This morning was the first Orðaheimurinn (OH+) Team Meeting (World of Words).
Grant title: Optimisation of the World of Words (Orðaheimurinn batnandi fer)
Here is the abstract: Many children from homes where Icelandic is not spoken, or not the only language spoken, experience challenges communicating effectively in Icelandic during their preschool years and beyond. This can be due to these children having insufficient access to high quality Icelandic language models in their daily lives. Difficulties with Icelandic in the preschool years can have long-term negative consequences for children’s language, literacy, academic, social, emotional, psychological, and vocational outcomes. This project is an extension of a cluster randomized controlled trial conducted in 2022-2024 and will test an optimised version of the Orðaheimurinn [World of Words] intervention, called Orðaheimurinn+ (OH+). OH+ is a teacher-delivered shared-reading intervention and education program for increasing the Icelandic language skills of children in preschool, especially children who are multilingual. This project uses a Translational Research Framework within a Community-Based Participatory Research approach to maximise the social validity of OH+ and ensure that an intervention is developed that can be widely used by preschools across Iceland.
The project is based on World of Words: /https://www.worldofwordswow.com/
The following people are researchers involved in the project and were present:
- Kate Crowe - University of Iceland
- Þóra Másdóttir - University of Iceland
- Jóhanna T. Einarsdóttir - University of Iceland
- Susan B. Neumann - New York University, USA
- Mark Guiberson - University of Wyoming, USA
- Sharynne McLeod, Charles Sturt University, Australia
- Frederic Borries - USA
We received a grant from the Icelandic Research Fund to undertake this work (17% success rate)
Susan introduced us to this paper:
Weiss, C. H. (1995). Nothing as Practical as Good Theory: Exploring Theory-Based Evaluation for Comprehensive Community Initiatives for Children and Families. In J. Connell, A. C. Kubisch, L. B. Schorr, & C. H. Weiss (Eds.), New Approaches to Evaluating Community Initiatives: Concepts, Methods, and Contexts (pp. 65-92). Aspen Institute. https://docs.opendeved.net/lib/2URBNM2X
