Essential competencies for teaching students with hearing loss and additional disabilities

The purpose of this national study was to establish an initial database of the essential competencies needed for working with students who are deaf or hard of hearing with additional disabilities. Surveys were sent to program supervisors across the United States; each supervisor was asked to give the survey to a professional on his or her staff who worked with students who were deaf or hard of hearing with additional disabilities. Respondents indicated that there were 67 specific competencies needed for working with this diverse population of students. A list of the specific competencies and a rationale for providing more in-depth training for teachers is provided.     

Negotiating the transition to middle school: the role of self-regulatory processes

The present research examined the role of maladaptive self-regulatory beliefs as vulnerability factors for academic and emotional difficulties during the transition to middle school. A short-term longitudinal design was employed to follow two groups of early adolescents: 187 adolescents who experienced a school transition between the fifth and sixth grades, and 142 adolescents who did not experience a school transition between the fifth and sixth grades. Adolescents completed measures of perceptions of academic control and importance of academic success, experience of chronic academic strain, daily school hassles, and depressive symptoms. Teachers reported on students' academic engagement, including levels of helpless behavior, effort, and academic performance. Consistent with the proposed model of self-regulation, maladaptive self-regulatory beliefs (i.e., decreased perceptions of academic control and importance) predicted individual differences in perceived school-related stress and depressive symptoms over the course of the middle school transition, but were not associated with academic and emotional difficulties in adolescents who remained in a stable school environment. Moreover, a self-regulatory sequence was identified proceeding from maladaptive self-regulatory beliefs, to academic disengagement, to enhanced perceptions of school-related stress, to depressive symptoms. This study bridges prior theory and research concerning the psychological impact of normative developmental transitions, the developmental context of depression, and the associations among self-regulatory beliefs, achievement-related behavior, and emotional experience.     

Intergenerational transmission of abuse: a two-generational prospective study of an at-risk sample.

OBJECTIVE: A model was examined in which the association between a parent's history of abuse and the parent's own abusive behavior toward his or her children was hypothesized to be mediated by parental psychopathology, early childbearing, and consistency of discipline. Additionally, the effect of severity of abuse on the likelihood of becoming abusive was examined. METHOD: Participants were 109 parents (G1) and their male children (G2) who were involved in a longitudinal study. The G1 parents reported on their own experiences of abuse when they were children. Ten years later, the G2 youths reported on the G1 parents' abusive behavior toward them. A number of other factors, including parental socioeconomic status (SES), antisocial behavior, depression and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), consistency of discipline, and the perceived early difficulty of the G2 children were measured. RESULTS: As reported by their own children, parents who reported having been abused in childhood were significantly more likely to engage in abusive behaviors toward the next generation. Findings indicated that abuse experienced by the parents, as well as consistency of discipline and depression plus PTSD, were predictive of parental abuse of the child. Contrary to hypotheses, the effects were not fully mediated. However, there were significant interactions between parental history of abuse and consistency of discipline, as well as abuse history and depression and PTSD. Parents who had experienced multiple acts of abuse and at least one physical impact were more likely to become abusive than were the other parents. CONCLUSIONS: The implications of these findings for preventive interventions are discussed.     

Are mathematics disabilities due to a domain-general or a domain-specific working memory deficit?

The relationship between verbal and visual-spatial working memory and mathematical computation skill was examined in children and adults with and without disabilities in mathematics. A hierarchical regression analysis showed that, when partialing for the influence of reading ability, age, and gender, mathematical computation was better predicted by verbal than by visual-spatial working memory. Furthermore, the results showed that the relationship between mathematics ability and working memory were not significantly moderated by age but were stable across a broad age span. We concluded that, regardless of age, deficits in mathematics are mediated by both a domain-general and a domain-specific working memory system.     

Meaning in life and school guidance programs: Adolescents’ voices from Hong Kong

International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance - This study provides insights into how Chinese adolescents in Hong Kong interpret the concept of “meaning in life.” Data...     

The Role of Desegregation and Teachers of Color in Discipline Disproportionality

The Urban Review - Scholars note the multitude of ways that the continual shifts in the racial composition of schools affect students, but fewer studies consider the implications of such shifts for...     

The Role of Students’ Personality Characteristics, Self-Perceived Competence and Learning Conceptions in the Acquisition and Development of Social Communicative Competence: A Longitudinal Study

An important purpose of higher social work education is to guide students to acquire and develop social-communicative competencies. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role students’ personality characteristics, self-perceived communicative competence and learning conceptions play in the acquisition and development of social-communicative competencies. We designed and tested a hypothetical model on the student-related variables – self-perceived communicative competence, learning conceptions and reported learning activities regarding communication – in relation to performance scores. We were interested in developmental trends in the above mentioned variables. We also wanted to gain insight into the relationships among the variables. The study was set up according to a longitudinal, within-subjects design in order to study intra-individual changes. One-hundred and twenty-three first-year social-work students participated in this study. Many changes were found in students characteristics, reported deployed learning activities and study results during their first academic year. Except for confidence in “showing sympathy”, which was already relatively high at the beginning of the study, all scores on aspects of students’ self-perceived social-communicative competence increased. Assessment scores on comparable communication tests also increased significantly. Extraversion and emotional stability were the only two personality characteristics, which seemed rather stable. Agreeableness decreased while autonomy increased continuously during the first academic year. It seemed to be possible to set up a model, which may serve as a starting point for further research into the development of social-communicative competence.     

Genes, environment, and dyslexia the 2005 Norman Geschwind memorial lecture

This article presents an overview of some methods and results from our continuing studies of genetic and environmental influences on dyslexia, and on individual differences across the normal range that have been conducted over the past 25 years in the Colorado Learning Disabilities Research Center (CLDRC) and in related projects. CLDRC investigators compare the similarities of identical twin pairs who share all their genes and fraternal twins who share half their segregating genes to assess the balance of genetic, shared family environment, and nonshared environment influences on dyslexia and on individual differences across the normal range. We have learned that among the children we have studied in Colorado, group deficits in reading (dyslexia) and individual differences in reading across the normal range are primarily due to genetic influences, and these genetic influences are often shared with some of the same genetic influences on deficits and individual differences in language and ADHD. We have also learned from our molecular-genetic linkage studies that there are regions on several chromosomes likely to contain genes that influence dyslexia. Several specific genes within these regions have been tentatively identified through molecular-genetic association analyses, but much more research is needed to understand the pathways among specific genes, regions of noncoding DNA that regulate the activity of those genes, the brain, and dyslexia. I conclude with a discussion of our research on individual differences in early reading development, on the role of early learning constraints in dyslexia, and on how genetic influences are expressed through their interaction and correlation with the environment.     

Adolescent academic achievement: A model of social support and grit

Grit has been defined as passionate perseverance toward long-term challenging goals and it is associated with various positive outcomes for youth, including academic achievement. However, less is known about these associations for the two facets of grit (i.e., perseverance of effort, consistency of interest) and few studies have examined the link between grit and perceived social support. The present study examined the group-level demographic differences (i.e., gender, grade, socioeconomic status, and special education status) of grit in a high school sample (N = 1,077). In addition, direct associations between grit and perceived social support from multiple sources (i.e., teacher, classmate, parent) were examined, as well as a potential enhancing effect of social support as a moderator of the relation between grit and academic achievement. Results indicated positive associations among grit and its facets with social support from parents and classmates. Furthermore, the positive relation between grit and achievement was stronger for students reporting high social support from teachers, but not other sources (i.e., classmates, parents). Practical and theoretical implications for promoting student success are discussed.