Family systems counseling is a powerful and beneficial counseling technique that has been effective in treating families of children with learning disabilities. Family counseling has been effective in many settings, but has not been explored as a school counselor intervention. This research is a qualitative study exploring school counselors' experiences and perceptions while providing family counseling to families of children with learning disabilities. This counseling included a minimum of eight counseling sessions per family. The results of this study indicate that school counselors must begin to incorporate family counseling into their regular school counseling programs in order to most effectively help children. If family counseling becomes a standard practice for school counselors, counselor education programs will need to incorporate family counseling courses into their school counseling program curricula. School counselors may also obtain family counseling training through workshops, consultation and clinical supervision. Findings from this study suggest that school systems may need to implement the following changes: 1) provide flexibility in scheduling that allows counselors to meet with families during evenings, Saturdays, and summer months, 2) arrange for accessibility of counselors to families requesting family services, 3) provide availability of counselors as 12-month employees in order to maintain a consistent family counseling program, 4) reduce the counselor-to-pupil ratio by hiring more school counselors, 5) redefine the counselor's role and job description to include providing more counseling services, specifically family counseling, 6) increase opportunities for training and clinical supervision in family counseling, 7) provide appropriate facilities for family counseling in the schools and 8) provide training of family systems for school administrators and personnel. The results of this study show that counselors may need to engage in public relations activities so that children and families may be better informed of the variety of counseling services available, including family counseling. Since school counselors spend much of their time working with children with learning disabilities and family counseling is necessary to bring about lasting changes in children and families, school counselors must work with family systems. The results of this study indicate that family counseling needs to be incorporated in school counseling programs. / Ph. D.

This study investigates the use of Indonesian gamelan with participants who have special needs or with special populations, and considers what the playing of gamelan music has to offer music therapy practice. The gamelan is an ensemble of instruments on which the traditional music of Indonesia is played, consisting of mainly tuned and un-tuned percussion instruments tuned to four, five or seven tone scales. Gamelan are being increasingly used for music activities with participants who have special needs, such as learning disabilities, mental health problems or sensory impairments, and with special populations, such as prisoners. Whilst aims are broadly educational, therapeutic benefits are also being noted. There is little research into the effectiveness of this use of gamelan; the therapeutic benefits have not been researched within the context of music therapy. As an experienced music therapist and gamelan musician, I considered that investigating the potential for using gamelan within music therapy would produce new knowledge that could extend the practice of music therapy. Various qualitative methods within a naturalistic paradigm were used to investigate current and past practice of gamelan playing with special needs groups and to identify the therapeutic benefits. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with gamelan tutors working in this area and a music therapy project using gamelan with a group of children who had learning difficulties was undertaken by the author. Using a thematic approach to the analysis of data, the key features of gamelan playing which have relevance for music therapy practice were identified. Gamelan playing was found to have a range of therapeutic benefits which can be used intentionally by a music therapist to address therapeutic aims. It was found firstly that the playing of traditional gamelan music can be used for specific therapeutic purposes and secondly, that the music and instruments can be adapted and used within various music therapy approaches and for participants with a range of disabilities. A set of guiding principles are also proposed for the use of this new music therapy practice.

The purpose of this study is to acquire knowledge about how interaction, participation and inclusion are affected by individual integration for three students in upper secondary education for pupils with learning disabilities. To be individually integrated means, in this case, that the students from compulsory school for children with learning disabilities are taking part in some of the programme-specific courses together with students from the regular upper secondary school. This study gets its inspiration from the ethnographic research approach, and uses passive observations together with interviews with students and their guardians as main methods to collect information. The school in question has not made any adjustments to make the programme-specific courses more adapted to the different needs, which is typical of integration. This study shows that the school presumes that the students with the help from the vocational teacher, but without any special needs educational help, themselves are to adapt to the conditions at the regular upper secondary school. This, together with the lack of special needs educational competence among the vocational teachers, led to a higher level of exclusion and an enhanced feeling of not being up to standard among the integrated students. The results also show that the integrated students maintain a strong wish to be included with the students attending the regular upper secondary school. However, the integrated students are only formally a part of the class, and the level of inclusion is dependent on how the regu- lar upper secondary school students behave and let them be a real part of the class. Similar to other studies about learning disabilities, this study also shows that the parents of the integrated students with learning disabilities tend to have a more positive appreciation of the social situation than both the regular upper secondary school students, as well as the integrat- ed ones. / Studiens syfte är att få kunskap om hur samspel, delaktighet och tillhörighet påverkas av individintegrering för tre elever inskrivna i gymnasiesärskolan. Att vara individintegrerad betyder i detta fall att eleverna från gymnasiesärskolan läser vissa karaktärskurser tillsammans med elever från ordinarie gymnasiet. Studien hämtar inspiration från den etnografiska forskningsansatsen och har passiva observationer samt intervjuer med elever och deras vårdnadshavare som huvudsaklig insamlingsmetod. Den aktuella skolan har inte gjort några anpassningar för att anpassa utbildningen till de varierande behov som är utmärkande för inkludering som princip. Denna studie visar att skolan förutsätter att eleverna med hjälp av yrkesläraren, men utan specialpedagogisk hjälp, själva ska anpassa sig efter de villkor som gäller på ordinarie gymnasiet. Detta, tillsammans med brister i den specialpedagogiska kompetensen bland yrkeslärarna, har istället bidragit till förstärkt utanförskap och en känsla av otillräcklighet hos de integrerade eleverna. Resultatet visar också att de integrerade eleverna har en stark önskan om att vara delaktiga med eleverna på ordinarie gymnasiet. Eleverna har dock endast en formell tillhörighet i klas- sen på ordinarie gymnasiet och är helt beroende av på vilket sätt övriga elever i klassen väljer att släppa in dem i klassgemenskapen. I linje med tidigare studier om funktionsnedsättningar, visar även denna studie att elevernas föräldrar tenderar att uppskatta den sociala situationen mer positivt än såväl elevernas klass- kamrater utan funktionsnedsättningar som eleverna själva.

The problem of this study was to determine the relationship between measures of intellectual functioning and adaptive behavior among learning disabled children. The purposes of this study were to analyze the factorial structure of intellectual functioning and adaptive behavior among learning disabled (LD) children and to determine whether or not these constructs were significantly interrelated for this population. Data for the study were obtained by the use of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children - Revised (WISC-R) and Zeitlin's Coping Inventory (CI). To facilitate the investigation, four research guestions were posed. The population for the study consisted of 160 LD students from Cooke County, Texas. Scaled scores from the WISC-R and CI were analyzed on 48 girls and 112 boys, ranging in age from 6-3 to 16-2 years. Statistical treatment included separate factor analyses of WISC-R and CI scaled scores, the analysis by canonical correlation of data combined from both tests to investigate the possibility of significant interrelatedness, an analysis of combined test data for principal factors, and an exposition of central tendency measures from both tests.

Metaphorlc competence of learning disabled and normally achieving fifth and seventh grade male children was Investigated. Four measures were made of metaphorlc abilities. The first task was a multiple choice written test to determine the rate of metaphorlc preference. Part two consisted of children developing metaphors. Part three and four required explanations of the meaning of preferred metaphors and produced metaphors.

No description available.

Individualized teaching in schools with children with learning disabilities is a prerequisite, in order to be able to convey knowledge and teaching in an educational and developing way. The purpose of this study is to explore how musical communication can be used in school's with children with learning disabilities in different ways and how teachers can create an individualized teaching through this, during the music lessons. The study's result describes the interviews that have been conducted that have occurred in varied locations around Sweden with teachers in the subject area music in learning disabilities. The result presents how teachers use musical communication in their teaching and in what way the teaching is tailored to the needs of the students to become developing. The discussion that is linked to the subject of the study focuses on individual adaptation and alternative ways in which the teacher can make use of it in order to obtain an educational teaching, in which the students are given the opportunity for an in-depth understanding and a developed knowledge.

Syftet med studien är att bidra med kunskap om personals uppfattningar av och arbete med skolbloggen i en grundsärskola med inriktning ämnesområde. Studien synliggör mönster, metoder och förhållningssätt som främjar elever med medel, måttlig och grav utvecklingsstörning till delaktighet i producering av skolbloggar. Bakgrunden till studiens inriktning utgår från egna erfarenheter och diskussioner med kurskollegor kring skolbloggens syfte och betydelse för elever inom grundsärskola. Vidare grundar sig studien på litteratur, tidigare nationell, internationell forskning samt teoretiska begrepp om delaktighet. De teoretiska begreppen som var grund för studien var Harts (1992) delaktighetsstege samt Szönyi och Söderqvist Dunkers (2015) delaktighetsmodell. Studien byggdes upp utifrån från kvalitativa metoder och bildade sedan ett frågeformulär som respondenterna fyllde i. Studien visar att det finns svårigheter för elever inom särskolan med inriktning ämnesområden att bli inkluderade och delaktiga i skolbloggen. Svårigheterna genomsyrar de tre frågeställningarna och får stöd av litteratur och forskning som berör delaktighetens komplexitet för särskolan. Det som styr skolbloggarnas syfte, personalens etiska ställningstagande och elevernas faktiska medverkan för producering av skolbloggar är personalens individuella och gemensamma förutsättningar för att förstå relevansen i etik och makt gentemot elever. / The purpose of this study is to contribute with knowledge of about how teachers and other staff in the schools experience and use school blogs in classes where children has learning disabilities. The study clarifies patterns, methods and approaches which promotes the participation of students with different degrees of disability in the development of the school blog. The background for the study is based on my own experiences from working with children with disabilities and their school blogs and from discussions with university colleagues. Further impact of the study is based on literature, national and international science and theoretical concepts of participation. The theoretical concepts that were included in the study was Harts (1992) participation ladder and Szönyi and Söderqvist Dunkers (2015) participation model. The study contained a questionnaire that was developed to enable qualitative analyses. The result revealed that the pupils possibility to participate in the production of the school blogg was depending on the school workers ability to handle authority and ethics. The results and previous research also shows that school blogs needs to have support from the school administration so that schools has common prerequisites for school blogs. When common prerequisites was used pupils were more involved in the school blog development.

The problem of this investigation was to compare the linguistic competence of learning disabled and emotionally disturbed pupils by means of two performance tasks. Sixty subjects, seven-and-eight-year old monolingual public and private school pupils, were assigned to three groups of twenty subjects each, learning disabled, emotionally disturbed and normally achieving children. The majority of those in the learning disabled and the normally achieving groups were from middle-class families, with the majority of fathers owners of small businesses. A majority (17) of the emotionally disturbed group attended the public schools.

The interaction between parent, child and book during story-book reading is considered as one of the fundamental instruments required for children to acquire the important elements needed to learn how to read. Parents of grade one children are unsure of their new role in the reading development of their children because their children enter a new phase in their literacy development and reading becomes the centre of their learning activities. The main aim of this research is to compare and describe how parents of grade one children without learning disabilities and parents of children with learning disabilities, perceive their children’s participation in home reading activities. Thirty biological parents or legal guardians of grade one children without learning disabilities and ten of grade one children with learning disabilities were used to complete a questionnaire. The results indicated that although children without learning disabilities and children with learning disabilities have similar exposure to home literacy activities, children without learning disabilities become more fluent and efficient readers than their peers with learning disabilities. Children without learning disabilities prefer to be actively involved in the story-book reading act with their parents, whereas children with learning disabilities tend to be more passive and they prefer to engage less in reading activities due to their reading difficulties. The study highlights the importance of story-book reading for grade one children in both groups, as well as independent reading of story-books by these children. Suggestions for further research are provided. / Dissertation (MA (Augmentative and Alternative Communication))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Centre for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (CAAC) / MA / Unrestricted