Julie Dockrell

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• PhD
• Professor at University College London

Childhood stunting is associated with delayed developmental trajectories. While the relationship between childhood stunting and cognitive development has been widely studied, the impact on children’s development requires further examination. This meta-analysis aims to synthesize existing research studies to clarify the relationships between childho...

No previous systematic reviews have focused on which targeted interventions successfully raise educational outcomes (i.e. reading, writing, mathematics, science and general attainment outcomes) for students with Down syndrome. This study reports on the findings from a larger pre‐registered systematic review of targeted interventions for students wi...

Childhood stunting is associated with delayed developmental trajectories. While the relationship between childhood stunting and cognitive development has been widely studied, the results remain inconsistent. This meta-analysis aims to synthesize existing research to clarity if there is any relationship and then examine in which cognitive sub-domain...

This systematic review and meta-analysis examined randomized controlled trials and quasi-experimental design studies targeting interventions to improve educational outcomes for students with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND). It identified 467 global studies with 2,891 outcomes, and 349 studies with 1,758 outcomes were included in t...

The prevalence of students with Special Education Needs and Disabilities (SEND) is rising, emphasising the importance of evidence-based interventions to support their educational progress. However, how educators use evidence to guide their intervention approaches, and the role of school context, remains unclear. Semi-structured interviews were cond...

Profiling the quality of early learning environments in low- and middle-income countries is challenging, but essential to ensure that all children have access to quality early childhood education and care (Global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Target 4.2). We report a study which assessed the early learning environments of a sample of 36 Ang...

Introduction: Previous systematic reviews have not focused on what targeted interventions help to raise educational outcomes (i.e., reading, writing, mathematics, science and general attainment outcomes) for students with Down syndrome. We examined studies that have used a randomised controlled trial (RCT) or quasi-experimental design (QED) to eval...

Background: Oral language competence provides children with an essential foundation for academic achievement and emotional well-being, yet many children enter school with delayed language and those living in economically disadvantaged areas are at disproportionate risk of experiencing language difficulties. A tiered system, offering high-quality la...

Introduction Childhood stunting is associated with poorer child health, growth and development including diminished cognitive abilities. Mapping out the links between child stunting and Early Childhood Education and Development is critical to increasing understanding of the causes and effects of childhood stunting, and for programme and policy deve...

Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic has offset some of the gains achieved in global health, particularly in relation to maternal, child health and nutrition. As pregnancy is a period of plasticity where insults acting on maternal environment have far-reaching consequences, the pandemic has had a significant impact on prenatal outcomes, intrauterine...

The ability to engage with ease in collaborative conversation is critical for child well-being and development. While key underpinning skills are biologically enabled, children require appropriate scaffolding and practice opportunities to develop proficient social conversational ability. Teaching conversation skills is a statutory requirement of th...

This report describes a RCT of Talking Time© in areas of significant social disadvantage. Talking Time© is a universal intervention targeting the oral language skills of children aged between 3 to 5 years of age. The intervention is designed to support early years’ practitioners to deliver a programme of engaging structured activities to children i...

This chapter considers the proximal and distal skills which impact on children’s developing writing competencies. We examine three dimensions: text-based factors, child-based factors, and the role of writing instruction in supporting struggling writers. Text-based factors include writing levels (word sentence and discourse), writing genre, and the...

Introduction Representations activated during handwriting production code information on morphological structure and reflect decomposition of the root and suffix. Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) have significant difficulties in spelling morphologically complex words, but previous research has not sought evidence for a morphologi...

Individual differences in children’s social communication have been shown to mediate the relationship between poor vocabulary or grammar and behavioural difficulties. Moreover, there is increasing evidence that social communication skills predict difficulties with peers over and above vocabulary and grammar scores. The essential social communicativ...

Abstract School classrooms within the EU are multilingual learning environments. The diversity of pupils in classrooms raises significant challenges for teachers, but to date, there are no data from large-scale surveys that compare views within and across European countries. A bespoke questionnaire was designed to examine views of current classroom...

Aim Writing is key to academic success and job opportunities later in life. Nevertheless, every year children leave primary school struggling to write and few assessments enable schools to reliably identify and target weaknesses in children’s writing. This study explored curriculum-based measures of writing (CBM-W) for assessing writing in primary...

Developing writing skills is a central part of the education curriculum in many countries, yet numerous children have difculties in producing written texts. To our knowledge there is no systematic study examining the ways in which Greek teachers adapt their writing instruction strategies to accommodate the children’s needs. The aim of the present...

Purpose This study offers the first description of misspellings across elementary school using the Phonological, Orthographic and Morphological Assessment of Spelling (POMAS), a linguistic framework based on Triple Word Form theory, adapted for French (POMAS-FR). It aims to test the “universality” of POMAS and its suitability to track development i...

Domain-specific observational tools that use valid and objectively measurable items are key to supporting improvement and developing understanding of practice in early years classrooms. The ‘Emergent Literacy and Language Early Childhood Checklist for Teachers’ (ELLECCT) aims to address a current gap in the tools that are available to capture behav...

Children from areas of social disadvantage experience delays in their language development, with significant numbers of children entering nursery classes with limited oral language skills. These difficulties are exacerbated when a child’s home language is not the language of instruction. This causes challenges for early years practitioners in devel...

There has been a resurgence in concern about the levels of pupils’ oral language skills at school entry. To support and develop these skills effectively an understanding of the key components of oral language is required. We examined the oral language skills of monolingual children in Reception (MAge = 57.9 months; n = 126) and Year 1 (MAge = 69.07...

This chapter examines the assessment of writing as writers move from the initial stages of learning to write (novices) to becoming more proficient writers. Challenges in what to assess and how writing can be assessed are examined. Both writing product and process measures are considered and the impact of proximal and distal factors on writing outli...

Children who struggle with writing are a heterogeneous group and may experience difficulties in a range of domains, including spelling, reading, and oral language. These difficulties are reflected in their writing and may influence their responsiveness to writing interventions. The effectiveness of a targeted sentence-combining intervention to impr...

Purpose This scoping review aims to identify and analyze the nature of the spelling errors produced by children with developmental language disorder (DLD) across different orthographies. Building on a previous meta-analysis identifying the extent of the spelling difficulties of children with DLD, the review extends our understanding of the nature o...

Executive functions are a set of cognitive processes we use to act on information, manage resources, and plan and monitor our own behaviour, all with the aim of achieving an end goal. These are skills that develop from infancy. While ‘reading’ has been extensively studied in psychology literature, ‘writing’ has been somewhat neglected, despite a la...

Englicious is an approach to grammar teaching underpinned by linguistics research that is supported by an extensive set of website resources (www.englicious.org). Englicious combines formal grammar teaching, that is specified in England’s national curriculum, with emphasis on how this grammar links with some of the processes of writing. The approac...

The Sustainable Development Goals mandate that by 2030, all children should have access to quality early child development opportunities, healthcare and pre-primary education. Yet validated measures of ECD in low and middle income countries (LMICs) are rare. To address this gap, a Systematic Review (SR) of measures available to profile the developm...

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-021-00539-z

Oral language skills underpin children’s educational success and enhance positive life outcomes. Yet, significant numbers of children struggle to develop competence in speaking and listening, especially those from areas of high economic deprivation. A tiered intervention model, graduating the level of provision in line with levels of need, has been...

School classrooms within the EU are multilingual learning environments. The diversity of pupils in classrooms raises significant challenges for teachers, but to date, there are no data from large-scale surveys that compare views within and across European countries. A bespoke questionnaire was designed to examine views of current classroom learning...

School classrooms within the EU are multilingual learning environments. The diversity of pupils in classrooms raises significant challenges for teachers, but to date, there are no data from large-scale surveys that compare views within and across European countries. A bespoke questionnaire was designed to examine views of current classroom learning...

Pdf of ideas and activities for supporting language development in preschool children. Also available online: https://sway.office.com/mpk2tWuDXFfDECmV?ref=Link

Language problems are a risk factor for externalizing problems, but the developmental path remains unclear. Emotional competence may mediate the relationship, especially when externalizing problems are reactive in nature, such as in Oppositional Deviant Disorder (ODD) and reactive aggression. We examined the development of reactive and proactive ex...

Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) often struggle learning to spell. However, it is still unclear where their spelling difficulties lie, and whether they reflect on-going difficulties with specific linguistic domains. It is also unclear whether the spelling profiles of these children vary in different orthographies. The present stu...

Learning to write effectively is key for learning and participation in social communities. In English, transcription skills (handwriting and spelling) constrain written production at the early stages of learning to write. The effect of transcription diminishes with age, when reading skills enhance text production. Less is known about how transcript...

Multilingualism is a major feature of European schools. The current study examines Danish data regarding teachers’ behaviours, beliefs and attitudes about multilingualism. Data were collected using the Multilingual Classroom Questionnaire (MCQ) devised by the European Literacy Network. Sixty-one participants contributed to the Danish sample (85% fe...

The report of the Warnock Committee “Special Educational Needs,” published in 1978, provided the first comprehensive review of special educational needs (SEN) in England and the basis for subsequent legislation, from the Education Act 1981 to the recent Children and Families Act 2014. The Warnock Report has been highly influential with respect to t...

Verb use and the production of verb argument structure in the written texts of children in elementary school is a key stepping stone towards academic writing success that has remained relatively unexplored and is a notable gap in our understanding of writing development. To evaluate the role of verbs in the written narrative texts of children, we c...

A Europa é uma realidade linguística diversa e heterogénea que enfrenta o desafio de educar uma população cada vez mais multicultural e multilingue. Os professores de língua(s) são atores nesta realidade, promovendo o multilinguismo e integrando a diversidade. Portugal não foge ao paradigma do multilinguismo e as escolas e professores portugueses v...

This GWRP will evaluate the effectiveness of the manualised Englicious approach to teaching grammar with the aim of improving pupils’ writing. Englicious is an innovative web-based approach to grammar teaching. It has not yet been subject to an experimental trial of its effectiveness. We propose a randomised controlled efficacy trial as the most ro...

Europe is a diverse and heterogeneous linguistic community that faces the challenge of educating an increasingly multicultural and multilingual population. Language teachers are key players on this regard as they may foster multilingualism and contribute to students’ inclusion in their classrooms. Portugal is no exception and Portuguese schools and...

The nature of ‘Teacher talk’ is likely to have a considerable bearing on the child’s learning but measuring the communication environment in the classroom can present challenges. One tool which does this is the Communication Supporting Classroom Observation Tool (CSCOT). Initial use suggested that it was valid and reliably used by specialists (psyc...

Planning plays an important role in the production of written texts. Little is known about why children plan and the plans they create when they are not explicitly instructed. This study explores the plans that elementary school children in Years 1, 3, and 5 create before writing a text. We compared performance of children educated in Catalan and i...

Background and aims There is a paucity of literature investigating health-related quality of life in neurodevelopmental populations including children with developmental language disorders and children with autism spectrum disorder. Health-related quality of life in these two groups remains poorly understood. Furthermore, studies have typically rel...

A central conceptual change in the Warnock report, the first type report of a UK government committee on the education of children and young people with all types of special educational needs (Department for Education and Science, 1978), was the shift from categorization of children and young people by handicap to the identification of individuals'...

An investigation has been carried out to examine the impact of different levels of classroom noise on adolescents’ performance on reading and vocabulary-learning tasks. A total of 976 English high school pupils (564 aged 11 to 13 years and 412 aged 14 to 16 years) completed reading tasks on laptop computers while exposed to different levels of clas...

The association between empathy and friendship quality in children and adolescents is well established, but longitudinal studies are lacking. Because social interactions typically involve language, these relations might be moderated by children's communication problems. The current study examined the interrelation of friendship quality (positive an...

Conceptualising the difficulties experienced by struggling writers in middle elementary school is of both theoretical and practical importance. To further our understanding of the problems experienced by struggling writers we aimed to identify the writing measure which best discriminated struggling writers from their peers, and the proximal and dis...

This comprehensive, 51-chapter handbook presents recent advances in the expression, etiology, assessment, and treatment of child and adolescent psychiatric disorders and related problems from a developmental psychopathology perspective. Following a broad conceptual overview of this area of clinical research and practice, assessment and treatment pr...

Well, the speech–language therapist comes to talk to us occasionally, but they don't help children anymore. (head teacher response to the governing body when asked about the provision for children with language deficits within a mainstream primary school)

Aims The role of educational psychologists (EPs) in relation to Speech, Language and Communication Needs (SLCN) has been relatively unexplored and when studies have targeted the role of EPs, their role has been at best peripheral. This paper aims to show how the re-alignment of EP practice could be made through exploring the different perspectives...

In previous studies, children with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have been found to have more difficulties with processing speed, working memory, and attentional tasks. The present study aimed to compare the cognitive variables (working memory and processing speed) and the attentional profiles of a sample of students with and with...

3D virtual glasses of AULA Nesplora test. The 3d virtual glasses allows to obtain a motor activity indicator to value the possible hyperactivity problems. (JPG)

Virtual classroom provided by AULA Nesplora test. Virtual classroom environment where the patient does the tasks which are explained by a virtual teacher. (TIF)

Database used for the present study. (SAV)

Age effect on AULA Nesplora variables. (TIF)

Purpose Victimization is a common problem for many children but is exacerbated for children with a developmental language disorder (DLD). However, the severity of communication problems does not explain their victimization rates. In children without DLD, difficulties with emotional competence are a risk factor for victimization and also increase th...

Background Depressive symptoms are common in children with developmental language disorder (DLD). However, risk and protective factors contributing to these problems are currently underspecified. Aims The current longitudinal study examined the role of emotion‐regulation (ER) strategies in the severity of depressive symptoms in children with and w...

Spelling difficulties often occur in children with developmental language disorder (DLD), the extent and drivers of these difficulties are underspecified. Meta-analyses were conducted to address this gap. We identified child-based factors (age, language spoken, profile of difficulties) and task-based factors (text production or dictation) as potent...

Background Oral language skills are the foundation for success at school and in employment. A significant minority of children experience difficulties in the acquisition of oral language resulting in speech and language needs (SLN). There are disjunctures between clinical studies using standardised assessment and educational studies. The current st...

It has been known for many years that poor acoustic conditions in classrooms leading to high noise levels and poor speech intelligibility cause annoyance to pupils and teachers and affect the academic performance of pupils. Much of the previous research concerning the impact of noise and poor acoustics on pupils has involved children in primary sch...

This report reviews assessments for children under 6 in the UK for language literacy, numeracy and social emotional development. It also includes information about tools for assessing the home and early years environment

We completed a systematic search of measures to assess language, literacy, numeracy, and socialemotional development for children up to the age of six. These included individual assessments of children’s competencies in these areas and assessments of the children’s home and early years environment. A review of the relevant competencies for these fo...

Appendix S2. Background document, with the statements for round 2.

Appendix S1. Background document, with the statements for round 1.

Appendix S4. Report showing quantitative and qualitative responses to Round 1 statements.

Appendix S3. Relationship between Round 2 statements and final statements reported in Results section.

Appendix S5. Report showing quantitative and qualitative responses to Round 2 statements.

Teachers and speech and language therapists (SLTs) share concern about children’s speech, language, and communication needs (SLCNs) but they have different foci because of their professional roles. Contemporary research has identified the challenges to schools when meeting the needs of children with SLCN, highlighted terminological controversies, a...

Background: Paediatric SLT roles often involve planning individualised intervention for specific children (provided directly by SLTs or indirectly through non-SLTs), working collaboratively with families and education staff and providing advice and training. A tiered approach to service delivery is currently recommended, whereby services become inc...

Background: Paediatric SLT roles often involve planning individualised intervention for specific children (provided directly by SLTs or indirectly through non-SLTs), working collaboratively with families and education staff and providing advice and training. A tiered approach to service delivery is currently recommended, whereby services become inc...

Background Paediatric speech and language therapist (SLT) roles often involve planning individualized intervention for specific children, working collaboratively with families and education staff, providing advice, training and coaching and raising awareness. A tiered approach to service delivery is currently recommended whereby services become inc...

Delayed or impaired language development is a common developmental concern, yet there is little agreement about the criteria used to identify and classify language impairments in children. Children's language difficulties are at the interface between education, medicine and the allied professions, who may all adopt different approaches to conceptua...