Learning Motivation in the Postsecondary Classroom

The community college holds the promise of a better life for many. As open admissions institutions, community colleges provide educational opportunities for all citizens regardless of past academic or social background. Research needs to be conducted on students to develop programs tailored to meet their needs.     

Promising Practices for Providing Alternative Media to Postsecondary Students with Print Disabilities

For postsecondary students with disabilities influencing reading performance, printed class materials pose a substantial barrier and have a negative impact on academic achievement. Digital technologies offer alternative ways of accessing print materials for students with print‐related disabilities. Alternative media is a broad term that encompasses a variety of formats into which printed text is converted. Alternative media, together with assistive computer technologies designed to read aloud the text, provide a means to access textual information and bypass the difficult reading process. The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of model programs and pertinent research on the use of alternative media by postsecondary students with print disabilities; we will identify promising practices for students whose disabilities negatively influence reading performance.     

Allergies and Learning Disabilities: A Status Report

This literature review examines the relationship between allergies and learning disabilities. Do allergies cause learning disabilities and related behavioural difficulties? The existing research is summarized and evaluated. The authors conclude that the role that allergies play in LD is complex and interrelated with other factors.     

Social-Emotional Predictors of Postsecondary Enrollment for Students with Disabilities: Findings from a Nationally Representative Sample

Despite improvement in educational opportunity and outcomes, students with disabilities remain substantially less likely to participate in postsecondary education than individuals without disabilities. The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine the relations of teacher-rated social-emotional skills to postsecondary enrollment among students with disabilities. Using data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2, a classification tree analysis was conducted to ascertain which social-emotional skills were predictive of postsecondary enrollment in conjunction with student sociodemographic characteristics. Results indicate that compliance and, to a lesser extent, peer-relations skills, in addition to family income, predict postsecondary enrollment for students with high-incidence disabilities. This finding suggests that social-emotional skills play an important role in postsecondary enrollment for students with disabilities, providing support for the use of social-emotional skills interventions in improving postsecondary enrollment rates for students with disabilities.     

The State of Cooperative Learning in Postsecondary and Professional Settings

Modern cooperative learning began in the mid- 1960s (D. W. Johnson & R. Johnson, 1999a). Its use, however, was resisted by advocates of social Darwinism (who believed that students must be taught to survive in a “dog-eat-dog” world) and individualism (who believed in the myth of the “rugged individualist”). Despite the resistance, cooperative learning is now an accepted, and often the preferred, instructional procedures at all levels of education. Cooperative learning is being used in postsecondary education in every part of the world. It is difficult to find a text on instructional methods, a journal on teaching, or instructional guidelines that do not discuss cooperative learning. Materials on cooperative learning have been translated into dozens of languages. Cooperative learning is one of the success stories of both psychology and education. One of the most distinctive characteristics of cooperative learning, and perhaps the reason for its success, is the close relationship between theory, research, and practice. In this article, social interdependence theory will be reviewed, the research validating the theory will be summarized, and the five basic elements needed to understand the dynamics of cooperation and operationalize the validated theory will be discussed. Finally the controversies in the research and the remaining questions that need to be answered by future research will be noted.     

Augmented Reality for Teaching Science Vocabulary to Postsecondary Education Students With Intellectual Disabilities and Autism

The purpose of this study was to examine the use of an emerging technology called augmented reality to teach science vocabulary words to college students with intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorders. One student with autism and three students with an intellectual disability participated in a multiple probe across behaviors (i.e., acquisition of science vocabulary words) design. Data were collected on each student's ability to define and label three sets of science vocabulary words (i.e., bones, organs, and plant cells). The results indicate that all students acquired definition and labeling knowledge for the new science vocabulary terms. Results are discussed in the context of applying universal design principles with emerging technologies to create authentic opportunities for students with intellectual disabilities and autism spectrum disorders to learn science vocabulary. (Keywords: augmented reality, autism, intellectual disability, science vocabulary, universal design for learning)     

学习不良儿童的诊断与治疗

当今心理学界或教育界对学习不良的界定还存在争义 ,但有些儿童的学习困难又是不可忽视的。本文首先对学习不良的理论定义和操作定义做了简要的总结 ,然后介绍了我们在实践过程中对学习不良儿童的诊断与治疗     

学习困难学生教育干预中的激励手段

学习困难学生(以下简称学困生)的动机水平和任务坚持性已越来越受到特殊教育界的关注.传统的学习困难研究一般从学困生的认知角度进行分析和设计教育手段,但现在人们越来越认识到非认知因素对学困生的影响.     

Parental Perceptions of Learning Disabilities

Abstract

The research presented in this article analyses 242 written responses to interview questions conducted with families who live in the United States to explore parental perceptions of disabilities. The data were analyzed through a case study methodology and discourse analysis. Findings from this study illustrate how parents drew upon both medical metaphors and sociocultural factors to discuss their perceptions of their or their children’s perceived learning disabilities.     

多维视角中的学习不良研究

目前的学习不良现象的研究,理论视点多集中在心理学和教育学领域。而在急遽变动的多元化社会中,对学习不良现象的研究需要建立多重分析框架,从情境视角、互动视角和反思视角等不同的视角来进行。     

Students With Learning Disabilities: Homework Problems and Promising Practices

Students with learning disabilities are more likely than other students to have problems doing homework. In this article, we describe how deficits in language, attention, memory, and organizational skills as well as in reading, writing, and math affect homework performance. We describe family and school factors that may exacerbate-or ameliorate-their problems as well as the intervention research that has included students with learning disabilities. At this point, there appears to be a huge gap between the strategies successfully applied in intervention studies and teachers' preferences for interventions, a serious issue that spills over and has a negative influence on family life. Nonetheless, an emerging area of intervention research suggests that effective efforts to improve homework completion, accuracy, and test performance may require parental involvement, peer cooperation, self-monitoring and graphing, "real-life" assignments, teachercollaborative problem solving, or all.     

Science Education and Students with Learning Disabilities

Students with learning disabilities (LD) are increasingly expected to master content in the general education curriculum, making the need for effective instructional supports more important than ever before. Science is a part of the curriculum that can be particularly challenging to students with LD because of the diverse demands it places on cognitive performance. In this summary we review a number of strategies that have been validated for learners with LD. The strategies include supports for (a) verbal learning of declarative information, (b) processing information in texts, (c) activities‐based instruction/experiential learning, (d) scientific thinking and reasoning, and (e) differentiated instruction. We also summarize the research regarding the impact of teacher behavior on achievement for students with LD in science education. The strategies reviewed yield tangible and positive effect sizes that suggest that their application to the target domain will substantially improve outcomes for students with LD in science education.     

融入通用学习设计理念：学习障碍APP的研究与实践

学习障碍在特殊学生中十分常见,目前虽无治愈方法,却可通过辅助技术在教学中的运用降低其影响。具有辅助技术功能的教育APP为学习障碍学生提供了多样化的参与、表征和表达方式,这正好与通用学习设计的理念相契合,有助于他们在融合班级中获得平等的受教育机会。这些学习障碍相关APP可划分为文字转语音、语音识别、单词预测、文字处理、计划与组织、数学运算等6种类型。一方面,作为能力补偿工具和学习支持工具,学习障碍相关APP能够在阅读、写作和数学学习中为学习障碍学生提供多元化、可参与的学习环境;另一方面,作为一种新型的教学工具,学习障碍相关APP也可能给学习障碍学生带来诸如注意力分散、学习情绪消极等负面影响。因此,其作用机制和在教学中的有效性仍有待明确。未来我国在学习障碍相关APP的研究与实践方面还需做到:推进通用学习设计理念在学习障碍学生教育中的应用与实践,为其学习提供适宜的环境和支持;完善特殊教育辅助技术相关法律和政策,确保各类特殊学生能够获得更专业的支持;加强学习障碍相关APP的开发与研究,使其能够更有效地应用于现实教学情景;建立教育APP的评价体系和支持系统,提升学习障碍相关APP的应用效果。     

远程教育学习认可度与学习障碍的调查分析

随着人类进入学习型社会,远程教育打破了时间和空间的限制,在世界范围内引发了一场教育变革．文章以对泉州师院远程教育学习中心的厦门大学远程教育学员所进行的问卷调查为例,分析学员对远程教育的认可度和存在的学习障碍,针对远程教学和远程学习过程中所存在的问题提出建议．