Children with specific language impairment and achievement in science in Key Stage 2: The effect of their language difficulties on performance in scientific reasoning tasks and the implications for pedagogy
Abstract
Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have more difficulty with accessing the National Curriculum than their typically developing (TD) peers. Previous research has investigated the difficulties these children have with English and mathematics, but there has been little research on their achievement in the third National Curriculum (NC) Core Subject of science. Practitioner experience suggests that teachers perceive children with SLI as more easily able to access the science curriculum in comparison because it is visual and practical, but at the same time these children do appear to have considerable difficulty with verbalising scientific concepts.
This investigation focused on children with SLI within the Key Stage (KS) 2 age span and their ability to perform scientific reasoning tasks as appropriate for this KS. Drawn from a pre-sampling study conducted within three mainstream schools, 11 pairs of target children with SLI and control TD children undertook in an individual interview a series of scientific reasoning tasks which were designed by the researcher. With each task instructions were repeated, there was considerable visual demonstration and the participants had practical experience of the tasks. Both receptive and expressive language skills were assessed and responses were scored according to accuracy regarding facts and in some tasks for the production of causal connectives, e.g. “because”, “so”.
Non-parametric statistical analyses showed that the children with SLI for the most part had significantly more difficulty with expressive language tasks than the TD children in spite of scaffolding and there was evidence that they also had greater difficulty with the production of causal connectives. However, there was no difference between the two groups on scaffolded receptive language tasks.
Two main implications for pedagogy emerge. In the first place, children with SLI may be able to perform scientific reasoning tasks independently of language, in which case they will benefit from non- verbal reasoning activities in the course of their science lessons; secondly, they may improve their ability to perform causal reasoning tasks verbally, if they are specifically coached in the production of causal connectives.
