Listening comprehension involves the ability to understand and extract meaning from spoken sentences, stories, and instruction. This skill is vital for young children and has long-term effects on school achievement, employability, income, and participation in society. There is a lack of measures of young children’s listening comprehension skills. We report on a new measure of listening comprehension (LURI) that we tested in a group of at-risk preschoolers. Using IRT (Item Response Theory) analysis, we examined the psychometric properties of the instrument. Moreover, in a series of regressions, we found that the LURI measure predicted a range of other language skills better than standardized measures. Thus, the LURI test is a reliable and valid measure of listening comprehension. Assessing listening comprehension is a time-effective way of measuring a skill critically important to language development and represents the product of a range of different oral language processes.

Students with disorders of intellectual development (ID) often experience writing difficulties, and effective interventions are highly needed. This systematic review and meta-analysis of single-case experimental design (SCED) studies summarize the effects of writing interventions for students with disorders of ID aged 4–19 years. We conducted a systematic search of seven databases, ancestral and forward searches of relevant sources, and contacted well-known authors in the field. Fifteen and 10 studies were included in the systematic review and meta-analyses, respectively. The overall results indicate that the participants improved their writing skills, with a large between-case standardized mean difference (BC-SMD) effect on the number of words and sentences written (BC-SMD = 1.22) and on the quality of paragraph and story writing (BC-SMD = 1.39). Students with disorders of ID can benefit from writing interventions, and the study results may provide practitioners with important insight into promising writing instructions and materials. There is a need for high-quality research targeting encoding (i.e., transforming sound into letters) skills for early school-age students with disorders of ID.

The validity of the screening tools used as a part of assigning students to tiers within the Three Tier framework is essential for its quality and success. Although the Three Tier model has been widely implemented, there remains a lack of comprehensive synthesis regarding the accuracy of screening methods used as part of tier assignment procedures. This systematic review and meta-analysis examined empirical studies on the validity of screening and progress monitoring tools in the domains of literacy, language, and mathematics. A comprehensive search of seven databases and search engines yielded 127 eligible studies. The majority of tools identified were used in the literacy domain, with the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) being the most frequently employed. Of the included studies, 18 studies provided data on convergent validity, including concurrent or predictive correlations, and sensitivity and specificity metrics. Using a correlated-hierarchical effects robust variance estimation (CHE-RVE) model, results indicated a moderate overall pooled effect size for correlations ( r = .51, 95% CI [.35, .64], p = .001). However, this estimate should be interpreted cautiously, as heterogeneity was very high. Sensitivity and specificity estimates also varied widely across different tools. Findings highlight the limited number of studies assessing the validity of screening tools. Given the central role of screening in identifying students with learning difficulties, further research is needed to improve the precision and reliability of these instruments.

Objectives This is a protocol for a Cochrane Review (intervention). The objectives are as follows: The primary objective is to examine the immediate and long‐term effects of second language (L2) vocabulary interventions targeting L2 learners up to six years of age on vocabulary and social‐emotional well‐being. The secondary objectives are to examine associations between L2 vocabulary interventions and general characteristics of L2 learners (e.g. age, L2 exposure and L1 skills), as well as specific characteristics of L2 learners who do not appear to benefit from treatment.