The focus of this paper is on an Australian research project that evaluated the effectiveness of a resource called the "Ask Health Diary," which is used in the school curriculum to promote self-determination for better health and wellbeing for adolescents who have an intellectual disability. Education and health researchers used…

The extent to which school students continue to receive special education services over time is largely unknown because longitudinal studies are rare in this area. The present study examined a large Australian longitudinal database to track the status of children who received special education support in 2006 and whether they continued to access…

This article reports the findings of a one-year follow-up study of Australian beginning primary teachers' perceived preparedness to manage a variety of problematic student behaviours, and their confidence and use of behaviour management strategies based on their preservice coursework in classroom behaviour management. A total of 216 primary…

Using a case-series design with double baseline and 10-week maintenance phase, 5 struggling readers from middle- to high-income families (age range 6.4-7.9 years) completed a 5-times-weekly intervention (96 sessions) administered by a parent. All participants completed the intervention with phonological decoding, text-reading accuracy and reading…

Survey-based research was conducted with preservice teachers, from a large regional Australian university, to explore their views about inclusion and their readiness to teach in inclusive classrooms. Open-ended questions were included in the survey to glean information on the respondents' feelings and concerns about inclusion and inclusive…

A large gap is evident between the reading and related skills performance of Aboriginal students compared with that of their non-indigenous peers and this gap increases over the primary years of schooling. In this study, 34 students attended a tutorial centre in Sydney for older low-progress readers in Years 5 and 6, for two school terms. All…

Various models for funding special education services have been described in the literature. This paper aims at moving the debate concerning special education funding reform beyond the descriptive level by reviewing studies that investigated the impact of various models for funding special education. Systematic searches were conducted of ERIC and…

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) provides online reports to the public about the scientific evidence for educational interventions. The quality of these reports is important because they effectively tell the non-scientific community which programmes do and do not work. The aim of this brief review is to assess WWC's report on a clinically…

This article analysed 44 studies between 1991 and 2003 which report on the effectiveness of self-monitoring in improving academic, behavioral and social skills of students with a range of disabilities. Using prior reviews by Reid (1996), and Webber, Scheduermann, McCall and Coleman (1993) as a model, study variables were tabulated and analysed.…

The article reviews the history of special education in Australia over the last 30 years and identifies issues including the efficacy of early intervention programs, legislation and other governmental acts, the move to integration, attitudes toward integration, and establishment of a multidisciplinary center providing training, resource, and…

The article reviews the literature on the effectiveness of early stimulation programs to prevent intellectual or social retardation. It summarizes findings and recommends continued use and development of early stimulation as a primary prevention strategy. Also stressed is early identification of preschoolers with potential or apparent…