Browsing by Author "McNeill B"

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    A better start national science challenge: supporting the future wellbeing of our tamariki E tipu, e rea, mō ngā rā o tō ao: grow tender shoot for the days destined for you
    (Taylor and Francis Group, 2023-02-22) Maessen SE; Taylor BJ; Gillon G; Moewaka Barnes H; Firestone R; Taylor RW; Milne B; Hetrick S; Cargo T; McNeill B; Cutfield W; Moton TM; King PT; Dalziel S; Merry S; Robertson S; Day A
    The majority of children and young people in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) experience good health and wellbeing, but there are key areas where they compare unfavourably to those in other rich countries. However, current measures of wellbeing are critically limited in their suitability to reflect the dynamic, culture-bound, and subjective nature of the concept of ‘wellbeing’. In particular, there is a lack of measurement in primary school-aged children and in ways that incorporate Māori perspectives on wellbeing. A Better Start National Science Challenge work in the areas of Big Data, Healthy Weight, Resilient Teens, and Successful learning demonstrates how research is increasing our understanding of, and our ability to enhance, wellbeing for NZ children. As we look ahead to the future, opportunities to support the wellbeing of NZ young people will be shaped by how we embrace and mitigate against potential harms of new technologies, and our ability to respond to new challenges that arise due to climate change. In order to avoid increasing inequity in who experiences wellbeing in NZ, wellbeing must be monitored in ways that are culturally acceptable, universal, and recognise what makes children flourish.
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    A better start to literacy learning: findings from a teacher-implemented intervention in children’s first year at school
    (Springer Nature B.V, 8/01/2019) Gillon G; McNeill B; Scott A; Denston A; Wilson L; Carson K; Macfarlane AH
    This study investigated the feasibility of a teacher implemented intervention to accelerate phonological awareness, letter, and vocabulary knowledge in 141 children (mean age 5 years, 4 months) who entered school with lower levels of oral language ability. The children attended schools in low socioeconomic communities where additional stress was still evident 6 years after the devastating earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2011. The teachers implemented the intervention at the class or large group level for 20 h (four 30-min sessions per week for 10 weeks). A stepped wedge research design was used to evaluate intervention effects. Children with lower oral language ability made significantly more progress in both their phonological awareness and targeted vocabulary knowledge when the teachers implemented the intervention compared to progress made when teachers implemented their usual literacy curriculum. Importantly, the intervention accelerated children’s ability to use improved phonological awareness skills when decoding novel words (treatment effect size d = 0.88). Boys responded to the intervention as well as girls and the skills of children who identified as Māori or Pacific Islands (45.5% of the cohort) improved in similar ways to children who identified as New Zealand European. The findings have important implications for designing successful teacher-implemented interventions, within a multi-tier approach, to support children who enter school with known challenges for their literacy learning.
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    Evidence-Based Class Literacy Instruction for Children With Speech and Language Difficulties
    (Wolters Kluwer Health Inc, 2020) Gillon G; Denston A; McNeill B; Scott A; Macfarlane A
    This study investigated the response to class-wide phonological awareness and oral language teaching for 40 children who entered school with speech and language difficulties. A stepped wedge research design was adopted to compare the immediate impact of the 10-week teacher-led instruction. The progress of the children with speech and language difficulties was monitored over the first school year and compared with 110 children with language difficulties alone and 95 children with typical development. Children with speech and language needs showed a strong intervention response in phoneme awareness and vocabulary learning but needed more support to transfer skills to word decoding and spelling. Implementing the approach earlier in the school year resulted in stronger literacy performance at the year-end for all three groups. The importance of positive speech–language pathologist and teacher collaborations to support a systematic approach to evidence-based foundational literacy teaching is discussed.