Early detection of pupils with developmental language disorders. An intervention proposal for differentiated educational support

Abstract

INTRODUCTION. This paper addresses the diagnosis of the different manifestations of developmental disorders in language development, with the purpose of offering a differentiated educational response. The idea is to achieve the inclusion of pupils with language difficulties based on equity, that is, the dynamic allocation and combination of teaching resources to measure the needs of all pupils, not only those who are identified categorically. METHOD. 113 Early Childhood Education pupils participated in the sample, coming from 52 public schools. The CELF diagnostic test was used as an instrument. RESULTS. The results show that there are differences between the profiles of Specific Language Impairment (SLI), Specific Homogeneous Language Delay (SHLD) and Specific Heterogeneous Language Delay (SHLD). In both the subscales and the subtests, the SLI group shows lower scores than the rest of the groups, differing to a greater extent from the SHLD group, which always obtains the highest results. DISCUSSION. The educational response is organized from a Multi-Tiered System of Support based on collaborative work between professionals in the context of the ordinary classroom and intensive support in a more specific context. In conclusion, the importance of designing differentiated educational interventions for the three linguistic profiles is highlight-ed and, consequently, a series of practical applications are provided to carry out these inter-ventions. This practice allows all the pupils to be taught appropriately with an equitable dis-tribution of supports and services to fulfill each student’s individual educational needs.