Public Defence: Randi Karine Bakken

Randi Karine Bakken is defending her dissertation for the degree philosophiae doctor (PhD) at the University of South-Eastern Norway.

The doctoral work has been carried out at the Faculty of Humanities, Sports, and Educational Science 

You are invited to follow the trial lecture and the public defence.

• Link to dissertation will be updated.

Summary

The ability to read and write can be a key to social interaction, education, employment, and a more independent life – also for students with disorders of intellectual development (DID). A new doctoral dissertation explores how these students can be supported in developing reading and writing skills, highlighting both opportunities and challenges in current practices.

Students with DID often face substantial challenges when learning written language. International research has shown that education for this group of students has often been characterized by simplified methods and a one-sided focus on recognizing whole words (logographic method). At the same time, recent intervention studies suggest that phonics-based methods, which strengthen letter knowledge and phonological skills, can also be effective for this group.

The dissertation addresses this research gap through two systematic reviews and meta-analyses of international intervention studies, as well as a national survey among teachers in Norwegian primary schools, grades 1–10. The findings show that students with DID can benefit from systematic, comprehensive, and multi-component reading interventions – that is, a combination of measures aimed at strengthening students' skills. These interventions often include phonological awareness, decoding, and sight-word reading, leading to improvements in reading both familiar and unfamiliar words.

Writing skills also showed significant progress. The students wrote more words and sentences, and the quality of their texts improved. The writing interventions examined were also often systematic, comprehensive, and multi-component, primarily targeting linguistic production, or encoding. Both the reading and writing interventions were adapted to students with DID and often included support for their cognitive and adaptive challenges.

The survey among teachers in Norwegian primary schools shows that many combine different reading and writing methods, such as synthetic and analytic phonics, and the logographic method. At the same time, the study highlights that teachers largely rely on teacher-made tests, learning resources, and materials. Digital tools such as tablets and computers are frequently used in reading and writing education, but fewer teachers report on the specific functions of the reading and writing technologies they use. Education is often organized individually outside the classroom, and access to research-based and validated reading and writing resources is limited.

The dissertation underscores the need for more research and development of assessment tools and learning resources for reading and writing that are tailored to students with DID – in close collaboration with teachers and with easy accessibility for practitioners. The findings suggest that students’ reading and writing education is influenced by teachers’ individual competencies and access to resources rather than by research-based adaptations. This may pose a risk that students with DID do not receive a quality-assured education in reading and writing in today’s Norwegian schools.

The findings of the dissertation provide an important knowledge base that can help inform planning and decision-making in educational practice and policy.