Browsing by Subject "http://www.yso.fi/onto/yso/p11406"
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(2022)Objectives. The purpose of this Master’s thesis is to assess the methodological quality of intervention studies examining the effect of digital learning games on the reading skills of children with or at risk of reading difficulties. Learning games can serve as a tool to motivate and engage in learning when a child needs more time and repetition to learn. Learning games are utilized in teaching, but the results for their effectiveness vary. The target groups for special needs education are small and heterogeneous in their skills, which makes it challenging to demonstrate the effectiveness of interventions. Methods. The dissertation was carried out as a systematic literature review using PRISMA guidelines. The studies to be evaluated were retrieved from the databases ERIC (Proquest), PsycINFO (Ovid), SCOPUS (Elsevier), Academic Search Complete (EBSCO) and Web of Science. The studies selected for review (n = 13) were published between years 2011 and 2022, were peer-reviewed and English-language intervention studies. The target group was children with reading difficulties or at a risk of reading difficulties, and the intervention sought to influence reading skills through digital learning games. The evaluation was carried out based on the criteria of the EPHPP framework. Results and conclusions. The majority (8) of the intervention studies were rated as strong, three as moderate and two as weak. For the study design, all were assessed as strong for evaluation, while for selection bias and blinding, all studies were rated as only moderate. For confounders, all but one was rated as moderate. Weak ratings were given to only a few studies for data collection methods and withdrawals and dropouts. Based on the results of this study, there is the most room for improvement in the reporting of these two parts to ensure the reliability of the studies.
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(2024)The increase of multilingual children in Finnish ECEC has highlighted the need to assess its inclusivity and effectiveness in educating and caring for children from various backgrounds. As early childhood is a crucial time for the development of language, social-emotional skills, and experiences of participation, it is essential that all children are effectively supported in developing these skills and provided with experiences of belonging. This study aims to investigate multilingual children’s participation opportunities during a shared reading and discussion activity. Eleven video-recorded shared reading sessions from different ECEC groups were analysed using qualitative content analysis. Finnish was the language of instruction in all groups. Multilingual children’s behaviour was examined in reference to three categories: active engagement and participation, passive engagement with little participation, or interfering behaviour with limited engagement and participation. Based on these observations, groups were divided into three categories depending on if they were considered to have a lot, some or little participation and engagement for multilingual children. Teachers’ methods for facilitating participation and engagement were also investigated, which resulted in 6 main themes and 19 categories being identified. The analysis revealed that most multilingual children actively participated in the activity, and teachers used multiple methods to facilitate participation and engagement. However, there were several groups where some children did not participate actively and received little support and attention from the teacher. Children’s multilingual competence was also rarely made visible during the sessions, as Finnish was the only language used in all groups. While the findings were generally positive, the lack of support for some multilingual children’s participation and the prevalence of monolingual practices indicate that the use of language-aware and inclusive methods could be developed especially in reference to shared reading.
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