PURPOSE:
to determine whether early childhood teachers are able to identify children with language development impairments.
METHODS:
the present comparative cross-sectional observational study was conducted in underserved early childhood education schools. The study sample comprised 14 teachers and 91 schoolchildren in the age range of 2 years to 4 years 11 months who were regularly enrolled in the selected schools. The teachers completed a questionnaire concerning the children's development status, and a speech-language evaluation was conducted with all the children. The level of agreement between the speech-language assessment and that conducted by the teachers was measured using the Kappa coefficient; sensitivity and specificity were calculated considering the speech-language evaluation as the gold standard.
RESULTS:
the speech-language assessment showed that language development was impaired thus: 22% of the children had deficits in receptive language; 34.1% showed expressive language impairment; 35.2%, cognitive deficits, and 6.6% had oral motor impairment. Slight agreement was found between the speech-language assessment and that performed by the teachers. The sensitivity of the teachers' assessment ranged between 0.3-0.4 while specificity ranged between 0.6-0.9.
CONCLUSION:
the teachers had difficulties in identifying the children at risk for language disabilities.
Language Development; Child Language; Child Rearing; Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences
Thumbnail
