Description
The first step towards the improvement of the well-being of children with special needs and the enhancement of their educational attainment is early screening for children at risk and assessment of their development. The specialists working with preschool children need standardized tests as objective tools for assessing child development. The project is aimed at adapting several internationally renowned tools for the assessment of language and cognitive development in Estonia. The overall objective of the project is to compose and adapt standardized tools for the assessment of preschool children’s cognitive and language development that would enable early identification of children with special educational needs and provide guidelines for planning their teaching in order to prevent the escalation of problems once the children are at school. The Norwegian partner HiOA will contribute with expertise into the development and implementation of the assessment tools and the Russian partner will provide training and expertise on methodologies and the adaptation process,
Summary of project results
The overall objective of the project was to compose and adapt standardized tools for the assessment of preschool children’s cognitive and language development that would enable early identification of children with special educational needs and provide guidelines for planning their teaching in order to prevent the escalation of problems once the children are at school. All the direct targets of the project were met: project promoter has adapted three and developed two assessment measures for preschool-aged children. The ECDI Short-Form version for 2 year-olds was adapted and created a new screening measure for assessing the language abilities of 3 to 4 year-olds. Both measures distinguish children with the risk of language delay from children with age-appropriate language development at these ages. To assess social skills in 3 to 4 year-old children, a measure/survey for kindergarten teachers was created, which can be used to distinguish children who differ from the age-appropriate norms based on their social or self-regulatory skills. For the primary assessment of children’s cognitive processes, the Strebeleva methodology was adapted, which has been previously widely used in Estonia with the permission of the authors, but lacked local norms. The PEP-3 test is the most extensive measure out of all the measures selected for this project and covers the assessment of cognitive, social verbal and motor skills. The PEP-3 test was adapted and it allows the adjusting of teaching for children, who differentiate severely from the age-group norms and who cannot cope with normal curriculum. The fulfilment of the projects direct targets provided an opportunity to fulfil the overall objective of the project. University of Tartu carried out two information seminars and seven full days of training, to inform the professionals who will be using the measures in the future (speech-therapists, kindergarten teachers, psychologists), representatives of professional associations, officials of the ministries and people who will be carrying out the training of said specialists. For publishing and disseminating the measures, follow-up activities and financing is necessary, which requires mutual effort from all interest-groups. Preliminary work for follow-up activities has been undertaken and the project has effectively contributed to preventing the increase and escalation of children’s problems at school age.
Summary of bilateral results
Project promoter had a cooperation with the Department of Early Childhood Education, Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences. During the project period several meetings took place with the aim to discuss the issues related to the selected measures and tests.