Browsing by Author "Taanila, Annukka"

Many researches have proved that reading disabilities can be predicted even before children start to study reading and writing at first grade. Charting school beginners linguistic skills helps to notice students who have high risk to have reading or writing disabilities. Charting also enables an early intervention to the problems. The target of this research is to find out what tests special education teachers use when charting school beginners linguistic skills and what kind of experiences do they have about this tests, regarding especially usefulness, practicality and cooperation. This research also compares tests that are used at the moment when charting school beginners linguistic skills. The comparison concentrates especially to research the exercises that these tests contain. This research consists of two stages. The first stage studied what tests special education teachers use to chart school beginners linguistic skills and what the teachers think about these tests. The data was collected with questionnaire, that brought 40 answers from the special education teachers who lived in Southern Finland. The data was analysed quantitatively using statistical methods. In the second stage of the research seven tests that chart school beginners linguistic skills were compared and analysed. According to this research special education teachers use different tests to chart school beginners linguistic skills. They also use some combinations of many tests. The teachers were mainly pleased about the tests the used. Some of they still told that the tests take too much time and that they are not diverse enough. The comparison between the tests reveals that they include different type of exercises and so they measure different skills. These tests suit to different functions so teachers should have pedagogy knowledge when choosing the test to use. This research can be useful to the special education teachers who are choosing the test to chart school beginners linguistic skills.