The purpose of this study was to explore the possibility that music and movement instruction could cause improvement in language arts skills, due to evidence that music and language share processing mechanisms related to auditory perception as described by Patel (2007, 2011a, 2011b, 2014) in the shared syntactic integration resource hypothesis (SSIRH) and OPERA hypothesis. Sixty-two Kindergarten students from a suburban school, near a city in the Midwest, were selected via random assignment to be a part of an experimental or control group. Each group participated in pre- and posttests measuring entrainment and pre-reading skills. ANCOVA results of pre and posttest data revealed no significant difference between the groups. The music and movement instruction did not improve entrainment so results were inconclusive in regard to the impact of entrainment on phonological processing and rapid naming. Future studies might consider a pretest/posttest design with a group that focuses on entrainment without specific music language (Patel, 2008) and a group that conducted music class with the usual songs and descriptive language, to provide evidence regarding whether or not language needs to be combined with music to cause a cognitive transfer of skills. A further comparison of a group that learned to play singing games with a group that learned instrumental music might provide further evidence regarding the role that the combination of music and language might have on reading. Another line of inquiry might involve increasing the length of the intervention period to determine if a year is needed to cause cognitive transfer and ensure that the control group does not receive any music instruction. An additional consideration may be that improvement in entrainment provides a foundation for language processing that does not fully develop or present itself until children reach more challenging levels of reading fluency. Studies that measure student improvement over time would be one way to find evidence that music provides a neurological basis for reading, and language development. Further study possibilities are described in the conclusions of the dissertation. / 2022-11-15T00:00:00Z

Följande studie undersöker speciallärare och specialpedagogers arbete med och kring elever vid komorbiditet; dyslexi och ADHD. Studien utgår från tre frågeställningar. Syftet är att frågeställningarna ska belysa vilken betydelse diagnoser har för speciallärare och specialpedagoger i arbetet för och med elever vid komorbiditet. Studien undersöker dessutom vilka insatser som underlättar skolsituationen för elever vid komorbiditet samt vilka arbetssätt som främjar lärandet vid komorbiditet. Studien utgår från en kvalitativ metodansats och baseras på semistrukturerade intervjuer med tre speciallärare och trespecialpedagoger från grundskolan årskurs-f6. Resultaten från studien visar att samtliga informanter menar att en diagnos aldrig får avgöra om elever har rätt till stöd och anpassningar i skolan. Diagnoser, menar informanterna, kan vara användbart som ett verktyg för åtgärder. Informanterna menar samtidigt att ett alltförstort fokus på diagnoser kan leda till ett kategoriskt perspektiv på skolsvårigheter. Speciallärare och specialpedagoger, som deltagit i studien, menar att de har en central och avgörande roll att, med sin kompetens, handleda personal och stötta skolelever vid komorbiditet. Det kan ske i form av utveckling av lärmiljön, extraanpassningar, kompensation och färdighetsträning. Resultaten i denna studie synliggör att det specialpedagogiska uppdraget, enligt informanterna, består i att ta hänsyn till olika perspektiv och behov som finns i skolan.

Denna undersökning fokuserar på två olika aspekter av matematikundervisning. Den ena handlar om hur medvetna lärare är om dyslexi-relaterade svårigheter i matematikämnet och den andra om hur lärare organiserar matematiklektionerna. För att besvara frågeställningarna har en kvantitativ enkätstudie skickats ut och besvarats av lärare som har eller har haft elever med läs och skrivsvårigheter. Resultatet av studien visar på att den behavioristiska lärandeteorin är en tydlig del av undervisningens uppbyggnad. Det finns flera andra lärandeteorier som kan utläsas av vilka aktiviteter som sker under lektionerna, dessa lärandeteorier sker dock mer sällan. Ytterligare tyder resultatet på att elever med läs- och skrivsvårigheter blir påverkade av detta även under matematiklektionerna. / This study focuses on two different aspects of mathematics teaching. The first one is about how conscious teachers are about dyslexia-related difficulties in mathematics and the other one is about how teachers organize mathematics lessons. To answer the questions, a quantitative survey study was sent out and answered by teachers who have or have had students with reading and writing difficulties. The results of the study show that behavioral learning theory is a clear part of the structure of teaching. There are several other learning theories that can be observed from the activities that take place during the lessons, however, these activities happen less often than activities that are based on behaviorism. Further, the results indicate that students with reading and writing difficulties are affected by this even during mathematics lessons.

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.

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka vilka uppfattningar som lärare, speciallärare och specialpedagoger har kring vilka stödåtgärder som prioriteras för elever med samtidig dyslexi och ADHD, komorbiditet. För att få tillgång till dessa lärarkategoriers uppfattningar genomfördes elva semi-strukturerade intervjuer. Resultatet som framkom var för det första att det inte fanns någon kunskap om begreppet komorbiditet och vad det innebär, och för det andra att alla informanter kunde erinra en elev som troligtvis haft denna kombination utan att skolan vetat om det. Det framkom även att ADHD är det som prioriteras när stödåtgärder sätts in, eftersom det är svårt att bedriva undervisning om eleven har stora koncentrationssvårigheter och/eller är utåtagerande. Stödåtgärder för dyslexi sätts oftast inte in förrän eleven kommit upp på mellanstadiet och blivit utredd för sin ADHD samt fått medicin som lugnat beteendet. Relation lyfts fram som mycket viktigt för att arbetet med eleven ska bli framgångsrikt. Kunskapen om vilka stödåtgärder som fungerar bäst varierar från stor kring ADHD, relativt stor kring dyslexi, till att vara i stort sett obefintlig kring den komorbida formen ADHD - dyslexi.

Dyslexia affects between 5-17% of all school children, mak-ing it the most common learning disability. It has beenfound to severely affect learning ability in school subjectsas well as limit the choice of further education and occupa-tion. Since research has shown that early intervention andsupport can mitigate the negative effects of dyslexia, it iscrucial that the diagnosis of dyslexia is easily available andaimed at the right children. To make sure children whoare experiencing problems reading and potentially could bedyslectic are investigated for dyslexia an easy access, sys-tematic, and unbiased screening method would be helpful.This thesis therefore investigates the use of machine learn-ing methods to analyze eye movement patterns for dyslexiaclassification.The results showed that it was possible to separatedyslectic from non-dyslectic readers to 83% accuracy, us-ing non-sequential feature based machine learning methods.Equally good results for lower sample frequencies indicatedthat consumer grade eye trackers can be used for the pur-pose. Furthermore a sequential approach using RecurrentNeural Networks was also investigated, reaching an accu-racy of 78%. The thesis is intended to be an introduction to whatmethods could be viable for identifying dyslexia and as aninspiration for researchers aiming to do larger studies in thearea.

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This is a praxis-oriented case study of written language activities in Forms 1–5 in the nine-year Swedish compulsory school. The emphasis is on pupils at risk of de­veloping reading and writing disabilities. The aim of this study is to analyse the factors underlying successful reading and writing education and the pedagogical conditions promoting re­flective didactic skills, focusing on the students’ develop­ment of reading and writing abili­ties. The praxis-oriented approach is expressed by means of working with classroom ob­servat­ions and reflective communication with the teachers. Four classes at the junior and intermedi­ate levels of the nine-year compulsory Swedish school have been studied for two years. Both the schools and the teachers have been chosen strategically. Quantita­tive and qualitative data indicate that the selected schools have special qualifications. The teachers were chosen because they have proved particu­larly successful in devel­oping reading and wri­ting abilities of their pupils, including those with docu­mented reading and writing disabilities. Reports from the National Swedish Agency for Education, as well as large inter­na­t­ional surveys, indicate that the consensus concerning reading and writing edu­cation achieved by science during the past decade has had very little impact on everyday class­room activities. One of the underlying questions is how research re­sults are suc­cessfully implemented in everyday school work. The results show that the teachers use a wide variety of methods in response to the wide variety of students´ requirements. The lessons are characterized by in­tense activity on the part of both teacher and pupils, and of a high level of interac­tivity in communi­cation, reading, writing and counting. A surprising pattern is that the teach­ers very consciously work with oral presentation in various topics and genres. This gives students with reading and writing difficulties an op­portunity to succeed. The instruction is notable for being well-structured, with a balance between form and function, a high level of challenging tasks and visibilization of individual pro­gress. The special needs education aspect of the instruction appears in the te­achers’ abilities to arrange pedagogical situations in which a wide variety of abilities can be expressed and developed. The teachers show a positive belief in their stu­dents and strive to make them successful in a social context. This study indicates the importance of a solid theoretical background, enabling the te­acher to identify the developmental stage the student is at and to adapt the instruction accordingly. Another important factor is the ability of the teacher to in­stantly see and grasp pedagogical opportunities and to interpret and utilize the diag­nostic signals in the classroom. One im­portant conclusion is that reading and writing education, in order to be successful, must be viewed in a context of lan­guage development as a whole, involving both its oral and its writ­ten aspects. This study also demonstrates that research results are perceived as more acces­si­ble and relevant by the teachers when the researchers’ focus is on applied peda­gog­ics, al­lowing theory and practical applications to interact. This opens up the possi­bility of es­tablishing and incor­porating scientific theories on learning in every­day, practical school work. / Detta är en longitudinell studie som tar sin utgångpunkt i Tjernbergs magisterstudie (Tjernberg, 2007). Detta innebär att vissa avsnitt från denna återfinns i licentiatavhandlingen, främst i de teoretiska utgångspunkterna och metodavsnittet. (Denna not tillfogades 20121201.)

Public libraries belong to the so-called public library system and must ensure that people with functional variations have access to literature in various formats but also technical solutions that enable the person to assimilate the literature (SFS, 2013: 801). What opportunities do public libraries have to keep up with the development of technology for people with reading disabilities? The technological development has in recent years gone very fast and the public libraries financial resources has not increased in the same way as the technology development instead has the financial resource decreased (Hansson and Linder, 2019).  The purpose of the study is to gain an increased understanding of inclusive activities within library activities for people with reading and writing difficulties. The question: What services and aids do public libraries offer on their websites for people with reading disabilities?  The study is a qualitative content analysis and an empirical inductive approach and where the collected material forms a pattern which in turn can be divided into categories (Patel and Davidson, 2011).  The results show that there is a big difference between the aids that public libraries advertise on their websites. Most of the public libraries advertise on their websites that they have E-books, E-textbooks and Daisy-books. There are some public libraries who advertise having several formats of books, for example cd-books, tactile books and braille-books.

The purpose of this study was to research the experience of support in school for five students with dyslexia. Based on the above, the type of support the students received was examined, their individual experience with their learning difficulties, digital technology and their views about themselves and their individual learning. The study was based on a special educational and socio-cultural perspective.Support in the form of individualized teaching of special educators or specialist teachers has been the method that has historically been used the longest and all students testified to such support in the earlier years. Recently, digital tools have begun to be used more and the studies conducted in this field show that the effect is positive.The study was conducted using qualitative method based on personal interviews of five students in age 14 and 15. The results of this study showed that a majority of the students were positive about the support they received in school for their dyslexic difficulties. The teacher was an important factor in having the dyslexic student’s learning to be most effective. It appears that support for their dyslexic difficulties can contribute to the students feeling more involved in the school, which leads to increased motivation. However, detailed requirements for implementation and support are required for digital learning support to work most effectively. The teacher and their competencies are of great importance when working with students with dyslexia related to the use of digital technology.The school is facing a dilemma as special support can be perceived as a stigma and at the same time it is the prerequisite for the student’s experience of inclusion at the school. It also became clear that several students experienced the level of technology support inadequate.In a future study, the school should review the organizational structure and the specialist teacher’s role as the one who has the key responsibility and assists in the implementation of digital tools in the continuous support for their students.