Abstract
This study was designed to assess and describe the neurodevelopmental status of Grade 1 learners in a rural school in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa. The aim of the study was to investigate and describe the neurodevelopmental status of the research participants. If any developmental delays were discovered, these would be described and contextualised. Gaining an objective perspective into the neurodevelopmental status of Grade 1 learners in a rural school may serve to illuminate the degree to which neurodevelopmental delays, if present, may be cited as a potential contributing factor to the reported poor scholastic performance of Grade 1 learners (as taken up and reported in the benchmark Annual National Assessment (ANA) results spanning from 2011 to 2014). In addition, it may serve to inform and highlight the need for early screening, identification, assessment and support for learners in the Foundation Phase. While there are a multitude of factors potentially impacting on the scholastic performance of learners in the early grades, the researcher wanted to rule in, or rule out, neurodevelopmental delays as a potentially significant contributing factor to scholastic difficulties of learners in these grades. Gaining such perspective is deemed to have the potential to contribute significantly to understanding the phenomenon of significantly poor scholastic performance of learners in the early grades of the Foundation Phase. Both in his capacity as a practising psychologist and lecturer in Early Childhood Development, the researcher was most interested in investigating the possibility of developmental delays as a contributing factor in the reported unfavourable scholastic performance of foundation phase learners. This study is decidedly not deemed to be a correlational investigation, but rather as an exploratory, investigative point of departure towards understanding the phenomenon under study. The measure of assessment employed to undertake this research had to comply, in particular, with the criteria for use on population groups within the South African context, rendering it culturally fair and culture free. Not many such developmental assessment measures exist, and those which do, do not comply with the criteria cited. To overcome this dilemma, the researcher investigated and compared the most prominent measures of developmental assessment, and viii selected the assessment measure most applicable and relevant within the South African context. Such a measure of neurodevelopmental assessment is the Griffiths Scales of Mental Development (Extended Revised) (GSMD-ER), which the researcher elected to employ in the current study. The study was not meant to yield experimental results – rather, it had as its objective to simply assess and describe the neurodevelopmental status of the research participants and to highlight recurrent themes or functional areas of developmental delays presenting within the sample group, where such occurred. The researcher investigated the research participants’ neurodevelopmental status across the functional domains of the Griffiths Scales of Mental Development (Extended Revised), and describing the assessed profiles of functioning.
D.Ed. (Educational Psychology)