tirsdag 22. mai 2018

Kindergarten teacher education in Norway – are we teaching our future educators enough about childhood communication difficulties?



A key component of the EST-project will be translating the findings of our treatment trial to the community. We want to ensure that as many preschool children as possible are getting access to the best stuttering intervention available. As part of this process, we will be engaging with health and education professionals in the community who are involved in the care of these children. One of the groups we will therefore be working closely with is kindergarten teachers. Our team has recently started reviewing the level of training and knowledge Norwegian kindergarten teachers currently have about working with children with communication difficulties including stuttering and we have uncovered some surprising findings!
In Norway, 91% of children, aged 1-5 years, attend kindergarten; most of these children attend for 41 hours or more each week (Statistics Norway, 2018). There are over 5,800 kindergarten centers throughout Norway; half of them are publicly owned (Statistics Norway, 2018).

Kindergartens are pedagogical institutions for children below the compulsory school age of six years. The Norwegian governments framework plan stipulates that one of the kindergarten teachers tasks is to identify, monitor and support children with communication difficulties (Norwegian Ministry for Education and Research, 2017).   
There are 12 tertiary institutions (including one Sami) throughout Norway that offer Bachelor programs of kindergarten teacher education. In 2017, 1,859 kindergarten teachers graduated from this bachelor degree across these institutions (DBS, 2018). These programs are designed based on the National Curriculum Regulations for Kindergarten Teacher Education in Norway (Ministry of Education and Research, 2012). This curriculum highlights the importance of incorporating special needs education into these programs.

“The study programme should emphasise the growing diversity in kindergartens, including the higher proportion of children under the age of three, the increased number of children with special needs and growing numbers of multilingual children.”
It further states that a graduate must possess:

“broad knowledge about children’s language development (…) is able to evaluate, stimulate and support children’s different abilities and take their different backgrounds and aptitudes into account (…) is able to identify special needs in individual children.”

The national curriculum does not however provide many details regarding teaching students specifically about children with special needs. In Norway, all students enrolled in a Bachelor of Kindergarten Teacher Education complete at least 100 days on field placements throughout their candidature. During this time, it is likely that they will meet children with communication difficulties. Given that more than 1 in 10 preschool children stutter, the likelihood of students meeting at least one child who stutters is very high.

A brief review of tertiary institutions which offer Bachelor programs of kindergarten teacher education revealed that the focus on children with special needs varies greatly between courses. One institution did not provide any reference to children with special needs in their course overview while another stated that graduates should have knowledge of how to support children with special needs. However, there were also institutions that explicitly mentioned children with communication difficulties in their course overview. This review is consistent with findings from a recently published report about kindergarten teacher education (Bjerkestrand et al., 2017) that stated some tertiary institutions are concerned that kindergarten teacher education programs do not include enough content about children with special needs. The depth of knowledge and training Norwegian kindergarten teachers have about children with special needs, particularly those with communications difficulties, may therefore reflect where they obtained their degree. Further, a report published this year about special needs education in Norway revealed that within kindergarten settings teacher assistants spend the most time with children with special needs. Importantly, these assistants do not require a formal degree to fulfill this role (Nordahl et al., 2018).

Based on this, it seems there is a discrepancy between the government’s report of increasing numbers of children with special needs and their call for kindergarten teachers to extend their knowledge about this population and the curriculum currently being taught in tertiary institutions. These findings have highlighted the importance of the third component of the EST-project, translation of results to the community! We have a really important aim to improve kindergarten teacher and teaching assistant’s knowledge of children who stutter. They see these children and their parents every week and therefore hold a really important role in ensuring that these children are identified and receive the best possible care as soon as possible. Hopefully, this blog can be one way that we begin to spread our message!
From the EST-project team

References:
Bjerkestrand, M. et al. (2017). Sluttrapport frå Følgjegruppa for barnehagelærarutdanning til Kunnskapsdepartementet. Rapport nr. 5. Retrieved from https://www.regjeringen.no/contentassets/0efc6554255647b1b138e4a2507f0c17/sluttrapport-fra-folgjegruppa-for-barnehagelararutdanning.pdf
Broström, S., Johansson, I., Sandberg, A., & Frøkjær, T. (2014). Preschool teachers’ view on learning in preschool in Sweden and Denmark. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 22(5), 590-603. Doi: 10.1080/1350293X.2012.746199.
Nordahl, T. et al. (2018). Inkluderende fellesskap for barn og unge. Ekspertgruppen for barn og unge med behov for særskilt tilrettelegging. Retrieved from
Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research. (2017). Framework plan for kindergarten. Retrieved from https://www.udir.no/globalassets/filer/barnehage/rammeplan/framework-plan-for-kindergartens2-2017.pdf
Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research. (2012). National Curriculum Regulations for Kindergarten Teacher Education Retrieved from https://www.regjeringen.no/contentassets/389bf8229a3244f0bc1c7835f842ab60/blu---forskrift-engelsk-ny-versjon-med-endringer-15-03-2016-1.pdf
Statistics Norway. (2018). Kindergartens. Retrieved from https://www.ssb.no/en/utdanning/statistikker/barnehager     

 

 

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