Special Education and Teaching Commons^™

“More Time. More Showing. More Helping. That’S How It Sticks”: The Perspectives Of Early Childhood Coachees, Lisa L. Knoche, Miriam E. Kuhn, Jungwon Eum

Special Education and Communication Disorders Faculty Publications

Coaching is a form of consultation used in early childhood settings to support positive outcomes for young children and families. While some research shows the effectiveness of coaching on practice and outcomes, little information is available on the experiences and perspectives of “coachees” as recipients of coaching support. The purpose of this study was to understand, from the coachees’ point of view, the benefits and challenges of participating in an early childhood coaching relationship. Twenty-one parents, preschool teachers and childcare providers who had engaged in coaching relationships participated in interviews and completed surveys regarding their experiences and perspectives. Data were …

Communication-Based Assessment Of Developmental Age For Young Children With Developmental Disabilities, Shari L. Deveney, Lesa Hoffman, Cynthia J. Cress

Special Education and Communication Disorders Faculty Publications

Purpose: In this study, the authors compared a multiple-domain strategy for assessing developmental age of young children with developmental disabilities who were at risk for long-term reliance on augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) with a communication-based strategy composed of receptive language and communication indices that may be less affected by physically challenging tasks than traditional developmental age scores.

Method: Participants were 42 children (age 9–27 months) with developmental disabilities and who were at risk for long-term reliance on AAC. Children were assessed longitudinally in their homes at 3 occasions over 18 months using multiple-domain and communication-based measures. Confirmatory factor analysis …

Do Declining Neighborhood Economic Conditions Trump Hoped For School Renovation Renewal Benefit?, John W. Hill

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study was to determine (a) individual student achievement, (b) teacher mobility rates, (c) perceptions of safety at school, and (d) student enrollment patterns, over time, in two recently renovated, same city, urban, No Child Left Behind compliant, Title I elementary school buildings located in close proximity neighborhoods one with improving the other with declining economic conditions. Achievement results indicated that fifth-grade students (n = 18) who attended a renovated school second-grade through fifth-grade in a neighborhood with improving economic conditions compared to fifth-grade students (n = 15) who attended a renovated school second-grade through fifth-grade in …

Have Institutional Review Board Regulations Affected Research Approval Patterns?, John W. Hill

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Not-So-Simple View Of Adolescent Writing, Apryl L. Poch, Erica S. Lembke

Special Education and Communication Disorders Faculty Publications

According to the Simple View of Writing, four primary skills are necessary for successful writing (Berninger & Amtmann, 2003; Berninger & Winn, 2006). Transcription skills (e.g., handwriting, spelling) represent lower-order cognitive tasks, whereas text generation skills (e.g., ideation, translation) represent higher-order writing/cognitive abilities. Self-regulatory executive functions include the attentional and regulatory abilities that help manage the writing process, and working memory represents the cognitive complexity of the writing process. Exploratory factor analysis was used to explore the relations amongst the components of the Simple View of Writing. A one-way ANOVA tested for differences between struggling and non-struggling writers on the …

Emotional/Behavioral Disorders: A Retrospective Examination Of Social Skills, Linguistics, And Student Outcomes, John W. Hill, Kathy L. Coufal

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

A language-based social skills instruction intervention used to prepare middle and high school students with emotional/behavioral disorders for return to less restrictive public school placements was evaluated. The daily 50-minute intervention focused on repetitive readings, recitations, and role-playing of skill step procedures until students achieved mastery on each required task in five broad dimensions: peer relations, self-management, academic, compliance, and assertion. The students were divided into three groups according to the length of intervention (under 2 years, 2 to 3 years, and more than 3 years). Dependent t tests were used to test the effects of prolonged intervention on past …

The Current Training Practices And Perceived Training Needs Of Paraprofessionals In Special Education Programs In Nebraska, Enid Ann Schonewise

Student Work

The purpose o f this study was to determine (a) the current training practices for paraprofessionals as perceived by building administrators, special education teachers, and paraprofessionals in special education programs in the state of Nebraska, (b) the perceived training needs o f paraprofessionals, as viewed by building administrators, special education teachers, and paraprofessionals, (c) the differences that exist between current training practices and perceived training needs of paraprofessionals and the differences that exist in perceptions of building administrators, special education teachers, and paraprofessionals, and (d) the changes that have occurred in training practices since 1982.

Building administrators, special education teachers, …

Home For The Holidays: A Red-Flag, Carry-In, Reclaiming Intervention, John W. Hill

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Impulse Control Rap: "We Got A Skill To Help You Chill", John W. Hill

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Availability Of Inferences In Children And Young Adults, Gerilyn A. Katz

Student Work

Much of the research on age-related differences in the ability to inhibit irrelevant information in a given task has been on the study of younger and older adults. Only a minimal amount of research has focused on the developmental differences in children and young adults. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to examine whether age-related differences exist between children and young adults in processes consistent with inhibition.

Third-, sixth-grade children, and college undergraduates listened to twenty-four garden path passages containing either expected or unexpected, but acceptable, conclusions. The twenty-four passages were divided into four subsets, with each subset containing …

Wisc-Iii Profile Patterns Of Learning Disabled Children, Russell Goetting

Student Work

The present study examined the performance of a heterogeneous population of learning disabled children (N=171) and children with learning disabilities in reading (LD-R), math (LD-M), and reading and math (LD-R+M) on the WISC-III ACID and SCAD subtests (Arithmetic, Coding, Information, Digit Span, and Symbol Search). Archival WISC-III scores of children that have been verified as having a learning disability in fourteen Midwestern school systems were used to answer the research questions in this study. Two different methods of examining performance on the ACID and SCAD subtests were used in this study, the index score method and the profile method. The …

Connecting Reasoning And Writing In Student "How To" Manuals, John W. Hill

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

An Investigation Of Source Memory In Learning Disabled Children, Roseanne Hatt Ewing

Student Work

Recognition memory and memory for source information were examined in learning disabled (LD) and nondisabled (NLD) children in two experimental conditions. In the listen-listen condition (external source monitoring), subjects watched a videotape in which two girls completed sentences that were constructed so as to highly constrain a terminal noun. In the think-listen condition (reality monitoring), subjects were asked to imagine themselves completing some sentences and to listen as a girl on the videotape completed other sentences. In each of the two experimental conditions, half of the stimuli were presented once, and half were presented twice. Recognition memory and source memory …

Stability Of Wisc-R Scores Between Triennial Evaluations Of Learning Disabled Students, Norman J. Wozny

Student Work

Recent studies of intelligence test score stability among learning disabled children have reported adequate stability when correlational and analysis of variance (ANOVA) techniques were used. However, less than adequate score stability has been found when individual scores were examined. The present study explores the test-retest stability of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-R) using three statistical methods: Pearson product-moment correlation, analysis of variance, and an examination of individual scores. Regression to the mean is also examined. While reasonably high levels of stability are concluded by the Pearson product-moment correlations, significant drops in Verbal and Full Scale IQ scores between …

Direct And Indirect Testing Of Memory In Children With Learning Disabilities, Janette L. Sodoro

Student Work

This study examined the relation between performance on direct and indirect measures of memory for pictures and words in children with learning disabilities. Recognition memory provided the direct measure and the magnitude of naming facilitation provided the indirect measure. Fourth grade learning disabled and nonlearning disabled children were asked to study a mixed list of pictures and words. A naming/recognition task was administered immediately following the study phase, as well as the following day. In addition, source memory was measured immediately following each recognition decision. For each item recognized as "old", subjects were required to render a decision about the …

Personnel Staff Attitudes Toward The Employment Of Persons With Physical Disability, Mental Retardation, Or Mental Illness, Karol Ruth Oldenburg

Student Work

This thesis describes a measurement of personnel staff attitudes and perceptions toward the employability of disabled job applicants. More specifically, direct comparisons among three types of disability categories were made using Osgood's Semantic Scaling Method.

Sixty employment professionals of the Lincoln Human Resources Management Association rated a job applicant with physical disability, with mental retardation, and one with mental illness on the basis of 15 paired opposite adjectives. These adjectives described a variety of attributes which could be grouped into evaluative, potency, and activity dimensions of semantic space.

Respondents completed a four-page questionnaire which rated physically disabled, mentally retarded, and …

The Effect Of Computer Use On The Process Writing Of Learning Disabled Students, John W. Hill

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

At-Risk Youth In Suburban Nebraska, John W. Hill

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Use Of Goal Setting By A Mentally Retarded Woman To Increase Productivity And Reduce Errors In A Competitive Job Training Site, Rita J. Yasson

Student Work

What students who have mental retardation do upon graduation has become a major concern of the 80?s. Over fifteen years ago parents of moderately retarded adults expressed concerns about the quality of life their children experienced after graduation (Stanfield, 1973). Data from 120 parent interviews showed that 40% of their children worked in a sheltered work setting, 2% worked for a family business, 11% attended an activity center and a large portion of them, 44% were not employed or were in a habitation program. Over ten years later, another follow-up study indicated unemployment at a rate of 67% in the …

Amounts Of Nonverbal Behavior In Students Labeled Behaviorally Impaired And Comparison Students, Christine Rudolph

Student Work

The child’s behavioral and communicative skills are comprised of verbal and nonverbal components. The importance of a nonverbal context for smooth communication and interaction is often only evident when it is absent or defective, such as in children with severe behavioral disorders (autistic, schizophrenic). Actions and the way of saying things, rather than words, are essentially important since they are used deliberately or inadvertently to convey feelings or attitudes and determine the effectiveness of social and working relationships.

An Investigation Of The Relationship Between Processing Rate And Memory Span In Learning Disabled Children, Jeffrey Wayne Gray

Student Work

Slow rate of information processing has been offered as an explanation for the short-term memory problems of learning and/or reading disabled children (e.g., Spring & Capps, 1974). The present investigation used an item identification task and a memory span task to determine whether, when learning and/or reading disabled and non-disabled children are equated with regard to the speed with which they process information, their measured memory spans are also equal. It was hypothesized that the observed memory span differences would be eliminated by equating the two groups on a measure of processing rate.

The Relation Of Visual Fixation And Pursuit To Posture In Four Month Infants, Nancy M. Fieber

Student Work

The frozen posture of a young child as he visually attends to something of interest, or the very young infantTs wide open eyes and mouth as he fixes on a stimulus, illustrate dramatically the close relationship between the visual system and the total action system. The two appear to be inseparable and interdependent.

When vision is impaired, control of posture may be impaired as evidenced by the typical delay in head righting in prone and all-fours postures of the blind infant. (Gesell and Amatruda, 1941; Gesell et al, 1949) In other children with severe visual impairment a peculiar head posture …

An Experimental Study Of The Impact Of Clinical Psychodiagnosis, Diagnostic Concept And Dogmatism On The Perception Of Psychopathology., Jane Ellen Stilwell Smith

Student Work

The subject of psychiatric diagnosis and the ramifications of a person being labeled as "mentally ill" has attracted increased attention in the past decade. Personal testimony from psychiatric patients about the difficulty in securing employment, returning to familiar abodes, and re-entering a scholastic environment because of rejection by "normal" society, has been documented in confidential case files, witnessed by friends and relatives, and published for lay consumption (Rubin, 1960; Salinger, 1951; and Green, 1964). Other literature has been devoted to the apparently negative psychological aspects of being an in-patient in a mental institution (Caudwill, 1958; Goffman, 1961; and Gordon, 1971). …