Portage Guide to Early Education: a review of research

Abstract Portage Guide to Early Education is a home‐based early intervention service for developmentally delayed preschool children. It consists of the triadic model of service delivery, a set of reading materials and a method of training parents to teach their own children. Each of these components are critically evaluated and recommendation made for the future development of Portage. Outcome studies are reviewed and evidence is found of developmental acceleration for mildly delayed children.

A wider range of dependent variables is needed to assess more fully the impact of Portage on both the child and the family. As yet no data are available on long‐term effects of Portage. The case is made for viewing Portage as one amongst several service options available for developmentally delayed preschool children and their families.     

Impact of feedback request forms and verbal feedback on higher education students’ feedback perception,self-efficacy,and motivation

ABSTRACT

In higher education, students often misunderstand teachers’ written feedback. This is worrisome, since written feedback is the main form of feedback in higher education. Organising feedback conversations, in which feedback request forms and verbal feedback are used, is a promising intervention to prevent misunderstanding of written feedback. In this study a 2 × 2 factorial experiment (N = 128) was conducted to examine the effects of a feedback request form (with vs. without) and feedback mode (written vs. verbal feedback). Results showed that verbal feedback had a significantly higher impact on students’ feedback perception than written feedback; it did not improve students’ self-efficacy, or motivation. Feedback request forms did not improve students’ perceptions, self-efficacy, or motivation. Based on these results, we can conclude that students have positive feedback perceptions when teachers communicate their feedback verbally and more research is needed to investigate the use of feedback request forms.     

Verbal self-instructional training: An examination of its efficacy, maintenance, and generalisation

The study examined the differential efficacy, maintenance and generalisation effects of verbal self-instructional (VSI) training on reading disabled children. Type of sub-culture (Tribal Vs. Non-tribal) is crossed with type of cognitive stage (concrete Vs. formal operation) to produce four training groups with 15 subjects per cell. The subjects were trained for 10 weeks and retested for post-test and follow-up data. While VSI training was beneficial to non-tribals and children of formal operational stage, it failed in case of tribals and children of concrete operational stage. VSI effects were maintained over four months time and evidenced clear generalisation effects.     

Initial insights into phoneme awareness intervention for children with complex communication needs

This study provides insights into the benefits of phoneme awareness intervention for children with complex communication needs (CCN). The specific aims of the study were: (1) to determine whether phoneme awareness skills can be successfully trained in children with CCN; and (2) to observe any transfer effects to phoneme awareness tasks not directly targeted during intervention, and to the encoding and decoding of printed words. Two children participated in the study: Scott, aged 7 and Anna, aged 10. Prior to intervention, both children exhibited poor phoneme awareness knowledge and severely delayed written language skills. Scott received 7 hours of intervention that focused on improving his phoneme identity skills and his letter‐sound knowledge. Anna received 11 hours of intervention that focused on improving her phoneme segmentation and manipulation skills. Results indicated that both children responded favourably to the phoneme awareness intervention, demonstrating improved performance on trained tasks compared with untrained control measures. Anna generalised phoneme segmentation skills to novel words. Both children, however, demonstrated little or no generalisation to different versions of the same tasks or to other phoneme awareness and literacy tasks. Further research is required to ascertain the extent of generalisation that is possible for children with CCN.     

The Effects of Oral Narrative Intervention on the Personal Narratives of Children with ASD and Severe Language Impairment: A Pilot Study

Abstract

The purpose of this pilot study was to examine and refine an oral narrative intervention addressing personal narratives of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and severe language impairment. A multiple baseline across participants design investigated the effect of the intervention on the macrostructure of personal narratives. Three five–six year olds participated in a 1:1 intervention that targeted the where, who with, what and feelings of personal narrative. Intervention included macrostructure icons, pictures, modelling and participants telling the entire narrative. Participants received training with two or three narratives each session. The intervention was effective for all three participants. Two participants showed evidence of maintenance and generalisation across settings. The results show that children with autism and severe language impairment may benefit from oral narrative intervention targeting the macrostructure of personal narrative. These results are consistent with previous findings. Areas for future research include investigation of generalisation across people.     

Effectiveness of a Family‐focused Early Intervention Program in the Education of Children with Hearing Impairments Living in Rural Areas

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of a family‐focused early intervention program developed to meet the needs of children with hearing loss and their parents. The participants were 12 children with severe and profound hearing loss who lived in a rural area of Turkey. They did not have any additional disabilities. Their ages ranged between 0 to 4 years. These children and their families had not participated in any intervention program before this research was designed. The 12 participants and their families were assigned to either an experimental or a comparison group. The data was collected before and after the implementation of the program, using three instruments; a preliminary information form for parents, a Scale of Parental Needs and an observation form to evaluate verbal communication. After the implementation of the intervention program, statistically significant differences were found between the experimental and comparison groups regarding their verbal communication.     

Exploring the effects of a social communication intervention for improving requests and word diversity in preschoolers with disabilities

This study examined the effects of a multicomponent social communication intervention to promote language learning and peer‐directed social interactions in preschool children with disabilities. Participants were eight children with developmental disabilities who met the specified criteria for the study. The intervention consisted of three components: (a) a planning period for instructional purposes, (b) a play session to practice skills, and (c) a brief reporting period to review skill performance. A multiple baseline design across two dyads replicated across two additional dyads was used. Results indicated an increase in peer‐directed requests, verbal requests, and word diversity for 6 of the 8 participants postintervention. Implications of the results are discussed. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The effects of parent self‐recording and home feedback in systematic parent training

This study experimentally evaluated the effects of three parent‐ training phases on the parents’ use of consequences to appropriate and deviant behaviour, and the frequency of deviant child behaviour in the home, within a single subject partial reversal design. Instruction No Feedback comprised didactic lecture presentation, verbal and written instruction in a group training setting to teach the parent to use behavioural procedures at home. Self‐monitoring Plus Feedback comprised the parent self‐recording aversive comments to the child and differential therapist feedback on her performance of various behavioural skills. Feedback Alone involved the continuation of feedback sessions but the withdrawal of self‐monitoring. Observation results indicated that Self‐monitoring Plus Feedback produced higher levels of parent attention to appropriate behaviour, lower levels of attention to deviant behaviour and low levels of deviant child behaviour when compared to Baseline, Instruction No Feedback and Feedback Alone conditions. The implications of the results for parent training were discussed.     

Supporting families in the early education of children with special needs: the perspectives of Portage home visitors

ABSTRACT

This qualitative study focuses on Portage home visiting. In‐depth interviews were conducted with 12 Portage home visitors which were transcribed and analysed according to the procedures of Grounded Theory. The following three main themes were identified: the ethos of the Portage model of early intervention; the process of Portage home visiting; and the Portage home visitor as a family supporter. A proposed model of the factors that influence the Portage practice of family support is derived from the data. The discussion addresses the relationship of these findings to the management of Portage home visiting and highlights the use of qualitative methodology in researching the early education of children with special needs.     

Effectiveness of a competence training programme for parents of socially disruptive children

Modern evaluations of parent training programmes seek evidence not only of efficacy in optimal, often university clinic settings, but also of effectiveness under normal field conditions. The Kompetenztraining für Eltern sozial auffälliger Kinder (KES) is a cognitive–behavioural competence training for parents of socially disruptive children. This study tried to complement the investigation of its efficacy by exploring its effectiveness under field conditions. Staff at 14 child guidance centres conducted the training with 88 parents (63.6% mothers; mean age 37.2 years). Effectiveness was assessed by comparing problem behaviour in the child and stress in the family (German versions of Home Situations Questionnaire and Parenting Stress Index) before and after training. Results showed mild to moderate declines in child behaviour problems and moodiness, as well as doubts in the parent role, and stronger effects in more versus less stressed families. Qualitative feedback from the trainers after running the programme was positive. It is concluded that the KES is a sufficiently promising parent training to justify further and more rigorous investigation under field conditions.     

The efficacy of `whole word' versus `analytic' reading instruction for children with Down syndrome

An intervention study was conducted toinvestigate whether children with Down syndrome(DS) would benefit from an `analytic' approachto reading instruction, which encompassedexplicit training in phonological awareness.Participants were seven English-speakingchildren with DS aged 8;6 (years;months) to11;1, who demonstrated little or nononword-reading ability prior to intervention.The children received weekly instruction (forsix weeks) in reading aloud 30 regularly speltmonosyllables (e.g., ten, bake) using an`analytic' approach, in which words werelearned by combining onsets with rimes (fourchildren), or a `whole-word' approach (threechildren). Participants' oral reading wasassessed pre- and post-intervention using areading test comprising the 30 trained wordsand 30 untrained (generalisation) words. Mostchildren (six out of seven) read more trainingwords correctly after intervention than before,with significant improvement shown by fourchildren (two trained analytically, and twotrained with whole words). More importantly,reading of generalisation words improvedsignificantly in only three children, all ofwhom had received analytic training. It wasconcluded that children with DS benefit from ananalytic approach to reading instruction, eventhough their auditory-verbal memory (assessedusing digit span) is poor.     

Introducing a Precursor Model of Inheritance to Young Children

This paper reports on a mixed-model case study of designing and implementing a constructivist teaching intervention about reproduction and physical family resemblance for young children. The objective of the study was to explore whether the ways that preschoolers reason about the resemblance between offspring and parents can be improved with a teaching intervention that introduces a rudimentary idea of genes through reproduction. The participants were 60 preschoolers (age 5–5.5 years) from public kindergartens of Patras. The qualitative analysis of their pre- and post semi-structured interviews showed a remarkable improvement in their reasoning, which was found to be statistically significant as well. After the three-part teaching intervention, children appeared to recognize the biological contribution of both parents to a child's creation. Moreover, most of them appeared able to attribute a child's species and body traits to the parental genes passed to the child through reproduction and not to the parents’ or child's intention.     

Revisiting the home literacy model of reading development in an orthographically consistent language

We examined the applicability of the Home Literacy Model in an orthographically transparent language (Greek). Seventy Greek children were followed from kindergarten until grade 4. In kindergarten they were tested in non-verbal intelligence, vocabulary, phonological sensitivity, rapid naming, and letter knowledge. The parents of the children also responded on a questionnaire regarding the frequency of storybook reading, the number of books at home, and the frequency of teaching letter names, sounds, and words. Reading fluency and comprehension were measured in grade 4. The results indicated that the early home literacy experience variables were related to the emergent literacy skills but did not directly predict future reading skills. Thus, the Home Literacy Model applies to consistent orthographies before any formal reading instruction takes place.     

Teaching Object-related Play Skills to Preschool Children with Developmental Concerns

The distinction between general early childhood education and special education on the issue of the essential characteristics of play, developmental appropriateness, and an emphasis on teacher directiveness, external contingencies, and correct products may help explain the relatively small body of work focused on teaching preschool children with developmental concerns how to appropriately engage in play with toys. Appropriately designed intervention is not only compatible with the concept of play, many children require intervention to support their continued development. The purpose of this paper is to explore the applied research in which object-related play skills of preschool children with developmental concerns are enhanced through intervention strategies. Guidelines for teaching toy play will be presented and strategies to promote generalisation and maintenance will be discussed.     

中国语境下的教师反馈与英语学习者的写作

在外语教学和学习中,动机的研究一直是一个焦点,具体来讲学生对写作的态度是否会影响学生的写作水平也成为了研究者的另一个关注点。作为英语写作教学中的重要因素,教师反馈将会对学生的动机产生影响,但在之前的研究中多集中在两者其中之一对学生成就的影响。本文作者将对国内对教师反馈研究作一个简短的文献综述,并基于相关理论对如何给出有效的教师反馈提出建议。     

Re-visiting transition-based teaching: Impact of pre-service teacher's implementation on child outcomes

Present study investigated impact of pre-service teachers’ implementation of a constant time delay procedure within the framework of transition-based teaching on teaching pre-academic skills to three preschool children with developmental delays during transitions in inclusive classrooms. A multiple probe design across behaviors replicated across three children was used. Results indicated pre-service teachers could implement transition-based teaching with very high fidelity following a brief training session; pre-service teachers’ implementation of transition-based teaching resulted in acquisition of pre-academic skills by all three participating children with developmental delays; children generalized the pre-academic skills they learned to other teachers, settings, and materials; and they maintained high levels of correct responding during the follow-up sessions. Moreover, pre-service and preschool teachers found transition-based teaching acceptable and effective. Directions for future research and practice are discussed.     

Modeling,Praise, and Criticism in Teaching Empathic Responding

This study employs a factorial design to investigate the efficacy of all possible combinations of modeling, praise, and criticism as a means of teaching empathic responding to counselor trainees. Measures of empathy were taken on 64 female introductory psychology students at the beginning of an experimental session and following each of two training segments. Results indicate a significant effect for modeling and stage of training. There was a significant interaction between modeling and stage of training such that subjects in the modeling conditions were rated higher in empathy than those in the no-modeling condition at the mid- and postmeasure but not at the premeasure. Results are in agreement with one previously published study but are inconsistent with two others. Discussion focuses on the critical elements of effective feedback techniques.     

Brief Therapy: A Model for Early Counselor Training

Early counselor training has traditionally stressed acquisition of basic listening skills while underemphasizing instruction in specific problem-solving competencies. This bias may be partly responsible for such frequently observed supervision issues as counselor anxiety, inefficient counselor management of interview time, inadequate problem clarification, and premature intervention. Models for conducting brief, problem-focused counseling seem well-suited for teaching trainees the verbal skills and structuring methods that promote efficient problem clarification and resolution. The purposes of this article are to present one such model, to identify its skills requirements, and to discuss the advantages of using this model in practicum training.