Escala de Valoración de la Enseñanza del Lenguaje Oral en contexto Escolar: adaptación para su uso en educación especial

The conceptual framework of our work underlines the importance of some language characteristics and communicative strategies used by adults when interacting with children in different contexts for the development of language competence. Children with intellectual disability (ID) need to develop skills to communicate with others, to learn and progress autonomously. This paper presents results of a pilot study in which an adaptation of the EVALOE (Assessment of Oral Language Teaching at School Scale) was carried out in order to be used in the context of special education. The process consisted, firstly, of the use of this validated scale for assessing a special class situation. Participants were two teachers and six 8 year-old children with ID. After that, adaptations were introduced in order to increase its usefulness. Finally, a new class situation with very similar characteristics and with the same participants was assessed with the adapted scale. Results show, firstly, that EVALOE is a useful instrument for assessing the oral language teaching in the school context. Secondly, it shows that the adapted version allows increase the assessed aspects and initiate a collaborative reflection with the special education teachers in order to introduce changes related with the context and communicative management, the instructional design, as well as communicative functions and strategies.