OMAHA – A $98,850 University of Nebraska Collaboration Initiative grant will support ongoing research from the Buffett Early Childhood Institute and university partners examining the teacher-child conversations and coaching that build young children’s language and early literacy skills.
The grant builds on the work of a five-year, $1.295 million Comprehensive Literacy State Development Grant awarded to the Buffett Institute in 2025.
That project, which to date has reached approximately 100 children in 15 Head Start classrooms across rural and urban Nebraska, uses cutting-edge LENA Grow technology to measure the back-and-forth verbal interactions between early educators and infants, toddlers and preschoolers. These “conversational turns” are key to children’s early language formation.
Early educators receive personalized coaching based on the collected data, helping them strengthen verbal engagement and identify children who may need additional support.
The five principal investigators are:
- Alexandra Daro, director of applied research, Buffett Early Childhood Institute
- Paula Thompson, Buffett Institute Community Chair and associate professor of teacher education, University of Nebraska at Kearney
- Philip Lai, Buffett Institute Community Chair and associate professor of communication disorders, UNK
- Myung-Jin Kim, assistant professor of early childhood education, UNK
- Clariebelle Gabas, research assistant professor in the Department of Child, Youth and Family Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
With the NU Collaboration Initiative grant, these researchers will conduct a deeper examination of data generated from the LENA Grow project, including quantitative and qualitative analyses that will:
- Explore variations in how teachers respond to coaching
- Understand how coaching sessions using data from teachers’ classrooms influence teachers’ instructional decisions and goal-setting
- Investigate the interplay between the goals teachers make in coaching sessions and resulting changes in children’s conversational turns
This pilot study will involve 40 Head Start teachers and approximately 320 children.
“Parents trust teachers with the most important years of their children’s development, and language is at the heart of that,” Daro said. “This study helps us better understand what coaching actually does to support teachers’ practice, allowing us insight into the strategies that make a real difference for the children and families they serve.”
NU Collaboration Initiative funding acts as a seed grant to support faculty seeking federal grants.
The goal of the Buffett Institute, UNK and UNL team is to generate preliminary data for a future federal grant application focused on the science of early language development.
“This project helps us better understand how coaching supports teachers in building strong language experiences for young children,” Thompson said. “By looking at both the data and the classroom context, we can learn more about what helps educators set meaningful goals and strengthen the interactions that support early literacy.”