Screening Young Children at Risk for Reading Failure

Reading and reading difficulties are some of the most researched topics in the literature in regard to psychology and education. Additionally, some specific subjects such as prediction and prevention attract research interest as well. These issues are discussed in the present chapter that focused on the screening measures and their characteristics towards significance and effectiveness. More specifically, discrimination accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity as well as validity and reliability were taken into consideration. Some well-known studies were examined revealing a range of methodological issues, which affected the effectiveness of using measures in the extant research. Although the findings were consistent with literature, they continued to be scant and not widely accepted, affected by several limitations regarding the sampling and the experimental design

Potential discriminative factors for dyslexia: A predictive statistical model based on the Pavlidis questionnaire distinguishing 8-9 year-old dyslexic and non-dyslexic-control Greek children. Validity's and potentialpredictive efficiency's considerations potential predictive efficiency's considerations

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonThe aim of the thesis was to identify the most significant early signs of dyslexia, independent of reading and to use them to differentiate between diagnosed dyslexic and non-dyslexic-control Greek children, 8-9 years old. Many authors (e.g., Nicolson & Fawcett, 1996; Muter, 1996; Singleton, et al. 1995; Grogan, 1995; Wenner, 1995; Hurford et al. 1994; Coleman & Dover, 1993) highlighted the importance and advantage of early identification, in terms of human and financial resources. Educationally, most teachers acknowledge the greater ease of working with younger children who have not yet experienced excessive frustration and feelings of failure. The findings of this thesis noted that could screen the dyslexics from non-dyslexics on the basis of a non-reading procedure, based on the parent-reported information for their children. The information was originated from a quick, economical, easy to administer, sensitive checklist related to the developmental history; laterality; sequential problems; behaviour and personal traits; ADD characteristics and family's history (heredity). This checklist, named Pavlidis Checklist could be used as screening tool for dyslexia. It could correctly discriminate the dyslexics with 95.2% accuracy, the non-dyslexics-controls with 97% and the overall accuracy was 96.3%. The validity of this predictive tool was tested using the comparison of the discrimination rate between this predictive tool and the spelling errors of dyslexics and non-dyslexics. Spelling errors could discriminate these two groups, because it is widely accepted (Hornsby, 1995; Megalokonomos 1983) that they are (spelling errors) a part of the diagnostic procedure for dyslexia. The results showed that this tool had the similar, very high, overall discriminative accuracy with the spelling errors, so, it was accepted as valid. Moreover, the within-test consistency of this checklist was very high too and also it seemed to be potential predictive efficient

Studying teaching methods, strategies and best practices for young children with special educational needs

Teaching objectives in special education are different from those in the ordinary classroom. Educational programmes for special needs students are focused on individual learning, achievement and progress. Thus, the instruction in special education classrooms and resource rooms in inclusive schools has to be specific, directed and individualised. The present study aimed to investigate the use of teaching methods, strategies and best practices in resource rooms of inclusive schools and to discuss their appropriateness and quality in relation to literature review. The study was a qualitative one, using triangulation of data collection, semi-structured interviews and observation. The participants were 30, experienced, special education teachers and 120 special education future-teachers. The study took into account the qualitative research ethical recommendations. The research revealed that the self-reported data show that the participants had great interest in their students' learning outcomes and they used effective teaching methods, techniques and strategies, but this was not confirmed by the data of observation. The present study would affect the educational policies regarding the critical issue of teacher evaluation and the differences between general and special teaching effectiveness. © 2015 Taylor & Francis

Distance Education Attitudes (DEAS) During Covid-19 Crisis: Factor Structure, Reliability and Construct Validity of the Brief DEA Scale in Greek-Speaking SEND Teachers

The aim of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties (factor structure, reliability and construct validity) of the Brief Distance Education Attitudes (DEA) scale. Four hundred twenty-two SEND teachers filled out socio-demographic data forms and the DEAS. Factors were extracted by EFA (Principal Components Analysis) and confirmed by Analysis of Moment Structures. No floor-ceiling effects were observed. No significant differences of skewness and kurtosis were observed between the two Domains. All goodness of fit indices generated by CFA were found satisfactory (TLI = 0.962 > 0.95, RMSEA =.035 < 0.08, CFI = 0.943 ≥ 0.90, χ2(34) = 57.93, p =.000 and SRMR = 0.034 < 0.08). Cronbach’s alpha value formed at α =.764. SEND teachers’ attitudes towards Efficacy in Distance Education and Difficulties Related to Distance Education are considered as significant factors for the implementation of distance education during COVID-19 crisis. Consequently, universities, education technology corporations and policy makers should take consideration of these factors so as to train SEND teachers’ and support emergency remote-teaching scenarios. © 2020, Springer Nature B.V

Teaching self-regulation strategies with SOLVE IT to two students with learning disabilities: Effects on mathematical problem-solving performance

International audience1 [email protected], 2 [email protected], 3 [email protected], 4 [email protected] The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether teaching self-regulation strategies via "Solve it" to students with learning disabilities could affect their problem-solving performance in mathematics. The mathematical problems involved four mathematical operations with natural and decimal numbers. Also, the present study investigated the effect of "Solve it" instruction on students' self-efficacy and value related to mathematics. It was a single-subject design with a pre-test, four repeated post-tests and a maintenance test. The results indicated that the students' problem-solving performance was improved and their self-efficacy and value attributed to mathematics were increased