Supporting the development of children’s oral language is crucial since it underpins development of literacy skills in reading and writing. The development of oral language skills is also of concern for children’s socio-emotional well-being. Children who struggle with their oral language may have speech, language and communication needs (SLCN). All children, and specifically children with SLCN, need many opportunities to practice oral language in classroom activities. The overall aim of the thesis was to explore and gain insights of an intervention aiming to support children’s verbal participation in the classroom. Specifically the verbal participation of children with SLCN was explored.

The participants were three teachers and children (N = 36, ~ 50 % with SLCN) in second-grade primary school. Two teachers followed a professional development (PD) and the third was a comparison teacher. The intervention was a small-scale 10-week individual PD designed to coach the teachers in using five communication-supporting strategies from The Communication Supporting Classroom Observation Tool (CSCOT; Dockrell et al., 2015) during verbal interactions. Total time of the PD was 270 minutes per teacher, with four individual coaching sessions of 60–90 minutes.

Study I used a case study design to explore the teachers’ use of five communication-supporting strategies, following the PD. The teachers’ amount of talk in relation to the children was also explored. Study II was an extended analysis from Study I, with the same participating teachers following the PD, and the same children. Framed by a Response to intervention model Tier 2, Study II used a pre- post-, and follow-up design to explore the children’s expressive language productivity in relation to the teachers’ strategy use during structured small-group conversations (SGCs). In the SGCs, the teachers read a text aloud and discussed it with the children. Study III shed light on the teacher-child interactions, and how the use of the five targeted strategies functioned in practice. Study I and III aimed to describe the PD teachers’ own experiences of using the strategies in the classroom.

Quantitative data from video recorded observations during the SGCs indicated that although the intervention teachers increased the use of some strategies during the intervention, these patterns were not maintained at the follow-up. The comparison teacher also used the strategies spontaneously. The children’s opportunities to participate verbally seemed suppressed when the teachers used the strategies frequently. A tentative conclusion was that the children with SLCN may benefit when the teachers balanced their strategy use to let the children talk during the SGCs. Qualitative data of the intervention teachers’ descriptions of strategy use both confirmed and disagreed with the quantitative data.

In sum, the thesis contributes to knowledge of how the five communication-supporting strategies operate in practice in relation to teacher and child outcomes. Altogether, the findings suggest that in developing the PD, additional strategies should be considered, which might support teachers in balancing strategy use and bringing the children to talk. Also, the strategies may have different impact on the children’s language development. In the thesis, a detailed analysis of the teachers’ strategy use was conducted, that could contribute to further operationalizing the strategies, which may be useful for research and practice.