Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is often linked with difficulties in triadic interaction or joint attention. This paper investigated the communicative competencies that children with ASD might have in these skills. We report findings from a pilot case study that focused on a school-aged child with ASD who interacted with his adult co-participants in various technology-enhanced contexts. The primary data consisted of video recordings that were analysed utilising mixed methods. Focusing on behaviours that were realised via the use of eye-gaze, we wanted to discover whether they would differ according to context. The results of this study show that the use of eye-gaze differed in the contexts studied. The communicative competence was revealed when the child’s behaviours were not investigated in isolation but rather in relation to the context of their occurrence. This paper discusses the implications of the described context-situated view of competence and suggests widening the approaches of studies of ASD. ... [more]

This case study describes services for students with disabilities at Karuna Home in Bylakuppe, Karnataka, India, a residential facility established to address the needs of individuals whose parents are primarily Tibetan immigrants. Interview, observation, and document review data collected over three months were used to describe and explain sociocultural and educational aspects of the school. Findings indicate that service providers embrace Tibetan Buddhist beliefs about individual worth and charitable service that can benefit the children and their caregivers in this life and the next, and that karma and other factors play roles in disability. Areas of concern and needed professional development are described, including effective assessment of academic and behavioral needs, improved planning and instruction using data-based objectives, and reliable monitoring of student progress toward intended learning and behavioral outcomes. Study findings can inform others who endeavor to provide similar services to individuals with disabilities in small or unique populations. ... [more]

The aim of the present study was to investigate and compare the effectiveness of family, child, and family-child based intervention on the rate of ADHD symptoms in third grade students. The population for this study was all of students with ADHD diagnoses in the city of Isfahan, Iran. The multistage random sampling method was used to select the 60 subjects included in this study. The subjects were randomly assigned into four groups, including three experimental and one control groups (each group consisted of 15 students). The children had been diagnosed by clinicians as having ADHD. In order to verify this diagnosis, Conner’s parental rating scale was used at baseline to confirm that children had ADHD. The results of the post test indicated a significant difference between the four groups. The results showed that the family-child based intervention was the most effective method to decrease students’ ADHD symptoms. ... [more]

This study examines the concept of inclusion and the degree to which it is being practiced in Swedish municipality schools and tries to draw some conclusions about the nature of pedagogy practiced in Sweden. This is a qualitative case study where primary data are collected from only five facilitators of children of special needs in one school in Sweden. Data were collected with an open-ended questionnaire, the variations in their responses are considered valuable in order to get a more accurate and comprehensive understanding of the phenomena under study. Perceptions of the respondents indicate that they were participating in both organizational and pedagogic differentiation. The administrators were more vocal about the value of the segregated education. Integration was perceived as being the ideal because it made it possible to both compensate the child as well as facilitate their involvement in the general class room. Inclusion was seen as a higher form of integration and was associated with capital intensive specialized equipment and materials. Respondents feared that children with special needs would not be able to cope with the general curriculum in an inclusive educational situation. I conclude in this study that every fifth student in the middle school in Sweden is probably in need of differentiated activities, and there is a need for another form of teaching than what is being currently practiced in Sweden. ... [more]

Many factors that may affect personal teaching efficacy (PTE) of special education teachers have been discovered. However, little is known about the relationship between character strengths (CS) and PTE in them. This study aimed to investigate CS in relation to PTE in Korean special education teachers. Character Strengths Test-Short Form (CST-SF) and Teacher Efficacy Scale-Personal (TES-P), respectively, assessed the CS and PTE of 111 Korean special education teachers. Results showed that four dimensions of the CST-SF (interpersonal, restraint, intellectual, and theological strengths) were significantly related to PTE, indicating that teachers with high CS were likely to experience greater PTE. Regression analysis indicated that the areas of interpersonal and restraint strengths significantly predicted PTE. The results have implications for the development of effective programs for special education teachers as well as the formalization of special education teacher recruitment policies. ... [more]

Preparing special education teachers to engage in transition services is a critical part of their preparation. This study examined how special education teachers perceive their preparation for transition services in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. A total of 350 teachers participated in this study. Data were analyzed using a two-way ANOVA. The findings indicated that teachers reported having negative perceptions of the transition service aspect of their preparation programs. No differences according to gender or educational background were observed. Implications and recommendations for teacher in-service and pre-service programs are discussed. ... [more]

There is an absence of research on test anxiety in students with disabilities although such testing is taken for granted among students without disabilities. This study investigated the test anxiety of the students in each of the two disability groups, those with vision impairments and those with intellectual disabilities who are placed in specialist and mainstream educational settings in South Australia. The Spielberger’s Test Anxiety questionnaire which measures two components, worry and emotionality and the total test anxiety was administered to 25 students with vision impairments and 20 students with intellectual disabilities. The findings indicated that among both groups of students, most had high scores in worry, emotionality and total test anxiety. However, students with vision impairments had slightly higher physically fearful symptoms (emotionality) in comparison to cognitive fears (worry) in a testing situation, while exactly the reverse was found for students with intellectual disabilities. The Welch two independent sample t-tests revealed that while there were no significant differences between female and male students with vision impairments, in the Total Test Anxiety, Worry and Emotionality components, the exactly opposite was found for students with intellectual disabilities. The female students with intellectual disabilities were found to be significantly higher than their male counterparts in the Total Test Anxiety, Worry and Emotionality. ... [more]

Following recent legislative initiatives in education requiring evidence-based practices, schools have implemented various instructional programs characterized as evidence-based. However, it is important to question whether these methods are truly effective. One example of a methodology currently promoted and used in schools is an educational kinesiology program called Brain Gym®. Brain Gym® is reported to improve various education related skills. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of Brain Gym® on academic engagement for children with developmental disabilities. In this study, Brain Gym® was compared to an alternate intervention, simple physical activity, which did not conform to Brain Gym® guidelines. Neither intervention produced consistently positive effects for academic engagement. Based on these findings, it is questionable whether Brain Gym® can successfully be used with children with developmental disabilities to improve engagement. These results can inform the decision-making process of selecting evidence-based practices in education. ... [more]

The purpose of the study was to examine the effectiveness of three remedial techniques to improve the spelling ability of students with learning disability. The three techniques, namely, TAK/v, visual orthographic method and listen, speak, read and write (LSRW) method were administered to three experimental groups, each having 13 students with learning disability. The students in the three groups differed in the kind of errors they made in spelling. TAK/v, group, visual orthographic group and LSRW group comprised of dyseidetic spellers, dysphonetic spellers and spellers with mixed errors respectively. The students in the sample had at least average intelligence, manifested specified traits of learning disability, had significant deficits in spelling skills and had no sensorial problems. The results indicated that all the three remedial techniques were significantly effective in ameliorating spelling deficits among students. ... [more]

Many international studies have examined the gross motor skills of children studying in special schools while local studies of such nature are limited. This study investigated the gross motor skills of children with Mild Learning Disabilities (MLD; n = 14, M age = 8.93 years, SD = .33) with the Test of Gross Motor Development-2 (TGMD-2, Ulrich, 2000). The TGMD-2 consists of 12 items equally divided into two subtests (locomotor and object control). The locomotor subtest includes run, gallop, hop, leap, horizontal jump and slide while the object control subtest includes strike a stationary ball, stationary dribble, kick, catch, overhand throw and underhand roll. The results revealed significant differences in 8 out of 12 test items: gallop, hop, leap, horizontal jump, slide, strike, dribble and roll at mastery level between children with MLD and TGMD-2 norm population. The authors suggest motor interventions for children with MLD to improve their gross motor skills. ... [more]