Page 179 - Second language development of newly arrived migrant kindergarteners - Frederike Groothoff

The influence of the school learning environment 179 Based on this General Development Model we constructed Figure 8.4, in which both the average development of Guiraud Index Score as well as the differences within and between individuals are represented (see Table 6.4 in Appendix 6 for the parameter estimates). The average GIS at an age of 73 months was estimated as 3.78. Each month a child grew older, his GIS increased by 0.04 5 4,5 4 3,5 3 2,5 Age in Months Growth GUIRAUD Growth GIS WWithitnh8in0%80-% - WWithitnh8in0%80+% + BeBtwetewenee8n0%80-% - Between 80% + Between 80% + Figure 8.4: Graphical Representation of the General Development Model Guiraud Index Score (114 cases) with 80% Reliability. Figure 8.4 shows that the effect of Age on GIS is significant. The differences within individuals (represented by the striped lines in Figure 8.4) do not depend on Age, however the differences between individuals (represented by the dotted lines in Figure 8.4) was a function of Age; differences in GIS score between older pupils is smaller than those between younger pupils. The analysis was continued with the new General Development Model, GISDEF. Positive Climate and Regard for Student Perspectives were added to this new General Development Model. Likelihood ratio tests did not show that main effects of Positive Climate and Regard for Student Perspectives contributed significantly to the fit of the model to the observed data, nor did we find an interaction between Age and Positive Climate or Regard for Student Perspectives for GIS. This means that we could not show that the fact that teachers at Mainstream schools were more likely to provide a higher Positive Climate and take into account student perspectives compared to teacher at the DL2-schools had any significant impact on the pupils’ development of lexical diversity, as measured with the GIS. 51 55 59 63 67 71 75 79 83 87 91 95 99 103 Guiraud IndexScore