Early childhood education and care in Luxembourg. Attendance and associations with early learning performance.

Report (2023)

Luxembourg’s student population is highly diverse in terms of language and family background and shows disparities in learning performances as early as first grade (Cycle 2.1). Achievement gaps might be ... [more ▼]

Luxembourg’s student population is highly diverse in terms of language and family background and shows disparities in learning performances as early as first grade (Cycle 2.1). Achievement gaps might be increased by the high language demands in the traditional Luxembourgish school system. Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) including for instance crèche, précoce and Cycle 1, is one of the possible mechanisms to reduce these gaps that is currently discussed by researchers, policy makers, and the broad public. A lot of international literature points towards a positive association of ECEC and child development. However, findings vary widely with characteristics of ECEC, as well as characteristics of children and their families. For this report, we used data from the Luxembourg School Monitoring Programme “ÉpStan” from 2015 to 2021 including students’ learning performances in three domains in Cycle 2.1 – Luxembourgish listening comprehension, early literacy, mathematics – as well as student and parent questionnaire data. Additionally, data from ÉpStan 2022 on German and Luxembourgish listening comprehension and students’ language exposure at home are presented. Who attends which type of ECEC in Luxembourg? We find that the attendance in ECEC is generally high. On average, crèches were attended at a moderate level of intensity and duration. Family background (socioeconomic status, migration background and home language group) interacts in a complex way with attendance in ECEC. For example, children from families with a high socioeconomic status speaking Portuguese or French at home, attended crèche for more hours a week than children from families with a high socioeconomic status speaking Luxembourgish at home. In regard to language exposure in ECEC, Luxembourgish appears to play a dominant role for most children. How are ECEC attendance and family background associated with learning performance in Cycle 2.1? Most importantly, non-formal (crèche) and formal types of ECEC (précoce, Cycle 1) have positive but small to moderate associations with learning performance in the three learning domains. Looking at crèche attendance in more detail, effects of crèche intensities are different for Portuguese speaking and Luxembourgish speaking children – i.e., only Portuguese speaking children benefit from higher intensity attendance in crèche. As can be expected, all children benefit most in their Luxembourgish listening comprehension if they attended a crèche in which Luxembourgish was spoken. Well-known performance disparities in the three learning domains between children of different backgrounds have been confirmed – with advantages for native, Luxembourgish speaking children from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. Is the pattern of differences between children of different home language groups the same in Luxembourgish and German listening comprehension? Children’s performances in German listening comprehension show even larger disparities between home language groups than those in Luxembourgish listening comprehension. This argues against the assumption of a transfer from Luxembourgish to German language skills for all children. Conclusively, this report points towards ECEC as a key adjustable parameter to improve learning development and concludes with the call to collect data on ECEC quality. Structural (e.g., child-caregiver-ratio) and procedural (e.g., characteristics of interaction) aspects of quality should be regulated and systematically evaluated to ensure positive child development and equal opportunities for every child. With more monitoring data on diverse quality aspects and language practices in ECEC, important insights on the effects of new reforms in the educational system could be gained. Additionally, the present results reveal a significant negative relationship between children’s learning performance and a previous allongement de cycle in Cycle 1, calling for a thorough revision of this frequently used procedure. Finally, the continuity between languages in ECEC and the successive schooling is important. This alignment is currently not ensured due to more flexible language policies in ECEC and more rigid language practices in formal schooling. For example, the plurilingual education in ECEC promoting Luxembourgish and French, could build a solid basis for a French literacy acquisition, yet explicit promotion of the current instruction language of reading and writing acquisition, German, in Cycle 2 is still missing. A crucial demand therefore arises to revise the language demands in the curricula and policies – to continuously support ECEC’s plurilingual education in formal schooling (e.g., European and international schools or French literacy acquisition) and to explicitly promote German in ECEC to build a solid basis for literacy acquisition in German. [less ▲]

Profiles of poor and good spellers in German noun capitalization

in L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature (2023), 23

This study investigated how fourth graders with different proficiency levels (1st and 4th quartile, 192 and 195 pupils respectively) produce and detect German noun capitalization in relation to two ... [more ▼]

This study investigated how fourth graders with different proficiency levels (1st and 4th quartile, 192 and 195 pupils respectively) produce and detect German noun capitalization in relation to two factors, lexical-semantic characteristics of the noun and the structure of the noun phrase (NP). The first factor includes concrete and abstract nouns, as well as nominalized verbs and adjectives; the second factor the syntactic context of the NP (with or without determiner and/or adjective, including bare noun). The two proficiency groups showed different patterns in the production and detection of capitalization in relation to these two factors after three years of instruction in noun capitalization. The low-proficiency group performed on chance level only for concrete nouns in the context with precedent determiner, the context highlighted at school. The high-proficiency group seemed to make use systematically of the expanded NP in order to recognize and capitalize the noun but still had difficulties with most bare nouns. The paper discusses the type of information low- and high-achieving pupils seem to use in noun capitalization and detection. [less ▲]

Development of a test battery to diagnose specific learning disorder in reading in a multilingual education context

Scientific Conference (2022, November 10)

Providing timely and adequate support to children experiencing difficulties in reading and writing is key to minimize the impact on children’s academic achievements, social and emotional well-being ... [more ▼]

Providing timely and adequate support to children experiencing difficulties in reading and writing is key to minimize the impact on children’s academic achievements, social and emotional well-being, particularly for children with specific learning disorders. However, the diagnostic process is especially challenging in Luxembourg’s multilingual educational system with changing instruction languages (Luxembourgish, German, French) and multilingual population. The chosen language of the diagnostic tool is usually identical to the main language of instruction at school, which at time of diagnosis (typically grade 3) is German. This may especially affect the diagnosis of children who do not speak German or Luxembourgish at home as data from the Luxembourgish national school monitoring program reveals significant differences in German reading comprehension in grade 3 depending on the language spoken at home (Hoffmann et al., 2018; Martini et al., 2021). Furthermore, the diagnostic tools currently employed in Luxembourg are developed in countries with primarily one language of instruction, challenging the validity of the diagnostic process in a multilingual population (Ugen et al., 2021). The aim of the current project is to develop a diagnostic tool adapted to the Luxembourgish educational curriculum, that takes children’s potential proficiency differences in the test language into account in the instructions, tasks and resulting norms. This way, over-diagnosis of reading and writing disorders in children who do not speak the main language(s) of instruction at home and underdiagnosis of children who do, can be avoided. The developed test battery assesses children’s performance in key domains relevant for reading and writing comprising phonological skills, (non)word and text reading (fluency and accuracy), reading comprehension, writing, and vocabulary. We will present the pre-test results of 9 sub-tests completed by 214 children, providing the first insights into the test development and validation process.   References Hoffmann, D., Hornung, C., Gamo, S., Esch, P., Keller, U., & Fischbach, A. (2018). Schulische Kompetenzen von Erstklässlern und ihre Entwicklung nach zwei Jahren. In T. Lentz, I. Baumann, & A. Küpper (Eds.), Nationaler Bildungsbericht (pp. 84–96). University of Luxembourg & SCRIPT. Martini, S., Schiltz, C., Fischbach, A., & Ugen, S. (2021). Identifying Math and Reading Difficulties of multilingual children: Effects of different cut-offs and reference group. In M. Herzog, A. Fritz-Stratmann, & E. Gürsoy (Eds.), Diversity Dimensions in Mathematics and Language Learning (pp. 200–228). De Gruyter Mouton. Ugen, S., Schiltz, C., Fischbach, A., & Pit-ten Cate, I. M. (2021). Einleitung: Lernstörungen im multilingualen Kontext – Eine Herausforderung. In Ugen, S., Schiltz, C., Fischbach, A., & Pit-ten Cate, I. M. (Eds.), Lernstörungen im multilingualen Kontext. Diagnose und Hilfestellungen (pp3-7). Luxembourg: Melusina Press. [less ▲]

Towards a fairer assessment of cognitive abilities in multilingual children

Scientific Conference (2022, November 10)

Development of a fair cognitive test battery for multilingual and multicultural children

Poster (2022, August 29)

Findings from the ÉpStan National Education Monitoring against the Background of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Online Supplement

E-print/Working paper (2022)

Befunde aus dem nationalen Bildungsmonitoring ÉpStan vor dem Hintergrund der COVID-19- Pandemie

in LUCET; SCRIPT (Eds.) Nationaler Bildungsbericht Luxemburg 2021 (2021)

Résultats du monitoring scolaire national ÉpStan dans le contexte de la pandémie de COVID-19 (Matériels supplémentaires)

in LUCET; SCRIPT (Eds.) Rapport National sur l´Éducation au Luxembourg 2021 (2021)

Development of a screening tool for functional vision impairments in early childhood

Scientific Conference (2021, November 11)

Cerebral Visual Impairment (CVI) is a term used to designate a neurological disorder of the visual pathways impacting visual processes at any given level (Lueck et al., 2019). Due to the advances n ... [more ▼]

Cerebral Visual Impairment (CVI) is a term used to designate a neurological disorder of the visual pathways impacting visual processes at any given level (Lueck et al., 2019). Due to the advances n perinatal and medicinal care, CVI’s occurrence has increased significantly over the last years (Chokron & Dutton, 2016). The condition almost always entails aggregated functional vision impairments, i.e., limitations on the use of binocular vision during everyday tasks (Dutton, 2015). CVI can have effects on school achievements if undetected. Early detection is thus key to offer appropriate aids to avoid a negative impact on learning processes. The aim of this project is to develop a large-scale screener at the beginning of formal schooling, to identify functional vision impairments early on. For this reason, a set of items assessing different visual functions will be incorporated into the Luxembourgish school monitoring program. Based on a theoretical model of object recognition (Humphreys and Riddoch, 1987), we developed items that can be administered in a classroom setting which target different stages of visual perceptual processing, as well as visual functions connected with both dorsal and ventral streams, visual spatial processing and visual memory. We will present the design of the large-scale screener in relation to the theoretical model, as well as the rationale used to include or exclude various perceptual visual functions in the final test. Furthermore, we will explain the foreseen data collection and tool validation processes. [less ▲]

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Luxembourgish Education System: Differences between students based on background characteristics in elementary and secondary school

Scientific Conference (2021, November)

Policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., school closure, home-schooling) have affected students at various stages of education all over the world and were found to increase inequalities in ... [more ▼]

Policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., school closure, home-schooling) have affected students at various stages of education all over the world and were found to increase inequalities in academic achievement (OECD, 2021). The present study is based on fully representative large-scale data from the Luxembourg School Monitoring Programme (Épreuves Standardisées; ÉpStan; LUCET, 2021). The ÉpStan are assessing key competencies of primary and secondary school students in different subjects (e.g., German, French and Math). To allow a fair performance comparison, socio-economic and socio-cultural backgrounds of students (e.g., gender, migration and language background) are systematically taken into consideration. The ÉpStan 2020 entail data from approximatively 25.000 students from five different grades (elementary and secondary school), from 15.000 parents (elementary school) and comparative data from 160.000 students from previous cohorts, thus providing key empirical findings on the pandemic’s impact on the Luxembourgish education system. In the present contribution, we analyze a) how the results of standardized achievement tests compare to previous cohorts and under consideration of students’ socio-economical and socio-cultural background, as well as b) how parents and students perceived home-schooling with regard to aspects such as coping, technical equipment, motivation or contact to teachers. First results indicate that in Grades 1, 5, 7 and 9, standardized achievement scores were generally stable in comparison to previous years. However, in Grade 3, students’ competency scores in German (primary language of instruction in elementary school) listening comprehension worsened substantially. Furthermore, third graders from socio-economically disadvantaged households and/or students that do not speak Luxembourgish/German at home did worse in German reading comprehension than their peers from socio-economically advantaged households and/or speaking Luxembourgish/German at home. Concerning the perception of home-schooling, students coped rather well with the situation, with German being a bit more challenging in primary school and math in secondary school. Findings concerning motivation and enjoyment of home-schooling were mixed, with primary school students’ motivation being comparably to the regular school setting but approximately half of the secondary school students being less motivated than in the regular school setting. Furthermore, all households seem to have been well equipped, with the situation being slightly more favorable in socio-economically advantaged households. For the majority of students, the contact with teachers was frequent, with teachers having adapted their type of support to the needs of their students (e.g., more personal contact towards students from socio-economically disadvantaged households). To conclude, it can be said that no systematic negative trend has been identified in students’ achievement scores. Only German listening comprehension in Grade 3 has worsened substantially and these skills should therefore be fostered as early as possible. Overall, students coped rather well with home-schooling without, however, particularly enjoying it. While students entering the pandemic with favorable background characteristics (e.g., higher socio-economic status, speaking a language of instruction at home) managed better both regarding competencies and perception of home-schooling, students with less favorable background characteristics have received more differentiated support. These findings underline that already existing inequalities in the Luxembourgish school system have in parts been intensified by the pandemic. References LUCET. (2021). Épreuves Standardisées (ÉpStan). https://epstan.lu OECD. (2021). The State of School Education: One Year into the COVID Pandemic. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/201dde84-en [less ▲]