Review of the contribution of various oral language abilities to early reading performances found that, although phonemic awareness was the best predictor of early reading skills, metasyntactic ability also often accounted for significant variance. Once children acquire initial decoding skills, narrative discourse and other metalinguistic skills…

Ethnographic methodology was used to explore the development of self-management skills in an 18-year-old woman with Down Syndrome. Triangulation of data types and the constant comparative method of data analysis were employed. Outcomes suggested the individual's family culture had a large impact on development of self-monitoring and that early and…

Three of four elementary students with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities were successfully taught to use the next dollar strategy (which requires students to present the next dollar amount higher than the price given) in making purchases. The teaching method used natural cues within a system of least prompts and resulted in transfer of…

This article critiques Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory of human development as it relates to children with disabilities. Discusses the recently expanded theory, including the identification of ecological niches that differentially influence children with particular personal characteristics. Studies from the disability literature illustrate…

A case history of a middle school's implementation of an integrated collaborative program for students with mild disabilities is presented as a framework for discussing the realities of inclusion. The authors observed a mathematics teacher during a nine-week unit on fractions. Suggested strategies from the literature on inclusion are considered in…

A 3-year follow-along study of 422 adolescents with disabilities found associations between being arrested while in school or during the first year after school, and lower personal/social-achievement skills, gender, and disability status. Students with serious emotional disturbance or specific learning disabilities were more likely than students…

Four students (ages seven to nine) with moderate mental retardation were successfully taught to name photographs of foods using a progressive time delay procedure. Presentation of the supermarket grocery department as part of the discriminative stimulus was effective in increasing the percentage of correct responding. Some generalization occurred…

Three students (ages 12-16) with moderate mental retardation and severe behavior disorders were taught to read sight words related to the daily newspaper weather report by a method that interspersed known words with new words. Students mastered the 10 sight words and showed some improvement in reading the weather report. (DB)

This paper examines instructional processes in two seventh-grade science classes and describes three components of general education middle school content classrooms (curriculum, verbal presentations during instruction, and assessed performance outcomes). It concludes that these three components need to be aligned for the successful inclusion of…

A survey of 258 directors/chairpersons of special education teacher preparation programs, and comparison with 1980 survey data, found that preservice teachers were not receiving adequate preparation in the area of sex education. The inclusion of sex education in the teacher training curriculum is urged. (DB)

Comparison of 30 children having reading disabilities and average to above-average nonverbal IQ with control children revealed that the average-IQ children with reading disabilities differed from chronological controls, but not reading age controls, mainly in the area of successive processing. Results support the critical role of successive…

An overview of the legal status of special education in Israel, especially the Israeli Special Education Law of 1988 and judicial rulings, suggests that the law has promulgated a parallel placement system in which the special education bureaucratic system is empowered to act without parental input. Cultural influences are noted and suggestions…

This article describes results for students with mild disabilities who participated in the Kansas science assessment involving cooperative groups. Individual achievement, attitude, and project scores were consistent with expectations in relation to results for general education students. The study did not find that participation of students with…

Two cohorts of students with and without learning disabilities were followed for three years, and they and their teachers annually rated their capabilities and efforts in science. Some age differences in student self-evaluation were found. Comparison of student and teacher ratings suggests that teachers often have higher expectations for students…

Two studies with a total of 82 students (grades 5-7) with learning disabilities found that, unaided, students corrected 9% of their errors; with spelling checkers, they corrected 37% of errors. Spelling checkers failed to identify about 30% of errors. Students usually selected the correct word from spelling checker suggestions. (Author/DB)