Effect of Application of a Phonological Remediation Program With Students in Social Vulnerability

In Brazil there is a high prevalence of learning difficulties, especially in the initial phase of learning to read and write. This number is higher in children in socially vulnerable conditions and was certainly worsened by the Covid-19 Pandemic. For this reason, the objective of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of applying a phonological remediation program to socially vulnerable children. The study was carried out in a philanthropic institution that assisted socially vulnerable children after school. 102 children aged between 5 and 11 years old, enrolled between the 1st and 5th year of elementary school I, participated in the study. The initial assessment was carried out using the Cognitive Linguistic Assessment Protocol and the School Performance Test-II. Next, 10 children with the lowest performances were selected to form the group that would receive the educational intervention, called the study group - GE. Another 10 students with the best performance were selected to form a monitoring group, called - GA. Only the EG received the intervention, but both groups were reassessed at the end of the intervention, using the same instruments as the first assessment. The results showed that students in general had low academic performance, possibly due to their vulnerable condition and also the post-pandemic context. The comparative analysis of both GE and GA, before and after intervention, showed that there were significant advances, mainly in the writing and reading measures of the two groups, possibly due to the intervention carried out in the present study, in the case of GE, and also the teaching received at school, in the case of both groups. A comparison between the groups revealed that the GA maintained a better performance when compared to the GE, even after the intervention carried out by the research. It is concluded that, despite methodological limitations, the response to the intervention in the GE was positive, making it necessary to develop and test new models to promote learning in schoolchildren in unfavorable socioeconomic contexts.