The reading process is a demanding cognitive process. With it, we achieve various levels of reading literacy. Pupils with dyslexia face not only problems mastering the reading technique, but also comprehension of the text. The main goal of the diploma thesis is to assess and find out how the learning process of pupils with dyslexia at the second stage of primary school takes place with regard to the reading process, which is weakened in these pupils. The partial goal of the diploma thesis is to find out which methods are used by teachers when working with pupils with dyslexia. The diploma thesis is processed as a qualitative research investigation using the technique of observation of a selected group in the educational process (second grade students), analysis of student documentation and interviews with students, their parents and teachers according to a pre-prepared scenario. The diploma thesis deals with the influence of the use of intervention aids on the educational process of pupils with dyslexia at the second stage of primary school and the suitability of individual aids for intervention in specific cases.

In educational research, the cognitive activity of problem posing is recognized as an important component of mathematics teaching and learning. Compared to the prevailing educational paradigm of problem solving, problem posing features less commonly in classroom instruction. During the past 20 years, numerous studies examining the use of problem posing in school mathematics instruction have documented positive outcomes in terms of students’ knowledge, problem-solving abilities, creativity, and attitudes and beliefs regarding the study of mathematics. However, despite these promising results, problem posing in mathematics instruction has rarely been studied in the population of students with learning disabilities (LDs). This study describes a problem-posing intervention that draws on existing Conceptual Model-based Problem Solving program (COMPS, Xin, 2012) and conceptual research into the problem posing task. The COMPS-based problem posing intervention is designed to teach word problem posing skills to students with LDs under structured problem posing situations. The study applies a single-subject multiple-baseline design across three participants to investigate the effects on participants’ word problem solving and problem posing skills. The results showed that all three students demonstrated increased math performance on both problem solving and problem posing tests when the COMPS-based Problem Posing intervention was used. In addition, both immediate and maintenance effects on student learning were noted.

A decline in high school dropout rates of students with learning disabilities (SWLDs) has been reported in the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI). Of the2 school districts in the USVI, St. STT/STJ and STX, the researcher examined high school experiences of SWLDs who dropped out and did not attain a high school diploma in STX. Utilizing the conceptual framework of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, participants' personal high school experiences were examined in an effort to understand factors leading to their choice to drop out. The researcher interviewed 12 participants who were drop out SWLDs, ages 18 years and older. Interview data were coded and analyzed for common themes. Member checking and peer debriefing were utilized to achieve credibility and trustworthiness. Data analysis resulted in the identification of patterns, or themes, relative to participants' STX high school experiences which contributed to their decisions to drop out. The themes included, peer, family and teacher lack of support, ridicule, peer pressure and behavior problems. Most of the participants had not reached Maslow's highest need for self-actualization. Maslow purported that if needs are not being fulfilled in homes, then they can be fulfilled in schools where a positive school culture is apparent. In this case, students with learning disabilities needed to feel there was value in their education and obtaining a high school diploma. The results of this research might contribute to positive social change by identifying SWLDs' need requirements to attain a high school diploma and provide high school administrators with valuable information to enhance school learning environments for SWLDs and increase high school SWLD graduation rates.

Recent research in juvenile justice has focussed on identifying precursors of delinquency, which are referred to as "risk factors." These are biological or psychosocial conditions that increase the probability of an individual developing problem behaviors. Delinquency prevention and intervention programs are adopting a risk-focussed approach which attempts to reduce targeted youth's exposure to risk factors. Limited attention has been paid to investigating whether commonly accepted risk factors are equally relevant across various subtypes of juvenile offenders. Two subgroups of offenders deserving of special attention by virtue of their extremely high prevalence rates in the juvenile justice system are those with emotional/behavioral disorders (EBD) and those with learning disabilities (LD). The purpose of this study was to determine the relevance of specific individually-, family-, and school-based risk factors for delinquency across three specific groups of juvenile offenders: (a) those with EBD, (b) those with LD, and (c) those who did not qualify as disabled under the definition of disability used in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Individual risk factors that were measured included aggressive/acting-out behaviors, irresponsible/inattentive behaviors, fearful/anxious behaviors, social withdrawn behaviors, age at first arrest and history of substance use. School-based risk factors examined were students' reading and math scores and attitude towards and involvement in school. Attachment to family, parental discipline style, and level of supervision provided by parents were the family-based risk factors examined. Discriminant analysis procedures indicated that juvenile offenders with EBD, juvenile offenders with LD, and nondisabled offenders differed significantly in their demonstration of aggressive/acting-out behaviors, irresponsible/inattentive behaviors and fearful/anxious behaviors. In contrast, no significant differences were found across family-, and school-based risk factors. This implies that until research demonstrates the existence of unique risk factors or a difference in the magnitude of risk factors experienced by juvenile offenders with EBD and LD, it would be premature to develop and implement differential delinquency prevention and intervention programming for these subgroups of offenders.

This diploma work describes educational trial in small village school in the context of inclusive education. It is focused on teaching united classes and teaching pupils with special educational needs. Theoretical part contains characteristic of small village schools, describes their historical evolution, typical features of teaching and position assistant of teacher in these schools. In the following subsections are determined special learning disabilities, theirs causes of origin and regulars pedagogical intervention. And then is focused on theme of inclusive education. Targets of practical part were to find experiences of teachers at small village schools, to choose ideal didactical methods and organizational forms, which are suitable for differentiation and individualization in the teaching, after that to make a proposal of methodical support, that to verify in practise and to evaluate its. KEYWORDS Small village schools, inclusive education, special learning disabilities

Fossilization, the stagnation of second language (L2) learning despite propitious conditions, is an inescapable reality for virtually all L2 learners. The study presented in this dissertation has endeavored to contribute to our current understanding of fossilization by examining, both longitudinally and cross-sectionally, persistent errors in the writing of adult learners of academic English for whom Spanish is a first language (L1). The theoretical framework is the Selective Fossilization Hypothesis (SFH), introduced by Han in 2009, which offers an extrapolative and explanatory framework for analyzing persistent errors in the developing grammars of L2 learners. This research was conducted in two parts. Part I consisted of a cross-sectional investigation of 60 English language learners (ELLs) grouped into three proficiency levels: low intermediate, high intermediate, and advanced. Part II was a longitudinal case study that followed two ELLs over a period of 28 and 56 months, respectively. For both parts of the study, naturalistic data consisting of college placement, diagnostic, and exit essays were collected at the research site, a large community college in the Northeastern United States, and analyzed quantitatively. Descriptive statistics were computed to identify persistent errors in the participants’ writing. Following that, the longitudinal data were subjected to further analysis, revealing robust evidence of selective fossilization both among and within the target subsystems of English articles, prepositions, and number, and offering empirical support for the SFH. These findings have some implications for second language research and practice. By providing evidence of selective fossilization, they may help challenge earlier conceptualizations of fossilization as a global phenomenon, and, by extension, the myth of the ‘fossilized’ (‘unteachable’) learner. Additionally, they contribute to extant research on the developing academic writing of post-secondary learners, a population and genre largely underrepresented in the L2 research. Finally, by offering empirical support for selective fossilization and the SFH, they provide L2 practitioners with the means to predict and explain learner errors, enabling them to set more realistic learning goals and achieve more successful outcomes.

This study explored the relationship between several variables known to influence achievement in Canadian Grade 6 students with Learning Disabilities (LD) who received instruction in either a regular class or specialized program placement. The main independent variable was program placement while the influence of four other independent variables was explored (i.e., level of academic need; prior achievement; socioeconomic status and sex). The dependent variable was a standardized, large-scale assessment of achievement. Hierarchical multiple regression was conducted on a secondary data file in order to address the following research questions: i) Does placement in a regular or specialized program influence the educational outcomes for Grade 6 students with LD, after controlling for the influence of prior achievement in Grade 3?; ii) Is there a relationship between the sociodemographic variables of sex and/or socioeconomic status and achievement for students with LD placed in either a regular or specialized program?; and iii) What influence does the student’s level of academic need have on achievement, beyond program placement, and after controlling for the influence of the other variables in the model? Results revealed that the variables of program placement and prior achievement were significant predictors of scholastic success only when the level of academic need variable was not taken into account. When the follow-up analysis focused on a relatively matched group of students with similar academic need, none of the predictors in the regression model significantly influenced achievement -- including program placement. These results provide important insight into the nuanced relationship of the ecological variables known to affect learning in students with LD placed in regular or specialized programs for instruction. Implications are discussed for stakeholders in Ontario’s public education system in terms of the optimum service delivery model for students with LD, and the inclusive education debate in Canada and abroad.

Cooperative learning is a very common working method in grade school. The purpose of this study is to identify the effects that cooperative learning has on students with different abilities. Several articles covering different abilities have been selected for our analysis. During our analysis we observed similarities and differences in the articles and thereby found three main topics for the result section: The effects of early introduction to cooperative learning, cooperative learning form a second language perspective and the teacher’s adaptation for students with learning disabilities. After reading and discussing the results in the articles we come to the conclusion that cooperative learning can be beneficial for every student, if the teacher has the right knowledge and the right understanding of how to use it.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Education in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Educational Psychology in the Department of Educational Psychology and Special Needs Education at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 2015 / One of the objectives of setting up a special needs school system in South Africa (SA) was to ensure that children with learning disabilities and special needs are part of a full service, inclusive education system. In SA, special needs education can be traced back to the Apartheid during which learners were segregated on the basis of their race, colour, ethnicity and disability. The apartheid policy allowed for well-resourced schools for white disabled learners and very few under-resourced schools for disabled learners from other population groups i.e. Blacks, Indian and Coloured. Children with learning disabilities (LD) have problems beyond reading, writing, mathematics, memory and organisational skills, to mention a few. Problems may include a deep sense of anger, sadness, shame and frustration which could lead to poor psychological well-being. Often affected learners present with anxiety, depression, low self-esteem and other psychological concerns. Teaching learners with special needs require skills which include proper knowledge about learners, wants and aspirations. The differences may also include cultural, gender, social and economic background. These differences influence how each learner relates and adapts to developmental milestones, cognitive & language development and psychological well-being. It should then be emphasised that every teacher, especially those who deal with learners with disabilities, needs assistance or information that will help them develop instructional programmes that enhance maximum functionality of each learner, particularly those with disabilities. The aims of the study were to assess teachers’ knowledge about the psychological well-being of their learners; and also to establish whether or not there is a relationship if any, between teachers’ demographical data and levels of knowledge. This study sampled thirty (30) teachers teaching at the special needs school, using a standardized structured quantitative questionnaire. The conclusions reached were that teachers at a special needs school did not possess adequate levels of knowledge about their learners’ psychological well-being. It was also established that there was a statistical significant association between their selected demographics and knowledge level of teachers.

The intent of this research was to explore special education labeling interactions with measured student self-concept on the Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale. An extensive literature review revealed that there are eight major variables which have been found to exert an influence upon student self-concept: achievement, age, sex, socioeconomic status, ethnic origin, place in family, significant others, and special class placement. This study was designed to examine these major self-concept variables and control for any significant variations between groups of learning disabled (LD) labeled students and nonlabeled regular students with equivalent math and reading achievement. Collection of data for use in this research occurred on two levels. Parents and subjects completed consent and demographic information sheets. The demographic information sheets provided information to assist in controlling for external variables, which research has shown to impact self-concept, as well as for probing parental perceptions of subject association with and internalization of handicapping condition labels. Once parents and subjects consented to participate in the study, subjects from both groups were administered the Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale. Subjects also completed a researcher-developed Student Information Sheet (SIS). From a total of 127 subjects who were randomly selected, 44 subjects and their families elected to participate in this research. The final study sample included 18 LD subjects and 26 regular classroom students. Data were gathered and analyzed to determine how much explained variance could be attributed to LD labeled students as compared to regular nonlabeled students. Through examination of seven from the eight major variables (the achievement variable had already been controlled for via stratified random sampling), this study found significant (p < .05) variations between groups for age (p = .0034) and placement (p = .000). Group variations approached significance on sex (p = .074). Findings indicated that LD labeled students had lower global self-concept scores on the Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale than the regular education students (t-test p = .079, ANOVA p = .051). These approaching significant variations on global self-concept scores might be attributed to four independent or interacting external variables: age, placement, sex, or labeling influences.