masset, e.masset@niesr.ac.uk
Contact information
Public, Scientific, Principal Investigator
2 Dean Trench Street
London
SW1P 3HE
United Kingdom
| Phone | +44 (0)7540201173 |
|---|---|
| e.masset@niesr.ac.uk |
Study information
| Study design | Cluster randomized control trial |
|---|---|
| Primary study design | Interventional |
| Secondary study design | Cluster randomised trial |
| Study setting(s) | Childcare/pre-school |
| Study type | Treatment |
| Participant information sheet | https://www.niesr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Talking-Time-Privacy-Notice-Parents-1.pdf |
| Scientific title | Efficacy Trial of Talking Time©, an oral language intervention for early years |
| Study hypothesis | High quality professional development to early years’ practitioners that enables them to deliver a programme of engaging structured activities to children aged 3-4 years in small groups in the nursery setting, can improve children's grammar and oral language skills. |
| Ethics approval(s) |
Approved 08/12/2023, NIESR Research Ethics Committee (REC) (2 Dean Trench Street, London, SW1P 3HE, United Kingdom; +44 (0)20 3948 4488; k.stockland@niesr.ac.uk), ref: EP30 31/10/2023 |
| Condition | Oral language and grammar skills of children aged 3-4 attending early years settings in disadvantaged communities in England |
| Intervention | The study recruited 130 early-year settings across England from the State-maintained and from the private sector. The researchers will use cluster randomisation. Half of the settings will be assigned to the intervention and the remaining half will be assigned to a control group not receiving the intervention. All children in the clusters assigned to the intervention will receive the intervention. Randomisation will be conducted within strata. There will be five strata consisting of five geographic regions. After distributing study settings across regions, in each region the researchers will randomly select an equal number of intervention and control settings. Randomisation will be conducted using Stata 17 in the following way: 1. Each setting will be assigned a randomly generated number 2. Settings will be sorted by strata and by the random number 3. In each stratum, the first setting will be allocated to either project or control, on the basis of the randomly generated number 4. Each subsequent setting will be assigned to have the opposite allocation of the previous setting The intervention is Talking Time, a universal intervention targeting the oral language skills of children aged 3 to 4. It supports early years practitioners in delivering a programme of structured small-group activities to children. Children take part in two 15-minute activities per week during regular provision, for a period of 20 weeks during the academic year (from November 2024 to June 2025). The programme is based on three evidence-based activities: 1. Shared storytelling and conversation using illustrations in storybooks as prompts (‘Story Conversations’) 2. Games and guided role play designed to develop vocabulary (‘Word Play’) 3. Narrative discussion and retelling based on photos of real situations likely to be familiar to children (‘Hexagons’). |
| Intervention type | Behavioural |
| Primary outcome measure | Sentence repetition measured by the Grammar and Phonology Screening assessment (GAPS) at the beginning of the academic year in September-October 2024 (baseline) and again at the end of the academic year in June-July 2025 (endline) |
| Secondary outcome measures | 1. Expressive vocabulary measured by the Renfrew Expressive Vocabulary Test, at the beginning of the academic year in September-October 2024 (baseline) and again at the end of the academic year in June-July 2025 (endline) 2. Information and grammar score measured by the Renfrew Action Picture Test, at the beginning of the academic year in September-October 2024 (baseline) and again at the end of the academic year in June-July 2025 (endline) |
| Overall study start date | 01/08/2023 |
| Overall study end date | 31/10/2026 |
Eligibility
| Participant type(s) | Learner/student |
|---|---|
| Age group | Child |
| Lower age limit | 3 Years |
| Upper age limit | 4 Years |
| Sex | Both |
| Target number of participants | 2600 children from 130 settings |
| Participant inclusion criteria | 1. Children aged 3-4 years 2. Children attending settings for a minimum of 15 hours per week |
| Participant exclusion criteria | Does not meet the inclusion criteria |
| Recruitment start date | 29/01/2024 |
| Recruitment end date | 29/07/2024 |
Locations
Countries of recruitment
- England
- United Kingdom
Study participating centres
Gilpin Crescent
Pelsall, Walsall
WS3 4HR
United Kingdom
Spencer Street
Liverpool
L6 2WF
United Kingdom
Crocklands
Greenstead Green, Halstead
CO9 1QY
United Kingdom
Sheringham Avenue
London
E12 5PB
United Kingdom
Washington Street
Girlington, Bradford
BD8 9QW
United Kingdom
Sponsor information
Charity
5th Floor, Millbank Tower
21 – 24 Millbank
London
SW1P 4QP
England
United Kingdom
| Phone | +44 (0)204 536 3999 |
|---|---|
| info@eefoundation.org.uk | |
| Website | https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/ |
"ROR" |
https://ror.org/03bhd6288 |
Funders
Funder type
Charity
Private sector organisation / Trusts, charities, foundations (both public and private)
- Alternative name(s)
- EducEndowFoundn, Education Endowment Foundation | London, EEF
- Location
- United Kingdom
Results and Publications
| Intention to publish date | 30/04/2026 |
|---|---|
| Individual participant data (IPD) Intention to share | Yes |
| IPD sharing plan summary | Stored in non-publicly available repository |
| Publication and dissemination plan | A protocol, and a final report with the results of the trial will be published online on the website of the Education Endowment Foundation on April 2026. The researchers also plan to publish the result in at least one article in a peer-reviewed journal. |
| IPD sharing plan | The datasets generated during the trial and analysed during the current study are not expected to be made available to the public because they include information authorised by parents' consent for the purpose of the study only. De-anonymised data will be archived in the EEF data archive managed by FFT Education at the end of the study (October 2016), and will be available to researchers upon approval of request. |
Editorial Notes
23/07/2024: Study's existence confirmed by the Education Endowment Foundation.
