In this article, Hayley Fitzgerald, Anne Jobling and David Kirk consider the physical education and sporting experiences of a group of students with severe learning difficulties. Their study is thought provoking, not only because of the important and somewhat neglected subject matter, but equally for the research approach adopted. The way in which the study engaged with the students and the insights gained from that engagement will be of particular interest to practitioner researchers.
Maternal behaviors and child mastery behaviors were examined in 25 children with Down syndrome and 43 typically developing children matched for mental age (24-36 months). During a shared problem-solving task, there were no group differences in maternal directiveness or support for autonomy, and mothers in the two groups used similar verbal strategies when helping their child. There were also no group differences in child mastery behaviors, measured as persistence with two optimally challenging tasks. However, the two groups differed in the relationships of maternal style with child persistence. Children with Down syndrome whose mothers were more supportive of their autonomy in the shared task displayed greater persistence when working independently on a challenging puzzle, while children of highly directive mothers displayed lower levels of persistence. For typically developing children, persistence was unrelated to maternal style, suggesting that mother behaviors may have different causes or consequences in the two groups.
A number of researchers have argued that young adults with Down syndrome could bene t from continued literacy education beyond the years of compulsory education. Speci cally, research has shown that, contrary to myths related to plateaux of learning, cognitive development in individuals with Down syndrome continues into adolescence and beyond. Further, it is also claimed that the young adult years may be the optimal time to focus on literacy development. Based on this research and the ongoing work of the Down Syndrome Research Project (DSRP) a literacy program for young adults with Down syndrome was established at The University of Queensland in 1998 (see Moni & Jobling, 2000). LATCH-ON (Literacy and Technology Hands-On) provides a two year program of teaching and learning activities based on socio-cultural models of literacy in which the explicit teaching of reading, writing, speaking, listening and viewing is integrated with the development of technological literacies. Assessments of reading were undertaken using the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability-Revised (Neale, 1988) and Concepts About Print (Clay, 1979) prior to students entering the program and on completion of the two year course. This paper reports three years of data about the reading-related literacy learning of 17 young adults who have participated in the program. These ndings are discussed in terms of the diverse nature of the students' needs, the variability of their reading skills, and issues for educators.
This study investigated the attitudes of 354 Australian parents who have a child with a disability and who attends a state school in Queensland. The types of disability of the children were broadly in accordance with accepted prevalence figures, except for a greater number reported as having autistic spectrum disorder and fewer students with a learning difficulty/attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The children were in a range of classes, from special schools to schools where there was in-class help from a special teacher or teacher aide. Many of the parents favoured inclusion, some would if additional resources were provided, and a small group of parents favoured special placement. There were a limited number of negative attitudes to inclusion reported by the parents, and though some parents thought that some need existed for in-service education about inclusion, this was not a widespread view.
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