About the project
The ability to use and comprehend language is essential for scholastic achievement and participation in society. Unfortunately, many children with special educational needs face challenges in linguistic comprehension.
Fortunately, prior studies have shown that interventions targeting linguistic comprehension skills can enhance this. However, more studies of children with language difficulties and special needs are highly needed. In order to address this we have designed a study with three parts:
- A review of prior studies concerning the effect of language comprehension interventions.
- A study of effects of a language comprehension intervention in children with weak language skills. Here we will examine whether we can prevent special needs education children with language problems by giving them a targeted intervention in kindergarten.
- A study of effects of a language comprehension intervention in children with special needs education and weak language comprehension skills. Here we will examine whether a targeted intervention can improve outcome from special needs education.
Objectives
Problems realted to linguistic comprehension is the most common cause of special needs education in Kindergarten and the early School years. This project have two objectives that address two key challenges in this area of special needs education:
- To provide effective interventions in preschool that will ameliorate learning difficulties in children and prevent the increase of problems that will eventually qualify as special educational needs.
- To ensure that the most efficient interventions are provided so that children who receive special needs education are able to each their full potential.
Thus, the project aim to address both prevention of special needs education and to increase the efficiency of special needs education. In a combination of innovation and high quality research in this field we describe three work packages that will aid society in dealing with this challenge in the large group of children with linguistic comprehension problems.
Financing
The project is funded by the Norwegian Research Council’s programme Research and Innovation in the Educational Sector (FINNUT) for the period August 2014 – August 2018.
