Journal of Learning Disabilities最新文献

Schools conduct comprehensive psychoeducational evaluations to identify students with specific learning disabilities (SLDs) and determine whether they qualify for special education services. This decision-making process is complex and research has documented many factors influencing SLD identification decisions. One such factor may be decision-makers' beliefs about the underlying causes of SLD, including intrinsic and extrinsic factors. However, no studies to date have examined the underlying factor structure of the responses to prompts about the causes of SLD from intrinsic and extrinsic perspectives. This study was conducted with a sample of 521 U.S. school psychologists as part of a larger study examining decision-making during SLD identification. Using confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) to compare two theoretically plausible models, results suggested that a single latent factor best captured variability in responses to these prompts. Implications for assessing beliefs and how they impact the psychoeducational assessment process to identify SLDs are discussed, along with areas for future research.

Rate of change (i.e., slope) is a critical mathematics concept for success in everyday life, academics, and professional careers. Students with or at risk of learning disabilities struggle with solving rate-of-change problems, especially word problems. Interventions that incorporate representations and problem-solving strategies are effective for improving the word problem-solving performance of students with disabilities. This multiple-probe, multiple-baseline, single-case design study evaluated the effects of an intervention that included an integrated, concrete-representational-abstract teaching framework with an embedded problem-solving strategy (POD Check) on students' rate-of-change word problem-solving performance. The intervention was delivered virtually via video conferencing technology. Four middle- and high-school students with or at risk of mathematics learning disabilities in the U.S. Intermountain West region participated in the intervention. Results indicate evidence of a functional relation between the intervention and students' word problem-solving performance, and effects were maintained 2-4 weeks after the intervention. The findings of this study provide implications for mathematics intervention research and practice for students with learning disabilities.

Developing both conceptual and procedural knowledge is important for students' mathematics competence. This study examined whether U.S. Grade 9 general education mathematics teachers' self-reported use of concept-focused instruction (CFI) and procedure-focused instruction (PFI) were associated differently with ninth graders' algebra achievement after 2.5 years, depending on students' mathematics difficulty (MD) status. Data for this study were drawn from the High School Longitudinal Study for the years 2009-2010 and 2011-2012 (N = 19,104). Multiple regression analyses indicated that students with MD who participated in Grade 9 mathematics classrooms where teachers self-reported the use of less CFI and more PFI were more positively associated with having higher algebra achievement after 2.5 years. Conversely, students without MD in classrooms where mathematics teachers self-reported the use of more CFI and less PFI were positively associated with having higher algebra achievement after 2.5 years. However, this study's findings do not suggest that teachers should disregard CFI and provide only PFI when teaching students with MD. Because the data set did not include any variable to discover whether teachers provided sufficient support (i.e., evidence-based practices) for students with MD, who have more constraints in their cognitive skills compared to students without MD, to benefit from CFI, the findings of this study should be interpreted cautiously. Directions for future research and practical implications are discussed.

The long-term negative consequences of learning difficulties have been acknowledged. Nonetheless, research is still scarce regarding the prediction of adolescent difficulties in reading and arithmetic skills. The present study examines at which age phase and with what kind of constellation of parent- and child-related factors can adolescent difficulties in arithmetic and/or reading fluency be successfully predicted. A sample of Finnish children (N = 941) was followed from the onset of kindergarten (at age 6) through adolescence (ages 13-16). Children's cognitive skills were assessed in kindergarten, and arithmetic and reading fluency were examined in Grades 2, 4, 6, 7, and 9. Parents' self-report data were collected on their own learning difficulties and educational level. Scoring below the 16th percentile in both Grades 7 and 9 was set as the criterion for dysfluency either in reading (n = 87, 9.2%) or arithmetic (n = 84, 8.9%). Adolescent dysfluency in both domains was moderately predicted by parental measures and kindergarten cognitive skills. Although adding school-age fluency measures clearly increased both the predictability and specificity of models up to Grade 4 for both skills, knowledge of letters' names, counting, and visuospatial skills remained unique predictors of dysfluency in adolescence.

Specific learning and attention difficulties are often first identified in childhood, but they can cause lifelong academic and occupational challenges. We explored the prevalence of these difficulties and the representation of sex and ethnicity amongst all first-year students in United Kingdom (UK) higher education (HE) across 12 years-almost 5.7 million students-and compared course preferences and university destinations of those with and without difficulties. Students declaring learning/attention difficulties were more likely to be White or of Mixed ethnicity and least likely to be Asian. They were more likely to attend specialist HE institutions or newer universities, and more likely to study courses in creative arts and design, agriculture and architecture than law, languages, computer science, and mathematical sciences. The number of students declaring difficulties has increased year on year, in actual terms and as a proportion of the student body, suggesting that efforts to increase diversity and inclusion have been successful. However, differences remain between students with and without learning/attention difficulties in terms of ethnicity, subjects studied, and HE institutions attended, so more needs to be done to identify and address reasons for this. While this paper reports data from UK students, it addresses an international question and invites similar explorations of other national datasets.