Faculty of Education Competitive Grants

Project Title: Development of a teacher-administered screening tool for linguistically diverse students

Chief Investigator: Dr Esther Care and Ms Amanda Thomas

Funded by: 2008 Melbourne Graduate School of Education Competitive Grant

Project Summary: The project aim is to develop a tool which differentiates between the reasoning and language-based abilities of Prep students from different linguistic backgrounds. The increasing numbers of children in Prep in Victoria who do not come from English-speaking backgrounds present a challenge for educators who do not have training in identifying those children who present with learning difficulties as distinct from language background based difficulties. This constitutes an obstacle to some children being referred for specialist educational assessment in their early school years. The project moves to overcome this obstacle by developing for teachers an appropriate screening device.