Session Information
05 SES 09 A, Marginalised Young People in Marginal Settings
Paper Session
Contribution
The current study presents an intervention program that was implemented in kindergartens to empower preschool children from low socioeconomic status (SES) neighborhoods. In each classroom, a speech-language therapist (SLT), occupational therapist, and psychologist collaborated with the kindergarten teacher to evaluate children's needs and plan activities to achieve the goals. The language program that was delivered by the SLT aimed to improve the children’s vocabulary, enable them to develop pragmatic skills, and develop age-appropriate morphological and syntax structures. The purpose of the present study was to examine the outcomes of the language intervention program.
The language program was developed for preschool children from low SES families, that as a group, tend to have delayed language abilities compared to children from higher SES in various language domains (Hart & Risley, 1995; Fish & Pinkerman, 2003). Many of these children begin their studies at school with language delay (Fish & Pinkerman, 2003; Ginsborg, 2006; Hoff & Tian, 2005) and the gaps between children from different SES increase over the years of school (Schiff & Lotem, 2011). In addition, studies indicate that the incidence of specific language impairment among children of parents with lower levels of education was 16%–29%, compared with only 8% among children of highly educated parents (Dollaghan et al., 1999).
A common assumption is that early educational interventions during the preschool years lay the foundation for future educational and social success (Kaiser & Roberts, 2011). Moreover, intervention programs that use natural activities in a social context optimize social and verbal interaction, helping those with language delay to improve their communication and language skills (Vilaseca & Del Rio, 2004). Thus, the current language program was developed as an activity-based intervention, founded upon the naturalistic approach, which enables the clinician to set up opportunities for children to learn through age-appropriate interactive processes in natural settings. The clinician uses activities that allow the children to incorporate modeling and reinforce therapy targets within contexts that are meaningful to the child (Fey, 1986). The intervention was conducted in small groups that allow the child a greater variety of natural opportunities with peers and caregivers than do “one-on-one” interactions. Studies have shown that young children with language delay or impoverished language benefit from language interventions in a small group (Hutchinson & Clegg, 2011; Justice et al, 2005; Nielsen & Friesen, 2012).
As part of the program, a short language assessment was conducted for all children at the beginning of the year. The goals of the screening test were: 1.) To identify children with poor language skills, and to refer them to further comprehensive developmental language assessment. 2.) To identify children who need to work in small groups, and to divide them into small groups according to their linguistic level.
In the current study, this screening test was used to test the language level at the end of the year, as well. In addition, the same screening test was delivered to kindergartens in low SES neighborhoods, that did not participate in the program. The goal of the current study was to examine whether children enrolled in the program had different gains in language development compared with children who did not enroll in the program.
Method
A total of 161 children participated in this study. All were from Hebrew-speaking families that lived in neighborhoods classified as low SES populations (based on the Central Bureau of Statistics 2009 report). The intervention group consisted of 114 children ages 33–57 months (average in months: 43.2, SD: 5.8, 47% girls) who attended the program in the district of Haifa. The city municipality gave its consent to use the data that was collected anonymously, to systematically evaluate the program. During 2017, for 7 months, an SLT came to the kindergarten once a week for 3 hours. The activities were based on children's books and the linguistic goals were integrated into the activities (see a full description of the intervention in Cohen-Mimran et al., 2014). All books contained colorful illustrations, vocabulary appropriate to 3-4 year old children, were not excessively long, and were narrative in genre. Six sessions were devoted to each book. In the first two sessions, the speech therapist read the book accompanied by pictures and explained unfamiliar and rare words. The four additional sessions per book were devoted to experiential activities related to its content (e.g., making a fruit salad, germinating a bean, creating and acting a play, etc.). The control group consisted of 47 children ages 35-56 months (average in months: 45.2, SD: 6.3, 49% girls), from kindergarten classes that did not participate in the program (kindergartens outside of the Haifa district). The parents gave consent for their children's participation in the research, and it was approved by the Israeli Ministry of Education. The screening test was developed based on two widely-used tests: the Preschool Language Scale (Zimmerman, Steiner, & Pond, 2002) and the Goralnik Screening Test (Goralnik, 1995). A total of 70 items from these two language tests were carefully selected and arranged in two subtests: an expressive language subtest that included 32 items and a receptive language subtest that included 38 items. These items represent the language development of Hebrew-speaking children ages 3-5 years (Berman, 2016). Moreover, the items represent diverse language abilities, including semantics (word meaning), morphology and syntax (grammatical structure), and integrative language skills (categorizing, completing analogies, and reasoning). The screening test took 15-20 minutes to administer.
Expected Outcomes
Results from two-factor RM-MANOVA of Groups (Intervention X control) and Time (pretest X posttest) showed a significant Group X Time interaction [F(1, 159) =4.94, p<0.05]. The control group scored significantly below the intervention group only in the post-test. For the expressive and receptive language subtests further Post Hoc t-tests were conducted. T-tests demonstrated no preexisting differences between these groups at the pretest for both subtests (expressive: t =0.87, p>0.05, receptive: t =0.77, p>0.05). However, the t-tests showed that the intervention group scored significantly above the control group on both subtests in the post-tests (expressive: t =3.30, p<0.01, receptive: t =2.54, p<0.05). The current study expands on previous findings (Hutchinson & Clegg, 2011; Justice et al., 2005). The results revealed that young children from low SES families ages 3–5 years old benefited from the intervention that was provided by SLTs in small group settings during their regular kindergarten days. It is suggested that SLTs have a major role in helping children from low SES families develop sufficient language skills, enabling them to engage with the curriculum, and enhance their participation in kindergarten. Although the real-life nature of the current study caused limitations on our ability to control certain methodological issues (e.g., the SES groups were defined according to neighborhoods and not through parent questionnaires), the program and the data collected were a unique opportunity to explore the outcomes of a naturalistic intervention that simultaneously treated multiple linguistic abilities in meaningful contexts, and to reveal the positive affect of that approach on young children.
References
Berman, R. (2016). Acquisition and Development of Hebrew: From Infancy to Adolescence (1st ed.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Cohen-Mimran, R. & Reznik-Nevet, L. & Korona-Gaon, S. (2014). An Activity-Based Language Intervention Program for Kindergarten Children: A Retrospective Evaluation. Early Childhood Education Journal. 44. Dollaghan, C. A., Campbell, T. F., Paradise, J. L., Feldman, H. M., Janosky, J. E., Pitcairn, D. N. & Kurs-Lasky, M. (1999). Maternal Education and measures of early speech and language. Journal of speech, language, and hearing research, 42 (6), 1432-1443. Fey, M.E. (1986). Language intervention with young children. Austin: TX, Pro-Ed. Fish, M., and Pinkerman, B. (2003). Language skills in low-SES rural Appalachian children: normative development and individual differences, infancy to preschool. Applied Developmental Psychology, 23, 539–565. Ginsborg, J. (2006). The effects of socio-economic status on children's language acquisition and use. Language and social disadvantage: theory into practice. John Wiley and Sons, LTD. Goralnik, E. (1995). Language Screening Test for Hebrew-speaking Preschool Children. Netanya, Israel: Gai Agencies. Hart B., & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children. Baltimore, MD: Brookes. Hoff, E. & Tian, C. (2005). Socioeconomic status and cultural influences on language. Journal of communication disorders, 38, 271-278. Hutchinson, J. & Clegg, J. (2011). Education practitioner-led intervention to facilitate language learning in young children: An effectiveness study. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 27 151-164. Justice, L., Meier, J., & Walpole, S. (2005). Learning new words from storybooks: An efficacy study with at-risk kindergartners. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 36, 17-32. Kaiser, A.P. & Roberts, M.Y. (2011). Advances in Early Communication and Language Intervention, Journal of Early Intervention, 33, 298-309. Nielsen, D. C., & Friesen, L. D. (2012). A Study of the Effectiveness of a Small-Group Intervention on the Vocabulary and Narrative Development of At-Risk Kindergarten Children, Reading Psychology, 33, 269-299. Schiff, R. & Lotem, E. (2011). Effects of phonological and morphological awareness on children's word reading development from two socioeconomic backgrounds. First Language, Published online before print. Vilaseca, R.M, & Del Rio, M.J. (2004). Language acquisition by children with Down syndrome: a naturalistic approach to assisting language acquisition, Child language teaching and therapy, 20, 163-180. Zimmerman, I., Steiner, V., & Pond, R. (2002). Preschool language scale (1st ed.). San Antonio, TX: The Psychological Corporation.
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