Inter-university cooperation on tool that helps children move forward
Eva van de Weijer-Bergsma and Jojanneke van der Beek (both with Development & Education of Youth in Diverse Societies) joined forces with researchers at other universities to develop a tool for remedial educationalists and psychologists. The tool allows them to record how children experience reading and spelling. “We all believe it’s important to pay more attention to the emotional side of learning and learning disabilities.”
Despite an arduous search for participating schools, the spread of professors and other researchers across several universities, a researcher who fell ill and was consequently absent for long periods of time, and high workloads, the developers have made it work: the LSBS (Lees- en spellingbelevingsschaal, or Reading and Spelling Experience Scale) is ready and has been launched by the publisher [link in Dutch].
Tool for professional practice
What was the need for the LSBS? Assistant professor Eva van de Weijer-Bergsma: “Research has shown that children with reading and spelling problems are more likely to suffer from social and emotional problems, such as fear of failure, reduced reading pleasure and low self-esteem. These social and emotional problems in turn make reading and spelling problems worse. The LSBS records how primary school pupils experience reading and spelling, so that remedial educationalists can work with it and advise education professionals.”
Questionnaire completed by children
The LSBS is a self-reporting tool, explains lecturer and remedial educationalist Jojanneke van der Beek. “We ask the children how good they consider themselves to be at reading and spelling, whether they enjoy it and whether they feel fear or shame when things are difficult. We also ask them what coping strategies they use. One child will start doing all kinds of different things, whereas another child will get angry or start fretting.”
Suffering
Jojanneke: “If remedial educationalists know how children can react when they’re having problems with reading and spelling, it can help with treatment. You can also observe or conduct interviews for this purpose, but a short and accessible questionnaire will help you get a picture of the suffering caused by reading and spelling problems quickly. This then allows you to have a conversation with the child.
We continued with the project because of our shared mission. So we’re over the moon that the LSBS is finally ready!
Widespread research team
The LSBS did not come into being without a struggle. The researchers all know each other from when they worked or studied at Utrecht University. Jojanneke: “We continued with the project because of our shared mission, but meanwhile the team has spread out. I work with Eva as a lecturer at Utrecht University. In addition, I’m an external PhD candidate at Radboud University. Eva and Sanne van der Ven are my co-supervisors; Sanne is an assistant professor at Radboud University. Some of us worked with Judi Dams, who coordinated the data collection for the benchmarking study, on the supervision of her thesis and during her clinical for her Master’s degree in Educational Sciences. Elise de Bree was a professor at Utrecht University, but now works at the University of Amsterdam. It was quite a challenge to schedule our monthly team meetings, so we’re over the moon that the LSBS is finally ready!”
The researchers intend to use the subsidy to record the reading and spelling experiences of Dutch children with dyslexia.
Subsidy for follow-up research
The team’s cooperation will not end with the launch of the LSBS. Last year, the researchers received a subsidy [link in dutch] from the research fund of the Association of Educationalists in the Netherlands (NVO). They intend to use this to record the reading and spelling experiences of Dutch children with dyslexia, Eva says. “We all believe it’s important to pay more attention to the emotional side of learning and learning disabilities. With the LSBS and our follow-up research, we’re making a contribution towards achieving that goal. Until a few years ago, the focus was really limited to cognitive and didactic aspects.”
Adopted by practitioners
How will the developers make sure that their tool will be adopted by remedial educationalists in practice? While the publisher (Hogrefe) obviously has a marketing task in this respect, the developers themselves have also reached out to practitioners. Jojanneke: “We organise a large amount of refresher training in which we explain the LSBS, we write articles for scientific journals and we post about it on LinkedIn.”