A follow-up study of children who attended the Centre for Language and Hearing Impaired Children

[摘要] Language is integrally involved in all stages of the learning process. Children who have alanguage disability are therefore likely to have difficulty with their schooling. The Centre forLanguage and Hearing Impaired Children was established to provide these children with anoptimal start to their education and to maximize the impact of early intervention. The aim ofthis retrospective study was to obtain follow-up information about the pupils who attendedthis language-rich nursery school environment, and to discover if their progress reflectedsignificant long-term improvements in their education. The study design involved bothquantitative aspects, for which it became necessary to create an educational outcome scoringsystem in order to objectively assess children’s outcomes, and descriptive components tounderstand the children’s progress. The data collection involved two phases, where the initialdata provided the basic demographics of 94 children who attended the Centre, and the secondstage considered information obtained in the follow-up interviews with 32 families that couldbe traced. The latter data showed that, in spite of previously reported improvements while atthe Centre, significant disabilities persisted in 56.25 % of the children, where they wereunable to reach mainstream education. In addition, there were significant numbers (81.25%)that attended or passed through remedial/special education during their formal school career,reinforcing the need for supportive, therapeutic forms of education for children with languageimpairments.

[发布机构] University of the Witwatersrand