Variation found in rates of restraint and seclusion among students with a disability

The restraint and seclusion of individuals—practices usually associated with highly restrictive environments—are extreme responses to student behavior used in some public schools. In this brief, authors Douglas Gagnon, Marybeth Mattingly, and Vincent Connelly report that restraint and seclusion are used much more frequently on students with a disability than on students without a disability. In addition, the majority of U.S. school districts does not restrain or seclude students with a disability; 59.3 percent of districts report no instances of restraint, while 82.5 percent do not report a single instance of seclusion. However, a small proportion of districts report exceedingly high rates. The authors also find that low-poverty, low-diversity school districts use restraint and seclusion on students with a disability more than twice as often as high-poverty, high-diversity districts. The authors conclude that, overall, the relationships between restraint and seclusion rates, and disability type and school characteristics, warrant further research. This brief draws on data from the 2009–2010 Civil Rights Data Collection and the 2009 Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates

Restraint and Seclusion of Students With a Disability Continue to Be Common in Some School Districts Patterns Remain Relatively Consistent Despite Recent Policy Changes

In 2013, Carsey released a brief that analyzed rates of restraint and seclusion using a large, nationally representative data set of U.S. school districts. This brief, which analyzes a more comprehensive data set and the most current Civil Rights Data Collection, serves as a follow-up to the pre­vious brief. Authors Douglas Gagnon, Marybeth Mattingly, and Vincent Connelly report that, despite numerous states with revised policies related to seclusion and restraint in schools between 2009 and 2012, trends in the rates of restraint and seclusion of students with a disability in the United States remained relatively consistent between survey years. Low-poverty, low-minority districts are more likely to report high rates of restraint than are high-poverty, high-minority districts, although this trend in the most recent data is less pronounced than the trend found in the 2009−2010 data. In addition, restraint and seclusion are most common in cities and least common in rural places. The authors conclude that future research should examine the factors that lead to the use of restraint and seclusion in some schools, as well as what conditions lead to uptake of alternative approaches to managing challenging student behavior

Writing and revision strategies of students with and without dyslexia

Previous work suggests that written text produced by university students with dyslexia is scored lower than that produced by their peers. The present study used a digital writing tablet to examine the writing process and the quality of text written by university students with dyslexia. Revision behaviour during and after writing was also investigated. Thirty-two university students with dyslexia (mean age, 20 years), were compared to 32 typically-developing (TD) students matched by age. Students composed a written text in response to an expository essay prompt. In line with previous research, students with dyslexia made a higher number of spelling errors and their essays were rated as poorer than TD students. However, students with dyslexia were comparable to their peers on measures of time spent writing, amount of text produced, and the temporal analyses (handwriting execution, pause times). Students with dyslexia made significantly more revisions to spelling during and after transcription than their peers, although other revision behaviour was similar across groups. Explanations for the finding of poor writing quality are explored. Importantly, the findings suggest that continued support with spelling and writing is needed for university students with dyslexia. Instruction directed towards effective revision strategies may also prove useful. Limitations and directions for future research are discussed

The influence of instructional approach on the reading strategies of beginning readers

There are a number of models of reading development which propose that reading develops in a set sequence of stages (e.g. Frith 1985, Marsh et al 1981), and that each child must pass through one stage before it can move onto the next. It is been pointed out that these models very rarely take into account external factors such as the method of instruction that the children receive (Stuart and Coltheart 1988, Goswami and Bryant 1990) and what effect such factors would have on progression through the stages. This study investigated how the factor of instruction influenced how children read. Young children taught by two different methods were studied. Scottish five and six year olds taught by a phonics method, where they were shown the correspondences between letter segments and their sounds, were compared with New Zealand children of the same age taught by a language experience approach. Samples were matched for reading age, chronological age, time at school, vocabulary knowledge and digit span. Error analyses of responses to single words showed a marked divergence in reading strategies. The Scottish children were much more likely to attempt to read unfamiliar words, whereas the New Zealand children often failed to attempt to read items they did not know. The errors the Scottish children made were also qualitatively different to those of the New Zealand children. The Scottish children were better at pronouncing nonwords and were more advanced in spelling performance. The Scottish children were also superior at a test of simple phonological segmentation. They also produced a word length effect when reading words. The New Zealanders, however, were better at pronouncing irregular words and were faster readers, especially with familiar classroom words. They did not produce a word length effect even when words were distorted. Overall the Scottish children showed more evidence of a grapheme to phoneme conversion strategy, which in turn was correlated with good reading performance. The New Zealanders displayed signs of a more visual approach to reading. There was some overlap between the national groups particularly regarding the prevalence of errors incorporating beginning and end letters. The older children in each national group also showed a greater convergence of strategy use than the younger readers. This work therefore has implications for the efficacy models of reading, such as Frith's (1985). Matched groups of children should display the same reading strategies if reading skill is accomplished in universal stages, in this study they do not. Future models of reading development will need to take into consideration how the child is taught to read

The interaction of reading, spelling and handwriting difficulties with writing development

Editorial

How do sociodemographic characteristics influence UK civilian opinions of UK armed forces Iraq and Afghanistan veterans? A mixed-method approach.

Evidence suggests that UK veterans are seen as victims with concern for their perceived mental health needs. This study examined sociodemographic factors that contribute to victimizing conceptualizations of British Army Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. UK participants (N = 234) provided three word associations to 'British Army Iraq Veteran' and 'British Army Afghanistan Veteran' and answered sociodemographic questions. A multiple linear regression outlines that low national pride, mission opposition and higher levels of education predict elevated victimizing word associations. Narrative accounts from UK interviews (N = 21) suggest that participants who perceived the recent conflicts as illegitimate conceptualize veterans as passive, naïve actors who had to submit to the agency of the anthropomorphic described government. This allowed holding overtly appreciative though belittling attitudes toward veterans, while opposing the missions. To dissociate veterans from victimizing perceptions, better knowledge about service and justifications for deployments need to be provided. Study limitations, including over sampling of young adult females, are discussed

Struggling writers in elementary school: Capturing drivers of performance

Conceptualising the difficulties experienced by struggling writers in middle elementary school is of both theoretical and practical importance. To further our understanding of the problems experienced by struggling writers we aimed to identify the writing measure which best discriminated struggling writers from their peers, and the proximal and distal factors which which contributed to performance. The performance of 96 students (Mean age 0;4), 39 of whom were independently identified as struggling writers using a norm referenced standardised test, was examined at word, sentence, and text level. Standardised measures of transcription, oral language and working memory were collected. The extent to which independent product and process writing measures accurately identified the students was tested using ROC analyses. The skills which underpinned performance were examined using regression analyses and path analysis. Written sentence generation was the most sensitive and specific measure to identify struggling writers at this point in development and, was concurrently predicted by both oral sentence level skills, handwriting fluency and listening span. Path models demonstrated that oral language contributed both directly and indirectly to sentence level writing. Implications for developmental models of writing and support for struggling writers are discussed