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Person-oriented approaches can be used to identify how teachers may draw upon a combination of strategies when interacting with individual children. For nearly 1 third of children under the age of 8 who come from a household where a language other than English is spoken, it is crucial to identify patterns of teachers’ use of discourse strategies that are hypothesized as being particularly important in supporting their unique developmental strengths and needs. The current study used latent profile analysis to (a) describe patterns of child-level experiences of teachers’ use of discourse strategies among a low-income sample of preschool Spanish-speaking dual language learners (DLLs), and (b) examine relations between these patterns, child language skills, family demographic factors, and teacher characteristics. Four classes were identified: (a) low-quality discourse practices (50%), (b) self-talk and simultaneous translation, with low-quality use of other discourse strategies (15%), (c) diverse range of strategies (7%); and (d) closed-ended, open-ended questions and one-on-one conversations (29%). These profiles demonstrated that children experience different patterns of discourse practices that vary across quality and the type of practices. When examining differences in profiles based on child, family, and teacher variables, results revealed that indicators of family SES, children’s age, bilingual expressive vocabulary, and teachers’ experiences of coursework (i.e., preservice) and professional development (i.e., in-service) were associated with patterns between profiles. These results have important implications for classroom instruction and policy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)
