The Danish Context

In Denmark, approximately 95% of children attend publically funded preschools (OECD, 2013), and arguably, the responsibility of preparing children for school is shared with the preschool teachers who instruct and care for the children. With such a large percentage of children attending preschool prior to school start, the potential for ensuring that all children, regardless of their social background, acquire the prerequisite skills necessary to acquire literacy seems like an obvious advantage. Little is known about the effect of attending preschool in Denmark. A registry study by Gupta and Simonsen (2010) found that the amount of time spent in Danish child care at age three was negatively associated with non-cognitive skills at age seven, but this study did not analyze language or literacy outcomes. In fact, little research has actually investigated the extent to which Danish preschools provide children with environments that foster the development of language and emergent literacy skills.

23 This is no trivial matter for two reasons. First of all, preschools in Denmark practice a unique holistic form of pedagogy, which emphasizes children’s social and emotional development and well-being, but places little focus on developing pre-academic skills (Jensen, 2009). As such, little is known about the effect of such an approach, and whether it produces learning environments that support children’s language and literacy development.

Secondly, a substantial percentage of Danish youths do not attain functional reading skills by the end of compulsory schooling (Egelund, Nielsen, & Rangvid, 2011), and this despite the fact that most have attended some sort of educational facility since the age of three. Taking into consideration that empirical research in Danish children has also found negative associations for SES and immigrant status on the language skills of preschool children (Bleses, Højen, Jørgensen, Jensen, & Vach, 2010), it is an open question whether Danish preschools could do more to prepare children for reading success in school.

Although the Danish pedagogical approach does not traditionally place much emphasis on the pre-academic preparedness of preschool children, political interest in improving children’s language skills has resulted in a series of legislative efforts aimed at improving the language outcomes of children in preschools. These efforts have taken the form of a number of amendments to the legislation surrounding the public child care system commonly referred to as the Dagtilbudsloven [The Child Care Law] (Government of Denmark, 2011), and have had the main goal of reducing the effects of social disadvantage on language development.

The first major regulatory change came in 2004 with the addition of § 8 to the Child Care Law requiring all preschools to develop a so-called læreplan [learning plan]. The learning plans were intended to serve as a document explaining how teachers intended to stimulate children in the following six areas: all-round personal development, social competence, language development, body and motion, nature and natural phenomena, and

24 cultural expression and values. Although language development is notably one of the areas of focus, the law does not prescribe specific learning goals. Rather it is up to the individual preschool to decide how each area will be supported in practice.

In 2007, the Danish government again displayed interest in improving children’s language outcomes in preschool when they enacted an amendment (§ 11) to the Child Care Law requiring all municipalities to offer the parents of all monolingual three-year-olds a language screening, and language screenings for all multi-language learning children was made mandatory. This passage of the Day Care Law was amended again in 2010 such that preschool teachers only were to screen the children for which they had a suspicion of language delay or impairment, but that screenings were mandatory if deemed necessary.

Furthermore, if a child’s Danish language skills were found to be far below the norm, the municipality was required to offer free language stimulation services to the family.

Another example of political steps towards improving the language practices of Danish preschool teachers occurred in 2010 as a complement to the regulatory changes described above. The Danish parliament budgeted 34 million kroner to develop and implement a PD course with a language focus. The PD course, referred to as Sprogpakken [the Language Package], was conducted either as a four or six day course between 2011 and 2012. The main goal of the course was to give at least one preschool teacher from every preschool across the country a working knowledge of language development, and suggest stimulation methods such as dialogic reading (Whitehurst et al., 1988), and the use of supportive language strategies (e.g., Girolametto, Weitzman, & Greenberg, 2003). Although the government allotted a large sum of public funds to develop and implement the PD, no funds were budgeted for evaluating the effect of the course on teacher and/or child outcomes.

As such, we have little empirical evidence that this massive public investment had its intended effect.

25 According to Jespersen (2006) , there is little practice in Denmark of evaluating the effects of interventions that aim to lessen the influence of social disadvantage. The language and literacy environments of Danish preschools are perhaps a case-in-point regarding this issue. Although the law requires that preschools create pedagogical plans for working with children’s language, preschools essentially have full autonomy in how this will be carried out. Furthermore, there are no systems in place to ensure that the language instruction and stimulation that preschools provide children actually have the intended effect.

In sum, Denmark is an interesting case in the international literature on preschool education. Denmark has near universal preschool, and spends the second highest percentage of its gross national product on child care programs in the world (OECD, 2013). Denmark is also a country whose central government has in recent years reformed the public preschool system such that teachers are required to afford children’s language development greater focus. Despite this massive public investment and political reform, preschools still retain autonomy in developing and conducting their own teaching plans, which may be highly influenced by the holistic approach of Danish pedagogy, which strays away from pre-academic goal-setting.