In other words, we examine both individual skills and relational and systemic factors around the child, and we use both quantitative and qualitative approaches to explore the connections between the children and the environments in which they grow up.
Most members of the SAMBA research group are currently associated with two externally funded projects: PolkaNorski and BePro S. In PolkaNorski, we examine the relationship between children's language skills, world knowledge and the linguistic, cultural and educational environment. In BeProS, we study the effects of ECEC quality on children's school performance, both socially and academically.
We also work with adapting international assessment tools to the Norwegian context, which means translating and adapting the questions in the tools, validating them and creating digitized versions. We adapt tools related to individual children, ECEC as a learning environment for children and for dialogues within ECEC centres, between ECEC and researchers, as well as between ECEC, parents and school.
Heads of research group
Members
More about the research
Our work centres around two lines of research. On the one hand we investigate which factors contribute to the pedagogical quality in ECEC and primary school, on the other we investigate how children’s language development, and particularly that of multilingual children, can be related to aspects of the ECEC environment.
For both lines of research, we have worked on adapting internationally developed assessment procedures to Norwegian, including translation, adaption of questions, validation and digitalisation. We also use the same tools to evaluate the relationship between ECEC practice and school success, as well as individual children’s language development. The assessment tools are relevant to: 1) individual children. 2) ECEC as a pedagogical environment for children, 3) dialogues within ECEC, between ECEC and researchers, as well as between ECEC, parents and school.
Projects
- Equity in Education – ECEC and School – BeProS
- PolkaNorski: Polish and Norwegian language and world knowledge development in mono- and multilingual children
- StarWords: Study on parental Report on early Words in monolingual and multilingual children
- Language diversity in ECEC
- BlikSSt: The development of contrastive intonation in two varieties of Swedish
PhD projects
- Elisabeth Holm: Språkkartlegging i barnehagen? (Language assessment in ECEC).
- Maren Meyer Hegna: Betydningen av interaksjonskvalitet for barns sosiale utvikling i overgang fra barnehage til skole (Interaction quality and children’s social competence from ECEC to primary school).
