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The Netherlands visits Bergen University
The first week of December 2018 I travelled to Bergen, Norway to visit Dr. Jan de Jong and Dr. Arve Asbjørnsen at the department of Biological and Medical Psychology, University of Bergen. The goal of this Short Term Scientific Mission (STSM) was to work on a review of the Dutch and Flemish national (grey) literature on intervention for children with developmental language disorder (DLD).
According to Paez (2017) grey literature, or evidence not published in commercial publications, can make important contributions to a systematic review. It can include, among others, academic papers, including theses and dissertations, research and committee reports, government reports, conference papers, and ongoing research. It may provide data not found within commercially published literature, providing an important forum for disseminating studies with null or negative results that might not otherwise be disseminated. We were especially interested in the national unindexed journals from professional organizations that are only available to members, master theses and PhD dissertations.
In preparation for my STSM visit to Bergen, articles that were possibly suitable were collected beforehand from several Dutch and Flemish journals of the national SLT and special education associations (Siméa). I am a member of both Siméa and the Nederlandse Vereniging voor Logopedie (NVLF), the Dutch SLT organization, so I was able to access these journals. The Vlaamse Vereniging voor Logopedie (VVL), the Flemish organization for SLTs, granted me access to their online journal for one month. In addition, we also screened the open access online Dutch speech-language pathology journal SSTP (Stem- Spraak- en Taalpathologie), and the journal for pedagogues Tijdschrift voor Orthopedagogiek. We hand-searched these journals from the last 10 years, so all editions between 2008 and 2018. Furthermore, we searched Dutch and Flemish university repositories containing master and PhD theses and dissertations for relevant entries concerning intervention studies on children with DLD.
I also gave a talk during the lab research seminar of the department on the development and evaluation of the MetaTaal programme, a metalinguistic and multimodal intervention for complex sentences. The talk was well attended and also included visitors from the linguistic department. During the discussion I got useful advice on the construction of a digital version of this metalinguistic training programme for morphosyntax that we are currently developing at the HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht. I also got to meet some of Jan’s and Arve’s colleagues and interact with them during group seminars and informal settings. There we could exchange our ideas on service provision in our countries, talk about our research in children with DLD and the training of SLTs.
My week was not completely devoted to work. One fine day (the only day without rain) we climbed one of Bergen’s mountains (Bergen means mountains, both in Norwegian and Dutch) and had great views of the city and fjords. I also got the chance to visit the KODE museum that hosts one of the world’s finest collections of art by Edvard Munch.
Jan and I had a very productive week together. We still have to find some time to finish our review and publish it in the Dutch and Flemish national journals for SLTs. I am very grateful to COST and the University of Bergen for this opportunity.
Last modified: Thu, 03 Oct 2019 14:03:43 BST