Avaliaçâo psicológica da linguagen expressiva e recetiva das crianças da educaçâo pré-escolar

Abstract

The main goal of this dissertation is to comprehend and acknowledge the language development of children in Preschool; to check if the Observation Grid usage is relevant, objective, reliable for data collection and consistent on how it evaluates the children language communication profile in preschool education. The pursue of answers for the pleasant and overall success on language development of preschool children is a challenge for education professionals. Within this perception, we must create assessment instruments that help the educational practice in different aspects. Schools have an important role in identify, depict and define the educational processes adapted to the children´s needs, which can be used as supporting instruments in the process. The present study, ‘Avaliação Psicológica da Linguagem Expressiva e Recetiva em Crianças da Educação Pré-escolar’, embodies this dissertation presented at the University of León. This study approaches the problematic of expressive and receptive languages in children from three to five years old on preschool education. Preschool education aims to the formation of the child in different areas of the development. The area of communication and language is an ongoing problem that was introduced on ‘Orientações Curriculares para a Educação Pré-Escolar Curricular, 1997’, from the Portuguese Ministry of Education, mainly in the content area, Expressions and Communication. Adopting a paradigmatic framework for research, in an interpretive and observational perspective, we privileged the use of quantitative data collection, through the observation of a skills grid that consists of sixty-four items being half for the Receptive Language and the other thirty-two items for the Expressive Language, providing information about the emerging abilities of children in these age groups in terms of communication. The language areas were assessed at the level of expressive and receptive languages, through oral exercises of children aged three, four and five years old of the preschool education from fourteen kindergartens (a total of 567 children). The groups were assessed by chronological age, not having any known problems on their development level. The ‘Competencies Observation Grid’ was validated by the judge test and had its reliability optimized by the Cronbach's Alpha. This dissertation is organized in six chapters: Chapter I - Acquisition and Development of Language; Chapter II - Language and Communication; Chapter III - Definition of Hypotheses and Objectives; Chapter IV - Design and Research Methodology; Chapter V – Results and Chapter VI - Conclusions. Assuming that preschool education is the first stage of basic education in the life of a child, it should promote and stimulate the development, aiming towards his/her autonomy, rational and communicational being, through codes/tools and multiple languages. Acknowledging that, our investigation has the following objectives: evaluate the expressive and receptive languages of children in preschool education, through this data collection tool: the Observation Grid, which was created with one purpose - to evaluate the expressive and receptive languages productions of Portuguese children aged three, four and five years old. In the statistical analysis, we used the package SPSS 22.0.