Gender differences in toddlers’ language and participation in language activities in Norwegian ECEC institutions

ABSTRACT

A body of studies, which are mostly based on parental reports, have documented gender differences in early language proficiency, and girls tend to outperform boys in both language production and language comprehension. In this study, staff in Norwegian Early Childhood Education and Care institutions observed language comprehension, word production, and participation in adult-driven language activities in 1005 thirty-three-month-olds (489 girls and 516 boys). Significant gender differences in favor of girls were found in all aspects explored. Children with high language scores participate more in language activities than children with low language scores, and boys are overrepresented in the last-mentioned group.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• language
• participation
• toddlers
• language activities
• ECEC

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to late professor Ann Mari Knivsberg for her great efforts in initiating and leading the project, and to PhD Inger Kristine Løge and Synnøve Iversen for their contributions in processing the data. Finally, we would like to thank the parents of the participating children, and the barnehage staff for having completed the observations.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Elisabeth Brekke Stangeland http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8359-5588

Kjersti Lundetræ http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5055-6769

Elin Reikerås http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2162-6371

Additional information

Funding

We thank the University of Stavanger and the municipal of Stavanger for financing the project.