Evaluating the effectiveness of the Kernvisie Method in supporting children with special educational needs

This study aimed at examining the effectiveness of the Kernvisie Method (KVM) that was developed to help students with special educational needs. The intervention assumes that these children think in a different way and that this thinking style needs to be addressed by a different kind of instruction, namely through visualizations of the learning content. We predicted that KVM children would show a significantly higher achievement gain in spelling ability than average students. In addition, we compared the achievement growth in the second half of the school year for children starting with the KVM in the first and in the second term. Besides, we examined gender differences in the effectiveness of the intervention. Furthermore, we expected children preferring to think visually to benefit higher than those preferring to think kinesthetically, and dyslexic children to gain more than non-dyslexics. Existing CITO spelling test scores of nineteen elementary school children (six second graders, six fourth graders, and seven fifth graders) were used to analyze the development of spelling skills during the intervention. T-tests revealed that second grade participants showed a significantly higher growth in spelling ability than average students, while we found no effects for fourth and fifth grade students. Analyses of Variance (ANOVAs) did not reveal differential effects of the method based on KVM starting point, gender, preferred thinking style, and dyslexia diagnosis. Directions for future research as well as limitations of the study and the intervention are discussed.