Promoting social-emotional skills in children with reading difficulties
As part of the cooperative project "Lubo-LRS", a project team led by Barbara Gasteiger-Klicpera from the University of Graz is developing a preventive program for students with reading difficulties to promote social-emotional skills.
Reading and spelling difficulties are among the most common learning disorders. They often occur together with social-emotional problems. Students affected by these problems are among the most vulnerable groups in the education system. They are more likely than other students to drop out of school or skip school altogether.
Lubo-LRS
The "Lubo-LRS" project, on which the University of Graz, the University of Cologne, and the Intercantonal University of Applied Sciences Zurich are collaborating, aims to counteract this. The project started in July 2021 and will run until 2024, with funding from the Boll Foundation.
As part of "Lubo-LRS," the researchers involved developed a social-emotional training program for the affected students. This is based on the already established prevention program "Lubo from Space!" developed by Clemens Hillenbrand and his team at the University of Oldenburg.
The program helps students with reading difficulties in the second grade to develop problem-solving skills, strategies for emotion regulation, and self-efficacy. Specifically, it addresses challenges that students may face at school that they experience as distressing.
Supplementary module
In a first step, the project team developed "Lubo-Les," a supplementary module to "Lubo from Space!". Based on a comprehensive literature review and interviews with dyslexia therapists, they identified situations that are challenging for students with reading difficulties - such as certain tasks or contact with peers or with the teacher. They used these situations as a basis for developing the supplementary module.
In a second step, they tested the effectiveness of the supplementary module in a randomized trial-control group study with four groups and three measurement time points, consisting of a pretest, a posttest, and a follow-up. A total of about 1200 students participated in the screening at the end of the first grade. About 90 students each - 30 each in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland - were finally part of the intervention study. Depending on the group to which they belonged, the students received reading training and/or training in social-emotional skills at their school in the school year of 2022/23.
Finally, in a third step, the results and findings will now be made known to the public. The supplementary module will be published freely accessible.
Follow-up project: Study for participation
In order to continue the study successfully, the project leader Barbara Gasteiger-Klicpera from the Institute for Educational Research and Pedagogy at the University of Graz and her project collaborators are still looking for elementary schools from Graz that would like to participate in the follow-up project. In this follow-up project, the materials will be revised and tailored to the specific needs on site.
