The 30 years since the publication of Hart and Risley’s ‘30-million-word gap’ have seen the development of a large number of initiatives designed to address the language gap between children of differing socioeconomic backgrounds. Language gap initiatives have in common the objective of supporting parents of low socioeconomic status (SES) to speak more and to engage in higher-quality interactions with their children. It is the contention of this paper that these parent-focused language gap initiatives must be supplemented by initiatives at the level of educational policy and systems in order to comprehensively tackle the multifaceted role that oral language plays in educational disadvantage. Moving away from perspectives which consider differences or deficits at the individual level, oral language is presented as a structural barrier within education. The various ways in which oral language contributes to educational disadvantage are discussed. It is concluded that a comprehensive approach to tackling language gaps must include educational policy which recognizes the structural barrier that oral language poses to the education of students from low-SES backgrounds.
Laura P. McAvinue (Thu,) studied this question.