The purpose of this study was to describe the experiences of students with intellectual disability (ID) and their teachers throughout the implementation process of an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device. Two students and three teachers at an arts-based school for adults with developmental disabilities were trained by a speech and language pathologist on how to use the device. The students were selected by the teachers because they had limited ability to produce speech, and it was thought that they would benefit from using the device. The three teachers made up the school’s faculty, and the speech and language pathologist was selected based on her expertise working with people with developmental disabilities. Self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985) framed the study, and, it guided the observations and discussion of this thesis. Student experiences were explained through the lens of this theory, but teacher experiences were more applicable to Guskey’s (1989) model of teacher change. This framework was used to interpret the experiences of the teachers. Data were collected through direct observations and teacher journals throughout the implementation process, and semi-structured interviews, post-implementation. A total of 10, one-hour observations per student were conducted between January 15, 2013 and March 11, 2013; with one additional observation of an unplanned follow-up session that lasted one-and-a-half hours on May 8, 2013. The researcher observed student communication and engagement before, during, and after the device was brought into the class. The implementation steps included: introduction and experimentation with the AAC device in-class; teacher-only training; in-class student coaching and modeling; and withdrawal of SLP support. This study found that that there were practical and logistical challenges with AAC device implementation for both students and teachers. Limited time for in-class training, strategic planning, goal-setting, and financial resources, such as funds to hire supply teachers so that teachers could observe in-class training, were barriers to implementation. One student, more than the other, used the AAC device to communicate throughout the study. Recommendations emerging from the study included more purposeful advance planning, goal-setting, developing teacher pedagogical knowledge prior to implementation, and collectively-planned in-class training sessions for students and teachers. / Thesis (Master, Education) -- Queen's University, 2014-01-30 11:38:38.195

The Assessment of Basic Learning Abilities (ABLA) test, developed by Kerr, Meyerson, and Flora (1977) assesses the ease or difficulty with which individuals with developmental disabilities are able to learn a simple imitation and five two-choice discrimination tasks. During ABLA Level 2, referred to as a position discrimination task, the client is presented with a yellow can always on the left and a smaller red box always on the right. The client is required to place an irregularly shaped piece of foam into the container on the left (the yellow can) for a correct response. With this task a client can learn to make a correct response based on position, colour, shape, or size cues, or some combination of these. The current study evaluated the relative difficulty of ABLA Level 2 and two additional types of position discriminations. The first type of task was similar to ABLA Level 2, except that it used identical containers, and thus contained both relative and absolute position cues (the REAB task), but not shape, colour, or size cues. The second type of task was similar to ABLA Level 2; however, it incorporated identical containers that varied in their absolute positions, which required a relative position discrimination to arrive at the correct response (the RE task). In Experiment 1, I used an alternating-treatments design with replication within and across three participants who passed ABLA Level 2 but failed all higher levels, to examine how many trials were required to master tasks analogous to ABLA Level 2, versus REAB tasks, versus RE tasks. In Experiment 2, I used a within-subject design with replication across three participants to further clarify the relative difficulty of the three position discrimination tasks, and to determine whether correct container location (i.e. left versus right) can influence the difficulty of learning the tasks. The results demonstrated that there was no consistent difference in difficulty between the three types of tasks, and the difficulties experienced by P1 and P2 can be accounted for entirely by an interaction between the right-left location of the correct response and handedness.

A model of education known as the Expanded Core Curriculum (ECC) (Lohmeier 2005) proposes that, for blind students, the inability to learn visually severely curtails learning opportunities. A program of instruction must teach skills and knowledge traditionally learned by visual observation. The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between the ECC and social capital (Lareau and Weininger 2003) and to discover whether visually impaired individuals who have received an education based on the majority of the elements from the ECC demonstrate greater ability to acquire social capital than visually impaired individuals who have received a more traditional education based on the core curriculum. The data collected established the subjects’ level of social capital; the nature of their education (Core vs. ECC); the link if any between social capital and their educational experience; and the degree of social integration including upward career mobility. Findings included: • Those subjects who reported involvement in non-work related activities perceived a positive employment relationship, indicating high social capital. • Education based on the ECC was limited, as demonstrated by subjects’ limited career development. • Subjects made good use of tacit knowledge, even though the education received was not based on the ECC. • All subjects described their social relationships at work in functional rather than sociological terms. Subjects who described limited social activities with co-workers away from the workplace appeared to have limited social lives generally. The study’s conclusions are that formal instruction in soft skills and knowledge of the organization’s culture, as well as orientation to workplace culture, are critical to the development of a high-quality employment relationship. Initiatives to compensate for the inability of visually impaired persons to acquire this information coincidentally would help others who experience challenges in their efforts to acquire social capital

In my thesis I engage selected texts of Jacques Derrida, David Wills, and Jean-Luc Nancy in order to draw on specific motifs that are relevant for a thinking of sight and blindness. The motifs on which I elaborate are immediacy, prosthesis, and extension respectively. In consecutive chapters, based on close readings of these selected texts and the development of these motifs in them, my study elaborates on the relevance of the work of these three thinkers for a thinking of sight and blindness that does not conform to the hierarchical dualisms of Western metaphysics. Following this, I engage three texts by selected theorists from the large and growing field of disability studies—Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Lennard Davis, David T. Mitchell, and Susan L. Snyder—in order to make the case that disability studies has not yet challenged its own metaphysical assumptions.

Summary Swimming is the most suitable branch of athletics for people with various handicaps. Much research is done and many scientific articles are written in foreign countries on the benefits of swimming for the handicapped, therefore there should be no doubt about it. In Lithuania however, little attention is paid to handicapped swimming. Desiring that the handicapped should reach higher levels of achievement, young swimmers should pay more attention to this sport. Because of this reason our objective is to determine disabled adolescents, their parents, swimming couches and municipality council members of Kaunas city attitude toward swimming for disabled like social phenomenon Our tasks were: 1. To determine handicapped adolescent’s knowledge’s about swimming as social phenomenon. 2. To determine handicapped adolescent’s attitude toward swimming training for disabled. 3. To determine handicapped adolescent’s parent’s attitude toward swimming training for disabled. 4. To determine coacher’s from Kaunas city attitude toward disabled children in their swimming classes. 5. To determine the attitude, about swimming for disabled, of municipality council members of Kaunas city and their abilities to improve swimming adaptation for disabled. Used methods: 1. Literature review, 2. Questionnaires, 3. Mathematical statistics We found out that the knowledge of handicapped adolescents about swimming as a branch of athletics is weak and is not dependent on their impairment. Disabled... [to full text]

People with disabilities are a ‘disadvantaged’ group, not only due to their impairment, but also due to the formal and informal institutional inertia that they contend with in Western Societies. This disadvantage has been recognised and acknowledged in the social model of disability. This model understands that disability is a social construction placed on people with impairments. The Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is a tool which identifies inequities in policy, and is potentially a useful tool to aid the response of policy makers to the needs of people with disabilities. Arguably, the New Zealand HIA guidelines reflect the underlying principles of the social model of disability. Using a mixed methods research strategy, this thesis sets out to understand in a global context using a top-down quantitative analysis, to what extent the New Zealand HIA guidelines which acknowledge the social model of disability are translated into practice. It then subsequently investigates from a bottom-up qualitative perspective, what factors influence this relationship. It is argued in this thesis that there are barriers to translating the rhetoric about people with disabilities found in the HIA guidelines into practice. Three sets of inter-related barriers identified include attitudinal barriers to people with disabilities, generic HIA barriers, and barriers related to the feminist interpretation of the construction of disability. In this thesis, the research findings conclude that it is difficult to operationalise the disability awareness present in the HIA guidelines due to barriers which are related to the ‘othering’ of people with disabilities. This is discussed in relation to feminist analyses of the construction of people with disabilities, and it needs to be addressed by wider societal reforms. The thesis makes the recommendation that a national awareness-raising campaign about people with disabilities be undertaken in New Zealand in an attempt to rectify this situation.

This thesis explores the topic of belonging: both the sense and experience of it as well as the relationship to individual and collective well-being. Through in-depth interviews with five leaders and advocates in the social justice community, I explore their perspectives on the topic, significant influences, the power of the experience, and the relationship between inclusion and belonging. Further, the capacity for belonging to influence and impact social issues such as marginalization, discrimination, and poverty are explored. Methods for fostering belonging are also considered with a view to suggesting recommendations for promoting a lens of belonging as a means for renewing a commitment to the beloved community. / Graduate

New Zealand education policies and documents (Ministry of Education, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011a, 2014a) situate students at the centre of assessment processes that are underpinned by the New Zealand Curriculum. They identify building student assessment capability as crucial to achieving improvement in learning. Documents recognize the impact of quality interactions and relationships on effective assessment. However these core beliefs about assessment are not observed to guide teaching practices for all students. Disabled students remain invisible in assessment data and practices within New Zealand secondary schools. There appears to be little or no assessment data about learning outcomes for this group of students. This thesis investigates possible ways to recognize the diversity of student capability and learning through the use of narrative assessment. It challenges the absence of disabled students in assessment landscapes as educator roles and responsibilities within assessment, teaching and learning are framed within an inclusive pedagogy. This research project focuses on how a team of adults and two students labeled as disabled make sense of assessment and learning within the context of narrative assessment in the students’ regular high school. The project examines the consequences of narrative assessment on student identity, wellbeing and participation within learning. The study offers opportunities to observe how specialists from outside of the school respond to the use of narrative as they work with the two student research participants. This study undertakes a critical inquiry that recognises the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi – partnership, protection and participation – as pivotal to inclusive practice where all students are valued as learners. It investigates how narrative assessment can honour these principles in everyday teaching practice. The project aims to inform education policy and practice, with a view to enriching learning outcomes and opportunities for disabled students who are frequently marginalized by inequitable assessment processes. It is argued that narrative assessment can support the construction of student identity and wellbeing. It can support the recognition of disabled students as partners in their learning. However the value of narrative assessment can be undermined by the responses of educators and other professionals who continue to work within deficit models of assessment, teaching and learning. Within this thesis adult participants from family and education contexts have clear ideas about the value and validity of assessment practices and processes that do not respect a presumption of competence or a need to establish a relationship with a student being assessed. Their views challenge everyday practices that fulfill assessment contracts, but ignore Treaty of Waitangi and New Zealand Curriculum commitments. Their views can inform better ways of working between specialists and schools supporting disabled students.

This study presented six typically developing children between the ages of five to eight with familiarization (baseline) in a mock scanner after which behavioural intervention ensued, in a non-concurrent multiple baseline design. The behavioural intervention included reinforcement for the contingency of lying motionless, and response cost (the removal of desirable stimuli) as a punishment contingency for movement. During baseline, all children showed a fair amount of head motion in the mock scanner. During intervention, small to large reductions in head motion were observed for five of the six participants. Therefore, use of the mock scanner and the reinforcement/punishment contingencies, may be an aid used prior to actual MRI/fMRI scans for children between the ages of five to eight: it is cost effective, may require only a session or two of intervention to be effective, and the potentially dangerous side effects and/or disabilities of sedation/anaesthesia can be avoided.

The purpose of this study was to identify the differences in the reading behaviors of subgroups of learning disabled children and of normal children.The null hypothesis tested in this study explored differences in the performances of learning disabled subgroups and normal children in the following areas: graphic similarity, sound similarity, grammatical function, comprehension pattern, grammatical relationships and retelling score. These areas were measured by the use of the Reading; Miscue Inventory and the Analytical Reading Inventory.Ninety students were chosen to participate in the study. Fifty-eight learning disabled students were classified either Learning Disabled - No Discrepancy or Learning Disabled - Discrepancy according to scores obtained on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children - Revised. Thirty-two average students were chosen by a teacher questionnaire.Multivariate analysis of variance was used to assess between group differences. Since the null hypothesis was rejected, pest hoc pairwise comparisons were conducted tc determine which pairs of means were responsible for the overall rejection. Only the difference in the Sound Similarity measure for the normal group and the LD-N subgroup emerged as clearly contributing to that rejection. Although the Retelling measure was also found to contribute significantly, this difference was not explained by any of the pairwise comparisons.