{"id":512,"date":"2020-04-23T18:08:30","date_gmt":"2020-04-23T17:08:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/upgrade-rocs\/?p=512"},"modified":"2020-04-23T18:08:30","modified_gmt":"2020-04-23T17:08:30","slug":"can-early-years-professionals-determine-which-pre-schoolers-have-comprehension-delays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/rocs\/can-early-years-professionals-determine-which-pre-schoolers-have-comprehension-delays\/","title":{"rendered":"Can early years professionals determine which pre-schoolers have comprehension delays?"},"content":{"rendered":"

More about Dr Kirsten Abbot-Smith<\/a>
\n<\/strong>Full text of paper<\/a><\/p>\n

About<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

If a preschool <\/span>child is<\/span> delay<\/span>ed<\/span> in language <\/span>understanding, he or she <\/span>is much more likely to<\/span> end up being diagnosed with a <\/span>developmental <\/span>disorder<\/span> compared to a preschool child who is not delayed in language understanding<\/span>. For this reason, <\/span>the language understanding abilities of preschool children <\/span>should<\/span> be <\/span>assessed<\/span> using an accurate measure<\/span>. <\/span>In England, <\/span>nursery and preschool <\/span>staff <\/span>(i.e. early years professionals) <\/span>assess <\/span>the <\/span>language comprehension <\/span>of children in their care <\/span>using a format based on <\/span>the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS:UCCS)<\/span>. This measure<\/span> requires early years professionals (EYPs) to observe children in their care for a period of time and then <\/span>assign<\/span> every child to a<\/span> developmental <\/span>age band (e.g. 16-26 mo<\/span>nths)<\/span> regarding their language understanding<\/span> by using example achievements <\/span>from the EYFS guidance<\/span> provided.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One concern with the above means of assessment is <\/span>that is <\/span>quite open to subjective interpretation and the <\/span>age bands<\/span> are wide, making <\/span>it <\/span>hard to differentiate a child who is performing at an expected level <\/span>from a child who is delayed<\/span>.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the current study, the authors examined the accuracy of the aforementioned assessment method. They did this by investigating whether the resulting scores were closely related (or not) to the test scores from the same group of children, when assessed using the Preschool Language Scale. The latter is a direct and standardised measure of language comprehension, which is designed for use by speech and language therapists.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To see whether early years professionals are per se capable of accurately assessing the language comprehension of young preschool children, the same group of early years professionals also assessed the same children using another measure<\/span>, the WellComm. When administering the WellComm, early years professionals must assess children individually by (for example) showing them pictures from the manual and asking them certain <\/span>questions without giving hints or looking at the correct answer.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Research objectives<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

The primary objectives were:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u00a0To examine w<\/span>hich tool completed by early year professionals most accurately detects comprehension delays in preschool children<\/span>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u00a0To examine <\/span>whether early years professionals can per se accurately assess the language comprehension abilities of children in their care.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Programme and methodology<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

Participants<\/strong><\/p>\n

70 children ranging from 30 to 35 months were assessed<\/span>.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Tools used\u00a0<\/strong>
\n\u2022 \u00a0The language comprehension component of the Preschool Language Scale <\/span>(PLS) <\/span>(administered by psychology students).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>
\n\u2022 \u00a0EYFS: Unique Child Communication Sheet (EYFS; Department of Education, 2012)<\/span>, administered by the children\u2019s early years professional (keyworker).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u00a0The <\/span>WellComm<\/span>, also administered by the children\u2019s early years professional<\/span> after reading the key instructions in the manual.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Findings\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u2022 \u00a0The EYFS:UCC<\/span> \u2013 i.e. the government-recommended method \u2013 did not relate well to the direct measure of language comprehension.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u00a0T<\/span>he WellComm <\/span>did relate well to the direct measure of language comprehension.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u00a0The WellComm was fairly good at <\/span>discriminating <\/span>those children who were <\/span>\u2018typically-developing\u2019 <\/span>(according to the direct PLS measure) <\/span>from those who <\/span>were<\/span> delayed<\/span> (according to the direct PLS measure).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Impact<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

The findings have important implications for educators<\/strong>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u00a0The<\/span> findings <\/span>regarding<\/span> the WellComm<\/span> show that early year professionals are <\/span>in principle <\/span>capable of assessing child language comprehension <\/span>if they are given appropriately structured tools to use<\/span><\/b>.<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 \u00a0The WellComm proved to be a better measure of children language comprehension<\/span><\/b> than <\/span>the types of assessments more commonly used by early years professionals.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More about Dr Kirsten Abbot-Smith Full text of paper About\u00a0 If a preschool child is delayed in language understanding, he or she is much more likely to end up being diagnosed with a developmental disorder compared to a preschool child who is not delayed in language understanding. For this reason, the language understanding abilities of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":297,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/rocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/rocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/rocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/rocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/610"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/rocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/rocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/rocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/rocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/rocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/rocs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}