Improving maths achievement in children with speech, language, and communication needs through 'collaborative vocabulary teaching'

The PhD project's addresses these grand challenges directly by building an empirical evidence base for improving education provision and access for children with learning difficulties, which is key to ameliorating their cognitive and social-emotional development. Therefore, I will (a) conduct systematic literature reviews of effectiveness studies of language-focused interventions that seek to improve children's educational achievement; (b) analyse original, primary quantitative data to test why child language development predicts educational achievement; and (c) collect qualitative data from research stakeholders (e.g., pupils, parents) to study the feasibility of broadly implementing language-focused education interventions across schools in the UK.

The project will bring together Speech and Language UK (speechandlanguage.org.uk, a charity and third sector organisation), Dawn House School (dawnhouseschool.org.uk, a specialist school for children with language and communication difficulties that is funded by Speech and Language UK), and researchers across disciplines including linguistics, psychology, and education science at the Universities of Sheffield (Prof Judy Clegg, Dr Sarah Spencer) and York (Prof Sophie von Stumm, Dr Umar Toseeb). By engaging beyond a single academic discipline, this WRDTP Collaborative Award Project will support me in testing the effectiveness and scalability of 'collaborative vocabulary teaching' - a novel, whole class approach led jointly by teachers and Speech Language Therapists (SLTs) - for improving numeracy and mathematics achievement in children with language and communication difficulties.

This Project has the capacity to advance knowledge across disciplines, especially in education science and psychology. Its wider benefits are the potential of mitigating some of the negative, long-tern consequences that stem from low educational achievement, whose greatest burden is for individual children and their families but that also affect society at large. It involves knowledge exchange and co-production of research with the project partner Speech and Language UK, (speechandlanguage.org.uk, a charity and third sector organisation), as well as with Dawn House School (dawnhouseschool.org.uk, a specialist school for children with language and communication difficulties that is funded by Speech and Language UK), and researchers from linguistics, psychology, and education at the Universities of Sheffield (Prof Judy Clegg, Dr Sarah Spencer) and York (Prof Sophie von Stumm, Dr Umar Toseeb).

This project will achieve a significant contribution to knowledge and create impact by evidencing the effectiveness and scalability of a novel, whole class teaching approach to improve numeracy and maths skills in children with language and communication difficulties, who are at increased risk for low educational achievement. Producing and sharing effective interventions that improve vulnerable children's life outcomes is the principal aim of this project's partner Speech and Language UK. Such interventions are often developed to target children with learning difficulties, including language and communication difficulties, but they are likely to benefit all children. We therefore anticipate that this WRDTP Collaborative Award Project will achieve broad impact in school education settings.