Sheldon:

Welcome advocates to another episode of the Leading Equity podcast, a podcast that focuses on supporting educators with the tools and resources necessary to ensure equity at their school. Today, I've got a special guest, Dr. Stephanie Abraham is here with us. She is the author of What Counting Words Has Really Taught Us: The Word Gap, A Dangerous but Useful Discourse. So without further ado, Stephanie, thank you so much for joining us today.

Stephanie:

Thank you Sheldon, for having me on the show. I just wanted to say that... Thank you for inviting me to talk about this. This has been a concern that I've seen circulating in education and in the news about the claim of a word gap. I know that you were going to ask me to define what is a word gap, if you want me to go ahead and start, I can tell you what I think the word gap is and what people claim that it is.

Sheldon:

Well, before we get into that, why don't you share a little bit about who you are.

Stephanie:

Okay, sure.

Sheldon:

And where you're from and then yeah, we'll jump right into the word gap after that.

Stephanie:

Okay. Well, currently I'm an associate professor of language and literacy education at Rowan University in New Jersey. I actually live in Philadelphia, but I am from the state of Georgia. And I grew up in a white working class home, it would have been my family that would have been one of those families that the researchers claim had a word gap. So it's always been a really personal issue to me and I've longed to write about it and speak back to that research that position families like mine as having a word gap.

Sheldon:

All right. So now I'm really interested, because sometimes I'll ask folks how did you get into this research? But you said that this is a personal thing for you. So do you want to share a little bit more as far as kind of what is the word gap?

Stephanie:

Sure.

Sheldon:

And maybe that personal piece to it?

Stephanie:

Yeah, I think it's going to come out because it's certainly there in my research about my personal responses and my scholarly responses to these claims of what a word gap is. So I think that the word gap is a discourse. Other researchers will claim that a word gap is an empirical fact or a scholarly fact. And so what a discourse means is that it's an idea that circulates in society that many people assume to be true, and they don't question it too much or think about it critically. People just say, "Oh, the word gap." And it's become kind of a common name and term used in homes, and in education in schools and preschools even, I hear teachers and other educators or actors in those schools talk about word gaps. Essentially the word gap discourse, it claims that the number of words that children who grow up in poor families or working class families, that they know a lot less words than children who grow up in middle-class or wealthy families, but it doesn't stop there.

               The word gap discourse will continue on to say that it is that gap of words that causes a person to be poor. And you can see how this is starting to get into a circular argument here, because it's just impossible for a baby to have a pre-existing word gap that's causing their poverty. Researchers who also claimed that there's a word gap will say that if we can just close the word gap, you'll see that phrase a lot too, close the word gap, that educational inequality won't exist anymore, that all children will then do well in school. They'll all graduate high school. They'll all go on to college. They'll all get a good job and viola. There are no more poor people and there are no more problems. That's kind of the basic logic behind the word gap discourse and its argument.

Sheldon:

Well let me-

Stephanie:

Sure.

Sheldon:

Let me throw something out there because I've heard of the word gap, I've heard that term with the work that I do it comes across every now and then, often I... So I do hear a lot of the poverty versus those who are more middle class, wealthy, but also I see level of education tied into that as well. Is that some of your research reflecting as well, folks that were bringing up well, and also if a parent has a PhD versus a parent that has a high school, or GED, or something like that, is that also part of your research?

Stephanie:

Well, it isn't... It will be. It wasn't in this last article that I wrote, but if you notice, if you start to read the books and the research that purports a word gap, you will notice some conflation of educational attainment with socioeconomic status. And I think my family is a really good example because all of my brothers flunked out of college, I got a PhD, but they earn more money than I do. So we can't conflate educational level with income. And so you don't see that pulled apart very well in the research that purports that there is a word gap. It is something that I would like to further explore, but it wasn't something that I did in this article. But I encourage those of you who are listening to this, to go out and read that research and get really critical about it and go, "Hey, what did they do? Did they really compare apples to apples here? Are they making these claims that socioeconomic status is equivalent to educational attainment?" So, yeah.

Sheldon:

Okay. Okay. Well, future research study is going to happen. So we'll have you on later once that research is out. Okay. So let me ask you this question. As far as the word gap, what is the age range that students are? Is this early childhood? What is the gap that's being measured as far as [crosstalk 00:05:45] the word gap?

Stephanie:

Yeah. You'll see a range depending on the study that you read. In this article that I'm reporting on here, I was mostly critiquing a book that's called Meaningful Differences that was published in 1995. And they started following babies very, very young, starting at 24 months, up to 36 months, and sometimes up to 48 months. So they're looking at young toddlers and making assumptions that the number of words that they heard was the number of words that they know. So you can see also a problematic claim there that just because you hear a word means you know a word isn't true.

Sheldon:

Well, okay. So now I have so many questions, Stephanie. So, okay. So how valid are those assessments, those instruments that are being used? Because like you said... I'll give you an example. I had a dog, and I trained my dog, and when I was learning and researching about training dogs, they said, dogs don't actually understand the language that you utilize they understand sounds. So whatever you say that refers to sit, you could say whatever you wanted.

Stephanie:

Sure.

Sheldon:

And your dog is conditioned to know, okay that means to sit down.

Stephanie:

Yeah.

Sheldon:

So now you have me thinking, and I'm not calling our precious babies dogs, but I guess when you mentioned that just because a word is said, doesn't necessarily mean that the child understands that word. Could you dig a little bit deeper into how that could possibly be problematic?

Stephanie:

Sure, if I could use an example, I was going to bring this up about more definitions of the word gap, is that even though the researchers won't claim this, if you read the research, even though they're saying it's a word gap between poor people and wealthy people, it's really about race. And it's really they're making a claim between white people and black people. So you need to read critically for that as well. And something that's happened more recently is now they're extending this word gap claim to include brown people and specifically brown people who are multi-lingual. So this may be bringing up all kinds of flags for you because now you've got them claiming that a multi-lingual child knows less words than a white monolingual child, which is just really an empirical impossibility. It can't happen. And so when you bring up these notions of sounds...

               My child is bilingual. He's growing up bilingual and I'm raising him bilingually. So if you think about how ridiculous it is to say that a table is a table, or a mesa, or a [hmm hmm 00:08:21], right? You can assign any kind of sounds you want to that thing and then they just start naming it, but to claim that just because they know a lot of different sounds to name the same thing automatically indicates a new measure of intelligence is just really beyond the scope of their work. And that is what they have done is they've made these really huge claims that now they have found kind of this key, this one thing that you can just count the number of words that a child has heard, you can automatically predict their intelligence, and how they're going to perform in school, and how much they're going to make when they grow up. So you probably hear lots of issues coming up with these claims of a word gap.

Sheldon:

Bottom line, this assessment, this instrument sounds culturally biased, right? I think...

Stephanie:

Oh, sure. Yeah.

Sheldon:

At the end of the day.

Stephanie:

Sure.

Sheldon:

Okay, because that's what I'm hearing. I mean, I wrote it down on this note, as I'm taking notes, I'm like, this is culturally biased, like you said.

Stephanie:

So let me talk about another instrument [crosstalk 00:09:19].

Sheldon:

Go for it.

Stephanie:

That's come up, that you're going... Oh, this is really going to get more problematic. So millions of dollars are being funded into close the word gap programs, close the word gap programs right now. Some of them have invented this thing that's like a wordometer that you attach to your child, and your child has to wear it, and it records how many words your child hears over time, and then someone comes back to... Now, the parents that are getting this, you know who these parents are, right?

Sheldon:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Stephanie:

It's going to be the parents who are earning the least amount of money. They're usually of color, black or brown, and they're being assigned this wordometer to put on their child to wear all day. Someone comes into their home and says, "You're not saying enough words. You need to talk more tomorrow, and then the next day, you need to talk more tomorrow." And the ultimate claim is if they just talk enough, we're trying to extrapolate over time, they won't be poor anymore.

Sheldon:

And they're legit saying they won't be poor? That's in the research? They're saying they won't be poor anymore?

Stephanie:

They won't say it that way, but that's what I say that they're saying, if you read it and think about what they're claiming that closing the word gap will do, that is what they think closing the word gap will do.

Sheldon:

Okay. Okay. Okay, if you read between the lines. They're not word for word saying that, but if you listen to what they're saying that [crosstalk 00:10:39].

Stephanie:

Maybe I can find someone who word for word said that. Don't worry. I've read a lot of these newspaper articles, a lot of this research, and they make some claims that I am just really surprised that anyone who's working in language, literacy, or linguistics would make such a claim about language.

Sheldon:

Okay. Okay. So you are blowing my mind right now. And like I said, I have so many thoughts. Let's move on. Okay. So this wordometer... Oh, hold on, this wordometer, is a thing? So, okay, with the wordometer, they're measuring a child's... how much words they're saying or how much they're interpreting?

Stephanie:

Well, they don't know. Right? There's only so much we can know. We can't actually look into your head and know that you really paid attention to those words. Right? I tune out my four-year-old all the time. So you can't really know what's going on inside of a person's head so that's why we're always trying to develop instruments, and observe, and interview to try to know what's going on in your head. So they are making some claims that because a child hears more words directed to them, that then they will perform better at school. They will be smarter. They will be more intelligent.

Sheldon:

And they'll never be poor. Yeah.

Stephanie:

And they won't be poor because of that.

Sheldon:

Okay.

Stephanie:

So it really all comes down to poverty, which was really my... Even though I was talking about the word gap, I was really talking about people trying to find these cures for poverty, which they've tried to do for a long time. And people have posed all kinds of very silly things to try to cure poverty. And if I can go ahead and make a comment about that.

Sheldon:

Of course, go for it.

Stephanie:

That even if there was a word gap that closing it is not going to eliminate poverty, and that is because Americans at least are not very interested in eliminating poverty anyways. And that is because the American middle-class and maybe the lower upper-class benefits so much from the work of the poor, that if they were to be paid a living wage, they can no longer afford the items that make us stay in middle-class. So for instance, those who are picking our food, or making our clothes, cleaning our hotel room when we go away to conferences, we really don't want to pay more for that, and that is what it takes to eliminate poverty in one way in the United States. And the word gap is a way to move Americans away from that idea and to say, it's really just about closing a word gap, pretty easy, right? There's even one article that I analyzed in the article that I published that was titled Solving Poverty is Easy and it's Free.

Sheldon:

Oh, my gosh.

Stephanie:

Just close the word gap. Yeah.

Sheldon:

And they said, it's free.

Stephanie:

It's free.

Sheldon:

Okay, I've got one more question about the multi-lingual... Oh, I'm sorry, the wordometer and then we can move on.

Stephanie:

Yeah. Okay.

Sheldon:

I'm sorry. This is like blowing my mind. So is the wordometer multi-lingual? Does it...

Stephanie:

Oh, it... I would not call it... What is supposedly is happening is it's recording, like you said, sounds. So it's recording, hmm hmm, pause, hmm hmm, pause, hmm hmm, pause. And it's spitting out this data of terms and words that happened, and it's not supposed to be reporting back actual audio transcripts for people to read it because of privacy protections. So in a way, yes, it's multi-lingual because it can indicate where a syllable starts or a word starts and ends. It can segment that way, but it's not multi-lingual in the sense that it's going to give you an accurate transcription back to someone and analyze the quality of conversations that could be happening. I don't know who would make those judgments, but it doesn't do that kind of work.

Sheldon:

Okay, because to me, it sounds like if I just listened to the, or and, or like small little words...

Stephanie:

Over and over again.

Sheldon:

Over and over again on a repeated basis, I could be very... My word gap could be very small and to me that seems inaccurate versus someone that's maybe utilizing larger, more syllables, and all that kind of stuff.

Stephanie:

Yeah. [crosstalk 00:00:14:49].

Sheldon:

Okay. All right. That was my last question. Okay, so we have... To me, I think you have portrayed a... You've done a great job with painting a picture, if you will, of why this is such an issue, putting so much attention on closing the word gap when we have other issues that are impacting our communities. You've mentioned that this is personal, you've talked about all these different examples. I want to get your take on what are some solutions? What should we be focusing on? What are... What are the... Okay, so now we know what the word gap is, what should we actually be studying and researching and what should we be doing?

Stephanie:

Yeah. So I developed just some very... I have long answers to that, but I just want to give three short things to three different audiences if they ever listen to this about what you could do moving forward. And one is to teachers, teachers of children who are children of color, any color, who come from, grow up in poor families, working class families who are multi-lingual, any combination of that in your classroom. It's usually those children that are ascribed as having a word gap, so I don't want you to believe that they have a word gap. Instead, I want you to think that they have this brilliant and amazing linguistic repertoire, that they have all of these languages and dialects that they use every day.

               Children invent words, they are inventive. They are our best creators of language. They play with language and they're not afraid to do it. It's why they're such great language learners because they don't worry about pronunciation yet like we do. So believing that, just changing your mind about what you believe about children's language practices, and then know that it's your job to grow the language practices of all the students that are in front of you in the classroom, regardless of who they are. And we can all grow our language practices, build upon the language practices that they're doing in their every day and that means you have to find out what those are. So ask, be creative, send home those mini cameras, ask them to take pictures, and document, and audio record, and bring those back and then use those as a basis for language learning in your classroom. So that's my advice to teachers. How that looks? It's going to look very different depending on where you are, and what you're doing, and who you're with.

               My other advice is for school administrators or people who are in the position to make curricular and overall decisions for a school or learning space. There's been other research that I didn't do that documented that there are administrators making decisions not to include more rigorous curriculums for these same children, because they believe they have a word gap, that they can't linguistically handle it. So you can see already how that's going to have an effect on even the access of rigorous pedagogies that they won't have access to. So my advice to those people who are in those positions is to go big, be critical, creative, real, current, and relevant, and whatever that means. So don't go back to the basics. I don't want to hear that anymore. Don't go back to worksheets. Don't go back to test prep, instead move in the other direction for these children. It's what all of us want for all of our children.

               And then finally, I do want to get into the personal, when I'm talking to other educational researchers who are out there doing this work, and if they are going into homes to supposedly document a word gap. Here's the first thing, usually it's not them who goes into the home to document the word gap. They usually send someone who is trained. This is their kind of research that they do. I understand that they have to do that, but I really recommend for these researchers to go into the home their self and to make sure that they understand what they're asking someone else to observe. They need to know that they can not just observe what's just going on in that home. And here's my first example from my home life.

               I was thinking about... I grew up on a farm, on a chicken farm, and we raised and we grew a lot of our own food. And so I was thinking about the word, when I was shucking corn, how I learned to shuck and what a husk was, what a kernel, and what a cob was, but daddy didn't teach me that when I was sitting in the house. I was out in the garden and then he was showing me what a husk was and how to husk, and he was showing me how to shuck, and he told me what a kernel was and not to pull them off the cob, so if someone had come into my home just to sit in the living room to document my language practices they would have missed all of that. They needed to go with me to the spaces that I went, that I went to, to learn words.

               Another thing is that the word gap people are in the same boat with the, you have to read to your child at night, every night at home to be a successful reader or whatever. I mean, it's great. I love books, right? I'm an associate professor of language and literacy education, but if you ask my mom or dad if they read to me every night, like on one of those little Likert scales, they would have said never. And they wouldn't have asked them if my dad told me these long made up tales of the black stallion and stuff at night, because that didn't count as reading a picture book aloud. So you need to go beyond what's on the instrument because you're missing things that aren't included there. And then the last thing I'm going to say, I'm not going to sing, but I am going to quote a hymn, that was my favorite hymn when I was little that I had memorized by the time that I was seven years old.

               And it comes from a song called Come Thou, Font of Every Blessing, and the stanza goes like this, it says, "Oh, to grace, how great a debtor, daily I'm constrained to be. Let that goodness like a fetter bind my wandering heart to thee." And so there's no way that my family could have had a word gap when I was reading hymns of this quality at home and memorizing them, but me and daddy would not have been singing aloud if an observer had been in our home and practicing that hymn. We probably would have been quiet so that they could pay attention to what they needed to pay attention to. So it's just really important for researchers to know that their space is going into the home and that not every home is the same, and that they need to find out what's going on before they can start making these claims about what they think they know about people.

Sheldon:

I think you... I mean, just what you shared on a personal note, I mean, you bring up some really good points that folks don't necessarily think about. And again, it goes back to the cultural bias-ness of how these instruments are being done. You mentioned how you sing songs, you sing hymns, right? And again, if I have a guest in my house that I don't know, some random person, professor, or study, or TA, whatever, and they're in my house, I'm not going to open up in song more than likely. Maybe, maybe, maybe, right?

Stephanie:

Right.

Sheldon:

But more than likely, I'm not going to do that. And then you also brought up the whole part of sometimes we educate, we do things outside of the home, and we... Again, our environment, the things that we do culturally, the customs that we have impact how we communicate and having someone into an environment, this structured environment, doesn't necessarily reflect the accurate results that need to happen. To me, in general, I think the overarching theme that I've heard throughout this conversation is we need to stop relying on quote, unquote, word gaps. That shouldn't be what our focus should be on.

Stephanie:

Right.

Sheldon:

There's too many other things out there that we need to worry about as opposed to trying to measure a child's words, because there's too many [crosstalk 00:22:17].

Stephanie:

I agree with you.

Sheldon:

Too many flaws there.

Stephanie:

Yeah. Too many flaws there, don't focus on gaps, focus on listening, paying attention. I know that children are amazing creators of language. All children are so pay attention to them and listen to them. You'll hear lots of language come out and then you won't be able to make claims about a word gap anymore.

Sheldon:

Well, Stephanie, I definitely consider you as providing a voice in leading equity. Why don't you leave us with one word of advice that you can provide to our listeners?

Stephanie:

Well, that. Don't pay attention to word gaps and rethink what you think you know about language and how people use language. You can already just look into yourself and think about assumptions that we all have learned and grown up with, what we think about dialects, variations, accents, and assumptions that we make about the people who use those languages. Instead, rethink them, and think how did you learn to make those decisions? And then moving forward, just think that all the language practices of people come from their families and their history, they're part of who they are. They make up their identity and they need to be just loved, and cherished, and take care of, and grown in every space, classroom or outside of it.

Sheldon:

Nice. All right. Well, you have... I have enjoyed this conversation. You have enlightened me with some stuff that I haven't really thought about. I've heard of word gap... I had heard of word gap... Oh, my gosh. I had heard of the word gap and so when I saw your article, I was like, oh my goodness I got to have her on. So thank you so much.

Stephanie:

Sure.

Sheldon:

Once again, I'm talking to Dr. Stephanie Abraham, author of What Counting Words Has Really Taught Us: The Word Gap, A Dangerous but Useful Discourse, and I'll leave a link in the show notes for that article. But Stephanie, if we have some folks that want to connect with you, what's the best way to reach you online?

Stephanie:

Oh, sure. Just through my email that you use, the [email protected] works. My professional email is [email protected], but I respond to them all the time so either one works.

Sheldon:

All right. Thank you again, Stephanie so much for your time.

Stephanie:

Yes, thank you so much for having me. Yes.

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