Over on Spedpro, Margo Mastropieri announced the annual competition for an award recognizing research on Learning Disabilities conducted by a doctoral student. Here’s a snippet:
The Division for Learning Disabilities (DLD) within the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) announces its annual competition for outstanding doctoral-level research in the field of learning disabilities. The purposes of the award are to encourage excellence in doctoral level research and to recognize quality research that contributes to the field of learning disabilities. Refer to TeachingLD.org for additional information.
Link
In a move that it hopes will encourage early assessment and identification where appropriate (a hope I share), Schwab Learning announced the availability of a new interactive tool for parents who suspect their child may have a learning problem. The Web site, which is supported by the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, focuses on helping families of children with learning and attention problems. The unique guide, “When Your Child Struggles with Learning: A Step-by-Step Guide for Getting Help,” covers content relevant for each of the myriad steps in assessment and identification of Learning Disabilities.
If your child struggles with learning, you may have more questions than answers, such as:
Where do I start?
Where can I get help?
What’s my next step?
Our interactive guide will help you navigate this often complicated journey. We’ll lead you through the process by providing tips, strategies, and essential resources to answer your questions at every step along the way.
Link to the Schwab Learning page where one can launch the guide.
ABC.net—the Australian Broadcasting Corporation—reported that local politicians are discussing the need for additional specialists to help students with Learning Disabilities.
The Opposition’s education spokeswoman, Sue Napier, is calling on the State Government to fund more specialist staff to help school students with learning disabilities.
Ms Napier says a lack of specialists such as speech pathologists in schools means many children with disabilities such as dyslexia are failing to achieve basic literacy.
She says more than 10% of Tasmanian children suffer from some form of learning disability.
The full story is pretty brief, but here’s the link.
If you live in my neighborhood (Charlottesville, VA, US), you or your child can participate in a project that will allow you to obtain scores from a battery of cognitive tests. My colleauge (and friend), Ron Reeve teaches a course that requires his graduate students to practice giving and interpreting widely used tests of cognitive ability. Professor Reeve is seeking volunteers to whom his students can administer the tests.
Better that Professor Reeve explain this than for me to make a mash of it:
I teach a graduate course (EDHS 764, “Cognitive Assessment”) in which doctoral students learn to give and interpret IQ tests. We are in need of about 50 volunteer children and adults who are willing to take the tests. The instruments will include the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Ability, and the Differential Ability Scales. Age range for the tests is 4 through 89; so there’s a test for almost everyone! Testing will require about 1.5 hours, and can occur at a time which is mutually convenient. Typically the testing takes place in Curry, although we can be flexible about that. The tasks are interesting, and most children (and adults) actually enjoy the 1 to 1 interaction and the experience of taking the tests. Results will be shared with you if you wish through a written report. Each test’s scoring and interpretation is supervised by me (I am a licensed clinical psychologist and a licensed school psychologist). There is no fee (typically in the community the fee is about $400). Contact me via e-mail if interested. We need adult subjects asap, to start in a week or so. Children are needed beginning in mid-September and throughout the fall. Thanks for considering this.
Write to Professor Reeve at RER5R -a@t- Virginia.edu (clean up that address, of course).
Parents, as Professor Reeve will likely inform you, it would be inappropriate to consider the results of these tests as definitive. They may be administered by novice or relatively inexperienced testers, so you shouldn’t plan to use the results in making decisions about your child’s future.
In a study that received some national press coverage, Professor Lee Kern and colleagues reported the results of a study designed to assess the benefits of (a) parent education aimed at teaching parents how to tailor behavior management procedures to the needs of individual children with ADHD in comparison to (b) parent education that addressed general issues in child development and parenting. Although they discuss the improvement of the children in the two groups, they did not find significant differences between them on a wide array of measures.
Recent research suggests that symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder may begin to emerge in children at a very young age. Given that early onset is associated with more deleterious outcomes, early intervention is imperative. In the current study, we evaluated the effectiveness of two different interventions with children aged 3-5 years. A multicomponent intervention combined parent education and individualized assessment-based intervention in home and preschool or day care settings was compared with a parent education intervention consisting of parent education alone. Both interventions resulted in significant improvements measured by standardized assessments of behavior and preacademic skills. There were no significant differences between the intervention groups 1 year postintervention. Implications for further research and practice are discussed.
The study is entitled “Multisetting Assessment-Based Intervention for Young Children at Risk for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Initial Effects on Academic and Behavioral Functioning” and, in addition to Professor Kern, the authors are George J. DuPaul, Robert J. Volpe, Natalie G. Sokol, J. Gary Lutz, Lauren A. Arbolino, Mary Pipan, John D. VanBrakle. It appeared in School Psychology Review, issue 36, number 2 in June 2007. There is more about the project available from a news release by Lehigh University, where several of the authors are on the faculty. There are links to videos of Professors Kern and DuPaul discussing the research.
Press coverage is available from USA Today (Easy non-drug help aids ADHD kids) and CNN (Some techniques to help 3- to 5-year olds with ADHD).
LD Worldwide
Learning Disabilities Worldwide is an international organization that serves parents, individuals with Learning Disabilities, educators, clinicians, and researchers. Here are its goals:
Here’s a link to the Web site for the organization. Note that I added it to the blogroll, so one doesn’t have to go back to this post to find a link to it.