Scoping and Hoping: The Provision of Speech and Language Therapy Services for Children with Special Educational Needs

Elspeth McCartney, Department of Speech and Language Therapy at the University of Strathclyde, reviews recent legislation and Government plans for the provision of speech and language therapy services for children with special educational needs and discusses issues which might be considered in a proposed DfEE 'scoping study'.     

Speech and Language Difficulties in Children With and Without a Family History of Dyslexia

According to recent psychological theories of situation model construction, readers routinely and quickly construct inferences that elaborate causal antecedents of explicit events in the text, but not inferences about causal consequences. The process of forecasting lengthy causal chains into the future is taxing on working memory, so these inferences are either not constructed or their construction consumes a comparatively large amount of reading time. This study collected self-paced sentence reading times from younger and older adults who read expository texts on scientific and technological mechanisms. Readers were also measured on working memory span, general world knowledge, reasoning ability, and reading frequency. Multiple regression analyses on the reading times revealed that (a) causal consequence inferences were more time consuming than causal antecedent inferences and (b) noncausal elaborative inferences were not constructed. The pattern of beta weights for inference variables was remarkably similar for younger and older adults and was unaffected by other measures of individual differences. The process of constructing causal inferences is therefore stable and predictable across different groups of readers.     

Critical Reflections on the Cultural Influences in Identification and Habilitation of Children with Speech and Language Difficulties

This paper analyses how and why cultural diversity is relevant to children with speech and language difficulties and the professionals who work with them. The relevance of various aspects of culture including the development of communication skills, language socialisation, adult-child interaction, child care, attitudes, beliefs, and the epidemiology of speech and language difficulties is described and illustrated with examples from the literature in a number of fields. The author encourages all professionals who work with children who have speech and language difficulties to increase their cultural awareness and for training establishments to consider how they may contribute to raising cultural awareness. Further research is needed in this area. A further challenge is to consider whether and how practice should be adapted to take account of cultural diversity.     

Teachers and Speech and Language Therapists Working with Children with Physical Disabilities: Implications for Inclusive Education

Jannet A. Wright and Myra Kersner, senior lecturers in the Department of Human Communication Science, University College London, consider the practical implications of recent policies for teachers and speech and language therapists working together in inclusive settings. Their conclusions complement McCartney's ideas in the previous article.     

Service Provision for Disturbed Children

Service provision for children classified as emotionally disturbed, behaviourally disordered or maladjusted involves a variety of service agencies including health, education and welfare. Recently a collaborative approach to service delivery, which recognises the multi‐disciplinary nature of the problem area and the necessity to avoid wastage of resources through duplication has been adopted. To determine priorities for service delivery the present study involved a multi‐disciplinary sample of experienced professionals working in the area of emotional disturbance. Using the Delphi technique, goals for service delivery in terms of system, instructional, adjustment and social objectives were assembled, clarified, rated in terms of their importance, and rank‐ordered to more clearly determine priorities. Results indicate that a collaborative multi‐disciplinary approach to service provision for disturbed children is feasible and that, despite diverse theoretical and professional backgrounds, competent workers in the field are able to arrive at substantial consensus in setting objectives.     

我们的教育需要哲学吗?

语言与言语两词有差别吗?有不同的话,其不同之处何在呢?与对语文教学的理解有关吗?先把语言这两个字拆开看看.     

Improving Word Recognition for Children with Reading Difficulties

Immediate word recognition is widely accepted as an important skill in developing fluent reading, but many of the most common words appearing in texts present particular problems to some children with reading difficulties. Roger Merry, a senior lecturer in education at the University of Leicester, and Irene Peutrill, a special needs teacher at Uplands Infant and Junior Schools in Leicester, describe a technique for helping such children, and provide experimental evidence of its effectiveness.     

听力障碍儿童的言语异常与言语矫治

随着社会福利制度的逐步完善,以及人们对残障儿童日益增多的关注,因此对听力障碍儿童的治疗也逐步重视起来,然而人们对听力障碍儿童的言语异常情形及言语矫治方法的认识仍存在些许问题。本文拟从听力障碍儿童言语异常的产生、原因及其矫治方法的角度来探讨。     

Provision for Reading for Four Year Old Children

The research outlined in this article was undertaken as part of a small-scale project examining the effects of the voucher scheme on educational provision for four year olds. The findings indicate that, in response to the requirements of the Desirable Outcomes for Children’s Learning, some providers have adopted a formal literacy curriculum based on reading schemes, phonic programmes and worksheets. The article discusses the possible impact of this on children’s reading development.     

Children with Behavioural and Emotional Difficulties: Complex Children,Complex Training for Teachers

This paper consists of two parents’ accounts of their experiences of having children with AD/HD. The article is divided into three distinct sections. In the first section the mother of ‘Simon’ describes her experience of bringing up a child who, from early infancy, presented challenging behaviour. She describes the effect of this on her family and her self esteem as a parent. She goes on to give an account of the process by which ‘Simon’ came to be diagnosed as having AD/HD and the effects of the ensuing treatment programme. In the second section the same writer describes the impact of her experience on her relationships with the extended family. The third section of the paper is provided by a second writer, who is also the mother of a child with AD/HD. This section focuses on the difficulties she experienced in dealing with her child's educational needs and the conflicts which arose between her and staff in her child's school.     

A Scheme to Promote Social Attention and Functional Language in Young Children with Communication Difficulties and Autistic Spectrum Disorder

This paper describes an approach to intervention that aims to foster the skill of young children with autistic spectrum disorder to share social attention and action to promote socially meaningful communication. It applies principles derived from research into pre‐linguistic development. The efficacy of the approach was evaluated through both a formal research project and within a clinical setting of a Portage scheme with groups of three to five year olds with a severe delay in their ability to communicate/autistic spectrum disorder. Outcome measures showed significantly accelerated levels of participation in social games and associated development of communication skills.     

语言·言语及言语的语言学

从索绪尔的"言语"入手,阐述了语言与言语的关系,引出了"言语的语言学"的概念及内容,论述了研究"言语的语言学"的必要性及该语言学和其它语言学的关系,从四个方面归纳了"言语的语言学"的研究方法,从而激发人们对该语言学进行探索,向认识的更高目标迈进。     

广州市非户籍少年儿童义务教育问题及其解决途径

广州市越来越多的非户籍少年儿童需要接受免费义务教育,而且新修订的义务教育法也规定,地方政府应当切实履行帮助他们接受免费义务教育的义务。在进行认真的数据计算之后,我们的研究发现:假如广州维持现有的公立中小学规模,政府以每年生均经费1,500元的标准资助就读私立初中、小学的非户籍儿童、少年,便可以基本解决他们接受义务教育的问题,而按这一标准补助的年总额均不会超过2010年前每年全市新增的教育投入额。因此,由私立学校为非户籍适龄少年儿童提供教育是经济可行的。     

Teaching French in a School for Children with Moderate Learning Difficulties

Margaret Riley, who teaches at Woodside Senior School, Bolton, considers approaches to the teaching of a modern foreign language in a school for children with moderate learning difficulties.     

Training Parents and Teachers in Remedial Reading Procedures for Children with Learning Difficulties

The mothers and classroom teachers of four 11‐12‐year‐old low progress readers were trained in tutoring procedures that involved delaying attention to child reading errors, providing cues to help correct errors and praising specific reading strategies and achievements. A multiple baseline design across subjects was used to evaluate the effects of tutor training in both home and school settings. Baseline measures showed that one class teacher delayed attention to child errors and two teachers provided appropriate prompts, while the parents showed no occurrence of the tutoring behaviours. Following training, both teachers and parents applied the specific tutoring behaviours and these behaviours were shown to persist across a three to five week maintenance period during which the experimenter reduced training and feedback to tutors and at three one‐month follow‐up assessments. Pre‐tests showed the children to have reading age levels three to five years behind an expected level for their chronological age. Post‐tests showed the children to have an average gain in reading level of 28 months (range 24‐48 months).     

计算机导航聋幼儿言语矫治的研究

本文介绍的是一种应用于聋幼儿言语矫治的新技术,它利用多媒体功能,采用最新的临床技术,对聋幼儿进行发声训练.该技术能提供七十多个声控的动画游戏,帮助聋幼儿进行多方面的实时发声训练,训练内容包括音调、响度清浊音、起音和最大声时等.由于发声后,立刻能获得动画形式的反馈,所以幼儿对色彩丰富、采用交互和游戏形式的训练特别感兴趣.对于特殊教育老师说这是个多用途的、功能独特的训练工具.     

The Development of Provision for Young People with Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties: An activity theory analysis

In this article we consider aspects of past and continuing transformations in specific forms of social practice relating to educational services for young people now described as having emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD). Our particular concern is the evolution of this provision and how historical dilemmas and tensions are relevant to explaining present and likely future developments. We believe that the framework of Activity Theory, not previously employed in this field, is a useful aid to analysis and facilitates wider understanding.     

A Study of the Educational Provision for Head-injured Children

Anne Jones (of the Froebel Institute College, Roehampton Institute of Higher Education) and David Johnson (Head of the Department of Neuropsychology, Astley Ainslie Hospital, Edinburgh) consider some of the problems experienced by children with head-injury on their return to school. Although education is an integral part of rehabilitation, the organisation of services and the provision of accurate information, training and communication between different agencies were all found to be inadequate. Given the high incidence of head-injury, urgent attention to these problems is essential.