This research explores the need for a unique, self-help manual to provide music students with diagnoses of dyslexia under the umbrella of specific learning disorder (SLD) and/or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) a positive way of coping with their musical tendencies. Dyslexia and ADHD are the most prevalent, comorbid neurodevelopmental disorders with symptoms affecting academic, social, and/or personal life. Musical symptoms could include difficulties in any of the following areas: notation reading; time, pulse, and rhythm; posture; fingering coordination; memorization; sight-reading; organization of thoughts, time, and materials; spatial and directional awareness; focused attention; retention of new concepts; positive attitude; and the ability to process written and/or oral information quickly and accurately. This dissertation includes scientific information related to the conditions; an analysis of musical tendencies; pedagogical approaches; personal anecdotal stories that serve to illustrate scientific concepts; and a self-help manual. The manual, "Music, Dyslexia, and ADHD: A Self-Help Manual for Students with Exceptionalities," is a colorful, accessible resource that begins to fill the self-help gap in the musical instruction literature for students with dyslexia and/or ADHD. It offers useful information, multisensory/multimodal techniques, and coping strategies to empower students with these learning differences to achieve more rewarding, independent success throughout their musical studies.

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African American students have been historically underrepresented in gifted programs throughout the United States. Research about retaining identified African American students in gifted programs is limited. This qualitative phenomenological study examined the perceptions of a purposeful sample of seven identified talented and potentially talented African American middle school students about participation in gifted programs. The purpose of the study was to understand the meaning of participants' expectations, attitudes, and experiences with regard to participating and remaining in a gifted program or participating and then dropping out. Data were collected through individual interviews. Interpretative phenomenological analysis revealed that participants expected talented and gifted programs to be challenging, boring, or fun. Attitudes about learning in gifted programs included a preference for hands-on activities, the study of other cultures, accelerated work, and a desire for a daily class rather than a pullout program. Male and female African Americans experienced participation in gifted programs differently. Males perceived that they are normal and like everybody else, but females perceived the need to resist conforming to negative African American stereotypes. Recommendations that could improve retention rates for African Americans in gifted programs include revising policies regarding gifted program delivery and providing teacher training with an emphasis on African American cultural sensitivity. The contribution of this study to the body of research literature has implications for positive social change because developing the talents and gifts of African Americans through gifted programs could result in higher college graduation rates and greater employment opportunities.

In my diploma thesis I am largely based on practical experience gained during practice in a preschool facility, which includes a special pedagogical center. I deal primarily with the specifics of the preschool facility, professional workplace and their mutual cooperation. I describe the implementation of inclusive education in the facility. The main topic of the work is the naming and definition of the main factors that affect the successful implementation of inclusive care. The research methodology is a case study. As the main method of data collection, I chose structured interviews and the study of documentation. The aim of the work is to present functional and practical recommendations for other preschool facilities that could help them in the implementation of inclusive education. Keywords: Early care, inclusion, preschool education, special pedagogical center, support measures, professionals

This empirical exploratory study quantitatively analyzed content similarity indices (potential plagiarism) from a corpus consisting of 360 dissertations and 360 published articles. The population was defined using the filtering search criteria human resource development, training and development, organizational development, career development, or HRD. This study described in detail the process of collecting content similarity analysis (CSA) metadata using Turnitin software (www.turnitin.com). This researcher conducted robust descriptive statistics, a Wilcoxon signed-rank statistic between the similarity indices before and after false positives were excluded, and a multinomial logistic regression analysis to predict levels of plagiarism for the dissertations and the published articles. The corpus of dissertations had an adjusted rate of document similarity (potential plagiarism) of M = 9%, (SD = 6%) with 88.1% of the dissertations in the low level of plagiarism, 9.7% in the high and 2.2% in the excessive group. The corpus of published articles had an adjusted rate of document similarity (potential plagiarism) of M = 11%, (SD = 10%) with 79.2% of the published articles in the low level of plagiarism, 12.8% in the high and 8.1% in the excessive group. Most of the difference between the dissertations and published articles were attributed to plagiarism-of-self issues which were absent in the dissertations. Statistics were also conducted which returned a statistically significant justification for employing the investigative process of removing false positives, thereby adjusting the Turnitin results. This study also found two independent variables (reference and word counts) that predicted dissertation membership in the high (.15-.24) and excessive level (.25-1.00) of plagiarism and published article membership in the excessive level (.25-1.00) of plagiarism. I used multinomial logistic regression to establish the optimal prediction model. The multinomial logistic regression results for the dissertations returned a Nagelkerke pseudo R2 of .169 and for the published articles a Nagelkerke pseudo R2 .095.

The role of transition providers' knowledge of evidence-based practices (EBPs) in secondary transition can only be understood in the context of the dismal post-secondary outcomes of students with disabilities (SWD) and the need for bridging the research-to-practice gap among secondary transition practitioners. A sample of 1,163 Texas Employment Designees (TEDs) were surveyed about their knowledge of secondary transition EBPs. The study examined the psychometric properties and theoretical factor structure fit of a modified version of the Mazzotti and Plotner's Use of Secondary Transition EBPs survey and identified significant effects of TEDs' characteristics on their capacity for implementing secondary transition EBPs (F(9, 110) = 2.16, p = 0.03). Psychometric validation of the instrument indicated overall reliability and internal consistency of the modified instrument in measuring both knowledge and use of EBPs in support and direct provision of transition services (Cronbach's alpha of 0.99). Principal components analysis (PCA) and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) returned a simple one-factor structure. A composite score was developed for the single factor of "capacity", and a subsequent analysis was conducted to determine a relationship between the demographic factors and the overall capacity scores of respondents (n = 198). Study limitations and need for further research are discussed.

The study is a two-part study that utilized the comparative method of content analysis and Policy Analysis of legal documents. Part one of the study compared special education policy documents of two systems; the Lagos State Special People’s Law and its Inclusive Education Policy to the United States’ Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 2004) to figure out how they compare for the sole purpose of mutual improvement and global competitiveness. Part two of the study is the policy analysis of the Lagos State policies that utilized the results and recommendations from the comparative document analysis (part one). This section of the study focused mainly on how the Lagos State special education documents could be improved using the IDEA of the United States as a model. It also offered alternatives that could be explored as well as recommendations that policymakers in Lagos State could use in order to improve the life outcomes of all children with disabilities in the State. The study addressed explicitly how the United States special education policies could inform the Lagos state policies and vice versa. The overarching purpose of the study was for mutual improvement that could influence special education policy revisions of both systems by respective stakeholders. The study concluded that there is a need for a special education-specific law in Lagos state that will be comparable to the IDEA of the United States so that children with disabilities in the state could become fully integrated into the system and be able to achieve their highest potentials. The study also offers directions for future research. / Special Education

Although there is extensive research demonstrating the benefits of teaching problem solving repertoires to typically developing individuals, there is little research on the effectiveness of these kinds of procedures with individuals with special needs. In this study, a group of special education students in a public school were taught problem solving skills using a curriculum called Talk Aloud Problem Solving (TAPS), which was developed by Robbins (2014). TAPS teaches students five problem solving skills and five active listening skills. This study utilized a multiple baseline design to examine whether training in TAPS would change the way that students solve problems and increase their accuracy when solving problems. In addition, a reversal design was used for each participant, consisting of the presence and the removal of the active listener during different stages of the study. After TAPS training and guided practice sessions, all students demonstrated new problem solving repertoires and their accuracy improved. For some students, having an audience (an active listener) was necessary to maintain their behavior. Further research is needed to determine how to teach students to be their own active listener.

Depuis l’adoption de la politique de l’adaptation scolaire en 1999, le ministère de l’Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport a mis en place un plan d’action pour permettre l’intégration des élèves handicapés ou en difficulté d’adaptation ou d’apprentissage. L’intégration des élèves handicapés a fait l’objet de plusieurs études ; toutefois, peu d’entre elles se sont intéressées à l’intégration d’élèves présentant une déficience auditive et utilisant le langage parlé complété. Le but de cette étude est de mettre en lumière les perceptions d’élèves présentant une déficience auditive quant à l’utilisation du langage parlé complété en contexte d’intégration scolaire. Les concepts exploités dans ce mémoire sont relatifs à la surdité, aux élèves présentant une déficience auditive, aux modes de communication utilisés auprès de ces élèves, et plus particulièrement le langage parlé complété, de même qu’au contexte d’intégration scolaire québécois. Cette recherche est de type exploratoire et la méthode utilisée est qualitative. Cinq étudiants présentant une déficience auditive et âgés entre 12 et 17 ans ont participé à une entrevue semi-dirigée. Les résultats de ces entretiens montrent que ces élèves ont des perceptions positives et négatives face à l’utilisation du langage parlé complété en contexte d’intégration. Quoique de façon générale cela n’entrave pas leur intégration scolaire, les perceptions négatives se rapportent davantage à l’intégration sociale qu’à l’intégration scolaire. / Since the adoption of the policy on special education in 1999, the Ministère de l’Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport created an action plan to allow the integration of the students with special needs. The integration of pupils with handicaps had been the subject of several studies, however, little of them were interested in integration of hearing impairment students using Cued Speech at school. The objective of this study is to throw a light onto perceptions of pupils presenting hearing impairment regarding the use of Cued Speech in a context of school integration. The concepts exploited in this memory are related to students with hearing impairment, deafness, modes of communication used with these pupils, and more particularly the Cued Speech, just as the context of Québec school integration. This research is of the exploratory kind, and the method used is qualitative. Five students with hearing impairment and between 12 and 17 years old took part in semi-directed interview. The results of these research sessions show that these pupils have positive and negative perceptions vis-a-vis the use of Cued Speech in an integration context. Though, in a general way, it does not seem to hinder their school integration, negative perceptions more refer to social integration than school integration.

Au Québec, plusieurs adultes n’ont pas de diplôme d’études secondaires. Parmi eux, plusieurs ont des problèmes d’apprentissage. Peu d’études se penchent sur leur participation à des programmes d’éducation des adultes. L’objectif de cette recherche est d’identifier les obstacles rencontrés par les adultes ayant des problèmes d’apprentissage lors de leur passage au secteur public de l’éducation des adultes. Dans le cadre de cette étude qualitative, douze entrevues ont été réalisées auprès d’adultes âgés de 18 à 50 ans. Ces entrevues ont été analysées afin d’identifier les obstacles rencontrés par cette population. Les résultats révèlent que ce sont les obstacles dispositionnels et les obstacles institutionnels qui sont les plus occurrents. L’interprétation de ces résultats permet de conclure qu’une adaptation et une diversification des pratiques institutionnelles dans le secteur de l’éducation des adultes permettraient d’accroitre la persévérance et la réussite scolaires des adultes ayant des problèmes d’apprentissage. / In Quebec, there are many adults whithout a highschool diploma. Among them, several have learning disabilities. Few researches adress the question of their participation to adult education programs. The purpose of this study is to identify the barriers faced by adults with learning disabilities when participating in the public adult education system. In this qualitive study, twelve learning-disabled adults between the age 18-50 were interviewed. From the analyses of these interviews we observed that the most frequently cited obstacles are dispositionnal and institutionnal. Interpreting these results leads us to conclude that the adjustment and diversification of the institutionnal practices in the adult education system could increase school perseverance and success among adults with learning disabilities.