ESRC Festival of Social Science

Every March the department organises an event as part of the ESRC's Festival of Social Science. This Festival celebrates some of the UK's leading social science research, highlighting the ways in which social science impacts on our lives.

LCS's Festival of Social Science event for 2010 was held on 18th March and organised by Wolfgang Mann. The title of the event was Language assessment of children – challenges and new directions, and the talks were as follows:

 

  1. Language assessment across social groups: Are our tests socially biased?
    Penny Roy (Language & Communication Science, City)
    About 7% of children in the general population are reported to have language impairments, but studies of children from socially disadvantaged areas have found rates of language difficulties seven to eight times higher. We explore the possibility that this large gap in performance may result from the kind of language tests used to measure language in children and consider alternative assessments that are less affected by the kind of early language environments children experience.
  2. What do bilingual and multilingual children "normally" do?
    Li Wei (Birkbeck College London)
    This talk focuses on the issue of developmental norms for bilingual and multilingual children especially those of minority ethnic and immigrant backgrounds. The notion of norms is important in clinical assessment and intervention. In the meantime, there are a range of issues, linguistic, psychological, socio-cultural and ideological that needs to be considered in determining what the norms are. Understanding these issues have wide ranging implications for policy and practice.
  3. Challenges related to the assessment of deaf children’s sign language skills
    Tobias Haug (University of Applied Sciences for Special Needs, Zurich)
    The development and application of sign language tests for deaf children and young adolescents is a very challenging task, which, at the same time, offers new insights for practitioners and researchers alike. Given the fact that sign language assessment is still a rather young field within sign language research, this calls for an interdisciplinary approach during test development, which benefits from close collaborations with practitioners as well as the use of new technologies. This talk addresses some of the challenges encountered in a recent project on the adaptation of a sign language comprehension test from one sign language to another.
  4. A new project to identify dyslexia in deaf children
    Ros Herman (Language & Communication Science)
    Deaf children are widely reported to have reading difficulties. Given the genetic basis of dyslexia, some of these poor readers will also be dyslexic, but such a diagnosis is rarely, if ever, applied to deaf children. One of the challenges in identifying deaf children with dyslexia is the lack of standardised assessment data. Starting in September 2010, a new study will recruit 80 Year 6 oral deaf children and assess them on selected reading measures and tests sensitive to dyslexia in order to develop norms. Test scores will be compared with the general hearing population and with a group of hearing children with dyslexia. This study represents a first step towards identifying deaf dyslexics, with important implications for education and intervention.

 


 

 

LCS organised two Festival of Social Science events in 2009: one on social cognition and one on children's literacy. Please follow the links below for further details:

Social and emotional learning: How we learn to 'mindread' and understand others

Literacy: A skill for life

 

Meanwhile, details of the event held on 15th March 2008, including presentations, can be found here:

When children's language breaks down: The hidden costs to society

 

Social and emotional learning: How we learn to 'mindread' and understand others (Friday 6th March 2009)   

This event, organised by Nicola Botting, was held on Friday 6th March 5-9pm in the Oliver Thomspon Lecture Theatre at City University London. 

 

The ability to understand what others are thinking is important. We need to be able to read intentions, take alternative perspectives and recognise emotions in others. Some find this social-cognitive skill easy whilst others need targeted education. This event comprised short talks about our ability to ‘mindread’ and bring together people with different experiences and knowledge bases to discuss the issues. Psychologists, speech and language therapists and educationalists talked about Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning in schools; autism; hearing impairment and adults who have had a stroke. Key speakers included Deborah Michel (SEAL National Strategies lead 2003-2008); Dr Greg Pasco (University of Cambridge); Derek Roger, Pat Kiff and Shanee Buxton (Oak Lodge School for deaf students); and Prof Rosemary Varley (University of Sheffield).  

 

 

Literacy: A skill for life (Thursday 12th March 2009)   

This event, organised by Chloe Marshall, was held on Thursday 12th March 5:30-8pm in Finsbury Library. Literacy is a skill for life, and potentially attainable by everyone. Yet poor literacy and measures for combating it are rarely out of the headlines. This academic year, for example, has seen the introduction of one-to-one reading tuition in schools for the poorest readers, in an effort to reduce the 20% of 11 year olds who currently leave primary school unable to read or write. Meanwhile, debates on phonics rage and teachers complain that the literacy curriculum is constantly changing, with little regard to research findings. Teachers, researchers, children's authors, policy-makers, parents and young adults all have valuable expertise to share, and this event brought them together.
 
Dr Christina Clark and Caroline Phythian-Sence (National Literacy Trust), Dr David Bedford (children’s author), Professor Sophie Scott (neuroscientist at University College London) and Alison Claridge (head of the speech and language unit at Green Street Green Primary School), each made a short presentation of their work, addressing issues surrounding how children learn to read, why some children have difficulty in doing so, which teaching methods work best, and what sort of role models and books encourage children to read. In addition, George Dugdale (National Literacy Trust) talked about the Trust's literacy manifesto. Members of the audience had the opportunity to ask questions of the speakers and participate in a discussion.

 

 

When children's language breaks down: The hidden costs to society (Saturday 15th March 2008)   

Communication is the foundation on which children learn, achieve and make friends. Most children acquire good communication skills effortlessly – but about 10% do not. Why not? What causes children’s language to break down? And what are the hidden costs to society?

 

Five panel members provided different perspectives on developmental language disorders and how they impact on young people, their families and on society. Dr Victoria Joffe, from City University London, introduced some of the many forms that a language and communication impairment can take. She then interviewed Abigail Beverly, a young artist who has a language and communication disorder. Abigail spoke movingly and with great humour about how such an impairment has impacted on her life, and how she explores these issues in her artwork, some of which was on display during the refreshment break. Mary Hartshorne, from the children’s communication charity I CAN, spoke about the report that she and I CAN published in October 2006 entitled ‘The Cost to the Nation of Children’s Poor Communication’. Professor Karen Bryan, from Surrey University, spoke about her research into language and communication difficulties in young offenders.

 

John Bercow MP also attended and gave details about the government review that he led into speech, language and communication needs services for children, which was published in July 2008. 

 

The event finished with a discussion and a showcase of research being carried out at City into the causes of language disorders and into effective methods of supporting children’s language development.

 

Copies of the speakers' presentations can be downloaded here [Powerpoint format]: