<p> This study explored the perceptions of six teachers of students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) in one school district. In individual interviews, the teachers shared their perceptions of the qualities, knowledge, and skills necessary for EBD teachers to be effective. Five of the teachers gathered for a focus group to discuss the findings from the analysis of the interview data. </p><p> An analysis of the data yielded three themes. First, effective EBD teachers develop unconditional teacher-student relationships. No matter how many setbacks a student with EBD may experience, the effective EBD teacher relentlessly affirms his or her belief in the student&rsquo;s ability to succeed. When it seems like others have dismissed a student, the student can always count on the effective EBD teacher for support. </p><p> Second, effective EBD teachers create positive classroom environments. When students with EBD are removed from the general education setting or experience a crisis at school, the effective EBD teacher provides a safe, consistent, and nonjudgmental haven. </p><p> Finally, effective EBD teachers individualize instruction. Having knowledge of behavior disorders and effective strategies is insufficient. The effective EBD teacher identifies the particular needs of each student and designs instruction that meets those individual academic and behavioral needs.</p>

A large body of research supports the use of intensive, explicit, structured, phonics-based programming (IESPP) for achieving positive outcomes for students at-risk for reading failure. Few studies included English language learners. The purpose of this study was to determine whether students participating in IESPP became proficient readers and to identify site characteristics contributing to successful implementation.The sample consisted of 199 third grade students from three schools in a district in the Southwest using IESPP. Participants were assigned to one of four groups: English speakers (n=89), English learners (n=79), English speakers with learning disabilities (LD) (n=13), and English learners with LD (n=18). Phase 1 targeted student outcomes from the four groups from the first year of IESPP implementation. Independent t tests of group means compared the progress between the four groups on three measures of reading fluency: Oral Reading, Retell, and Word Usage.All groups evidenced gains. Students without LD were found to have made statistically significant gains in Oral Reading Fluency compared with students with LD. No significant differences were found between students with and without LD. English as a second language did not appear to impact relative performance.In Phase 2, principals, reading coaches, and the reading coordinator participated in semi-structured interviews identifying the elements contributing to successful implementation of IESPP. Elements included: (a) site leadership and external training support, (b) teacher commitment and cooperation, and (c) common terminology in reading instruction.Challenges identified in schools implementing the IESPP included: (a) structuring changes involving lessons, coordination with other teachers, and philosophic differences in instruction, (b) training in progress monitoring and data interpretation, (c) identifying gaps in students' cultural literacy, and (d) acquiring additional time and personnel for intervention.Primary implications included the need for: (a) involving key site leaders,(b) providing resources and IESPP supports to sites based on identified student weaknesses, (c) anticipating teacher reactions while addressing change, and(d) continuing research of the IESPP model's impact on English language learners and students with LD.Further implications and recommendations for districts, site leaders and reading coaches implementing IESPP are included.

Researchers are increasingly interested in working memory (WM) training. However, it remains unclear whether it strengthens WM and comprehension among young children. We investigated whether training verbal WM would improve verbal WM and listening comprehension, and whether training effects differed between 2 approaches: drill and practice vs. rehearsal. Fifty-eight first-grade children were randomly assigned to three groups: WM drill and practice, WM rehearsal training, and the control. The two training groups received one 35-minute session of verbal WM training on each of 10 consecutive school days, totaling 5.8 hours. Both groups demonstrated improvement on trained verbal WM tasks, with the rehearsal group showing greater gains. Compared to controls, the rehearsal group also made significant improvements on an untrained verbal WM task (i.e., Listening Recall) and listening comprehension and retell measures. In comparison to controls, the drill and practice group showed significant improvement in listening comprehension, but not on the retell task. Findings suggest that brief but intensive verbal WM training is feasible with young children and can strengthen their verbal WM and comprehension performance. Caveats and implications for theory and future research are discussed.

The association made between the meaning, spelling, and pronunciation of a word has been shown to help children remember the meanings of words. The present study addressed whether the presence of a target word in braille during instruction facilitated vocabulary learning more efficiently than an auditory only instructional condition. An adapted alternating treatments single-case experimental design was used with three students with visual impairments who read braille. Data on definition recall and spelling were collected during each session. Data on definition recall were used to determine mastery. The results of this study are not consistent with previous findings with students who read print. Visual analyses of the data indicated that participants reached mastery in both conditions, but all three reached mastery on definition recall in fewer sessions in the auditory only condition. Spellings of words were learned in the flashcard condition only, and possible implications of this are discussed. The difference in the unit of recognition and working memory load between reading braille and reading print is discussed as one possible explanation.

Peer support arrangements have been advocated as a promising approach for increasing social interactions and academic engagement for students with severe disabilities in inclusive classrooms. However, it remains unclear whether paraprofessionals can facilitate these arrangements without substantial researcher support, and how best to prepare paraprofessionals to implement this intervention. In this single-case design study, four special education teachers trained and supported four paraprofessionals to implement peer support arrangements through delivery of a promising professional development package consisting of an initial orientation, video modeling, and performance feedback. Teachers implemented the professional development accurately, paraprofessionals implemented peer support arrangements effectively, and students with severe disabilities experienced increased social interactions with their peers while maintaining previous levels of academic engagement. These findings demonstrate one promising avenue for enabling paraprofessionals to implement peer support arrangements. Recommendations for preparing teachers to train and support paraprofessionals to implement evidence-based practices are offered, along with directions for future research.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which a parent-implemented language intervention, Enhanced Milieu Teaching (EMT), improved expressive and receptive language skills in children at risk for persistent language impairments as compared to a group of typically developing children. Participants included three groups of children between 24 and 36 months of age: (a) a control group of children with language impairments who did not receive EMT (n=18), (b) a treatment group of children with language impairments who received EMT (n=16), and (c) a group of children with typical language development (n=28). Participants in the EMT treatment group received 24, 1-hour sessions of intervention, bi-weekly for three months. Sessions occurred individually in the home and clinic. Participants in the control and normative groups did not receive any intervention but were assessed at the same times as children in the treatment group. Parental linguistic input and language-learning support strategies were measured across all three groups. Standardized, norm-referenced child assessments, as well as observational measures, were used to assess changes in childrens language growth over time. Results indicate that children in the EMT treatment group made greater gains than children in the control group on most language measures. While children in the EMT group had lower language scores than children with typical language following intervention, the rate of language growth was not significantly different between groups. Children in the control group had lower language scores than children with typical language at post testing and their language growth was significantly slower than typical children. Child receptive language and parent use of matched turns predicted expressive language growth in both children with and without language impairments. Directions for future research and implications for practice are discussed.

Previous studies have shown that some children with reading difficulties (RD) respond well to reading intervention while others do not. The purpose of this study was to examine whether functional neuroimaging prior to intervention could be used to distinguish intervention responders from nonresponders. The participants were 54 children and adolescents (8-14 years of age) who were assigned to groups of RD receiving treatment (RD, n=23), RD waitlisted for treatment (RD-WL, n=16), and typically developing readers receiving no treatment (TD, n=15). The RD and TD participants performed a single word reading task during fMRI scanning prior to intervention. RD participants received 15 hours of intensive reading intervention. Before and after implementation of the treatment, word-level reading measures were administered and word-level growth was used to determine responsiveness status. Whole brain and region of interest (ROI) analyses of reading-related areas both revealed that nonresponders differed from responders, and that nonresponders showed greater dissimilarity from TD than did responders. Multivariate pattern analysis indicated that pre-intervention behavioral measures and functional imaging were comparable in sorting responders and nonresponders.

Findings of recent studies suggest variations in performance across reading comprehension tests may be a product of differences among assessment dimensions (e.g., response format, genre) or child skills (e.g., Francis, Fletcher, Catts, & Tomblin, 2005; Keenan, 2013). The purpose of the current study was to investigate sources of variation in reading comprehension for three response formats (i.e., open-ended questions, multiple choice, retell) in relation to text genres and child skills. Participants included 79 fourth graders recruited from six classrooms within one elementary school. All participants read six passages (including three narrative and three expository texts) from the Qualitative Reading Inventory-Fifth Edition (QRI-5; Leslie & Caldwell, 2011) and completed a brief comprehension assessment, each of a varying response format. In addition, measures of word reading, linguistic and cognitive skills, and learning strategies were administered to each student across two 60-min testing sessions. Item-response crossed random effects models revealed statistically significant differences between open-ended and multiple-choice questions. Moreover, across the three response formats, five covariates were statistically significant predictors of reading comprehension: (a) genre, (b) listening comprehension, (c) working memory, (d) attention, and (e) word recognition. Further exploratory analyses identified three two-way interactions between: (a) Response Format (i.e., open-ended and multiple-choice questions) × Genre, (b) Response Format × Listening Comprehension, and (c) Response Format × Attention. Results of this study offer evidence to suggest the use of different response formats may lead to variations in student performance across reading comprehension tests. Given these findings, directions for future research and implications for using comprehension tests in research, policy, and practice are discussed.

Lexical access, the cognitive process of finding a word in ones mental lexicon (part of the process of word recognition), is an important part of the development of receptive and expressive language. Before we can test theories about the role of lexical access in explaining language development variance in children with autism, we need measures of lexical access with good psychometric properties. Event-related potentials (ERPs) hold promise as measures of lexical access. However, there are different approaches to ERP data analysis and variable derivation, and the validity and reliability of various ERP measures that might quantify lexical access are unknown. The proposed study examined the relative validity and reliability of several ERP measures that purportedly quantify individual differences in lexical access.

The purpose of this study was to extend previous research by examining the effects of concurrent parent and therapist-implemented Joint Attention Symbolic Play and Emotional Regulation-Enhanced Milieu Teaching with Sign Language (J-EMT+Sign) on parent use of J-EMT+Sign strategies with their young children with Down syndrome and to examine the effects of the intervention on the language use of two young children with Down syndrome with mental age below 18 months. In a multiple baseline across parent behaviors, a functional relationship was demonstrated between the Teach-Model-Coach-Review approach for teaching parents the J-EMT +Sign intervention and parent use of the strategies. Child progress in communication could not be attributed to the intervention because changes in child spoken and signed communication were variable and occurred over an extended period of time of parent and therapist intervention. Implementing the intervention during play activities was challenging for parents due to childrens lack of play skills and difficulty remaining engaged with objects and adults for extended periods of time. Future research on J-EMT+Sign with children with Down syndrome with mental age below 18 months should address alternative ways to maximize parent success and to increase the impact of the intervention on child language. These alternatives might include 1) implementing the intervention during routines in which the child readily engages in the activity (e.g., social routines, caregiving activities), and 2) implementing the intervention in several play sessions with the therapist only before introducing the intervention in play sessions with the parent.