Dr Bernard Camilleri, Dr Natalie Hasson, Prof Barbara Dodd

Transcription

1 Academic excellence for business and the professions The Dynamic Assessment of Preschoolers Proficiency in Learning English (DAPPLE): Exploring the validity of a DA of bilingual children s language Dr Bernard Camilleri, Dr Natalie Hasson, Prof Barbara Dodd RCSLT Conference, Leeds, September 2014

2 The DAPPLE: Dynamic Assessment of Preschoolers Proficiency in Learning English

3 What is dynamic assessment? DA and the zpd the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development determined through problem solving under either adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers (Vygotsky, p.86).

4 What is DA? Instruction and feedback are built into the testing process with an emphasis on measuring modifiability rather than unassisted performance Different DA methods have been shown to differentiate TD from LI performance in children from a range of different cultural and linguistic backgrounds (e.g. Miller, Gillam & Peña (2001), Peña et al. (2006), Bain & Olswang, 1995; Hasson, Dodd & Botting (2012); Camilleri & Law, 2013) Test-teach-retest methods with mediational interventions Modifiability rating scales Graduated prompting

5 The issue Children from a range of bilingual backgrounds present with limited English language skills. Sometimes there are also concerns/uncertainties about these children s abilities in their home language. It is often difficult to accurately assess children s abilities in the home language and to have an accurate picture of use and exposure to the two (or more) languages*. *RCSLT guideline is to assess bilingual children in both languages

6 The Logic of DA for assessing bilingual children We know that children perform poorly on standardized measures of language for different reasons BUT Children who respond quickly and learn well during short teaching sessions may have language differences Inefficient learners who are unable to make changes may have language impairments

7 The DAPPLE procedure 1. Vocabulary (pretest to select known and unknown vocabulary and teaching phase, including expressive and receptive tasks) 15 minutes 2. Expressive sentence structure (model, pretest, learning trials, post test) 10 minutes 3. Phonology (DEAP): 10 words imitated, stimulability of words not produced correctly, 10 words imitated again 10 minutes 4. Post-test for expressive sentence structure: 2 pictures 2 minutes

8 Aims of the study(ies) (Hasson et al., 2013; Camilleri et al., 2014) (1. To pilot the tasks and materials devised in the three areas for their accessibility to children aged To determine whether the DAPPLE elicits significantly different performances from children referred to SLT services when compared to bilingual children who are considered to be typically developing) 3.To determine whether individual referred bilingual children s responses to the separate components and to the DAPPLE as a whole reflects correctly their status as children with language difficulties (i.e. whether they were correctly referred).

9 Participants caseload group, 12 bilingual children (mean age months, sd 5.79 months, comprising 4 girls and 8 boys) - referred by their SLTs control group 14 bilingual children (mean age months, sd 6.90 months, comprising 9 girls and 5 boys) All children from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds were included with the only pre-requisite being that the children should have had some exposure to English

10 Results: vocabulary Caseload children lower on static pretest (mean 17.9 (4.0) vs 24.4 (5.0)) Caseload children needed greater assistance to identify targets (mean score of 1.9* (1.3) vs 2.6* (1.1)) Caseload children were equally able to name the targeted items during interactive phase (46.2% vs 47.3%) At post-test caseload children retained fewer words than the control group (33.4% vs 69.4%) *lower score indicates greater assistance

11 Results: expressive sentence structure Caseload children lower on static pretest (mean 4 (SD=0.74) clause elements vs 5.85 (2.9)) Caseload children needed greater number of prompts to produce sentences, mean level of 5.91* (1.6) vs 7.92* (2.1) At post-test caseload children produced fewer clause elements than the control group, mean 4.75 (2.4) vs 8.69 (5.4) *lower score indicates greater number of prompts

12 Results: phonology Caseload children produced fewer words accurately, and lower %age phonemes correct on pre-test Caseload children made greater positive change after imitation and repetition than controls, in both accuracy and %age phonemes correct At post-test caseload children produced fewer words accurately, and lower %age phonemes correct Caseload children were less consistent across trials than controls Qualitative analysis indicated different predominant patterns of errors in the two groups with more atypical errors and error patterns in the caseload group.

13 What about individual children?

14 What about individual children? Vocabulary All children were exposed to 6 target words (except child 7, exposed to 5). 2 children (6 and 9) unable to name words at trial 1 or trial 2 (child 9 one word at trial 2) 3 children (1, 2 and 4) named 4 items at trial 1 and retained 3 items at trial 2 6 children (3,5,8,10,11,12) named some items at trial 1 but fewer at trial 2, with child 8 showing the greatest reduction from 5 to 1 One child (7) improved from trial 1 to trial 2 (1 item to 5 items)

15 What about individual children? Sentence structure All children were scored on clause elements (2 sentences) at pre-test, assistance levels and post-test clause elements 6 children (2,5,6,8,9,10) obtained low scores (3/4) at pretest and no gain to post-test in spite of highest level of prompts given (imitation) features included gestures, omissions of articles, third person singular morphemes, semantic substitutions 4 children (1,3,11,12) made minimal changes from pretest to posttest (maximum of one three-element sentence) e.g. the mummy drop boy, but needed less prompting (e.g. responding to prompt questions like who was doing. ) 2 children (4,7) responded well to prompting and produced longer, ageappropriate utterances at post-test

16 What about individual children? Phonology All children named 10 items at pretest, teaching phase on errors, and named 10 items at post-test Four children (1,5,7,12) had a high number of errors overall, high inconsistency and a high number of atypical errors/patterns (10 to 14 errors) 5 children (2,4,6,8,9,11) have far fewer atypical errors (2-4 atypical errors) and appear to be acquiring the constraints of English phonology 2 children (3 and 10) presented with a number of phoneme distortions and therefore may have an articulation difficulty Type of errors rather than number of errors may be a better guide for identifying chidren with potential problems with speech sounds.

17 Overall ID Vocabulary Sentence structure Phonology 1 good gains on expression responsive, limited gain atypical errors 2 no response, no gain developmental errors 3 some gains, not retained? articulation 4 responsive, good gain 5 6 no gains on expression

18 Summary of results With child 4, the DAPPLE uncovered strengths across all three areas assessed Child 7 had limited vocabulary and sentence structure at pre-test and showed good gains on both language areas, but demonstrated atypical phonological errors Child 2 appears to have a particular difficulty with sentence structure Other children demonstrate profiles of relative strengths and weaknesses across areas.

19 Conclusions The DAPPLE is unlikely to lead to straightforward classification BUT can inform the assessment process, including discriminating children with different learning abilities There are considerable differences across different children and different components of the DAPPLE The DAPPLE corroborated 11 out of the 12 referrals ongoing monitoring required at the very least The findings underpin the importance of assessment of different areas of language.

20 The DAPPLE should be considered as: a pre-diagnostic tool, which alerts professionals to the need for further assessment once children have been identified as at risk. Such further assessments would need to include both a broad evaluation of the child s learning abilities across different areas, and a thorough evaluation of the child s competence in their other language/s. (Camilleri et al., 2014)

21 Thank you

22 DAPPLE papers Camilleri, B., Hasson, N. & Dodd, B. (2014). Dynamic assessment of bilingual children s language at the point of referral. Educational & Child Psychology, 31(2), Hasson, N., Camilleri, B., Jones, C., Smith, J. & Dodd, B. (2013). Discriminating disorder from difference using dynamic assessment with bilingual children. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 29(1) 57-75