Purpose: Even without explicit instruction, learners are able to extract information about the form of a language simply by attending to input that reflects the underlying grammar. In this study, the authors explored the role of variability in this learning by asking whether varying the number of unique exemplars heard by the learner affects…

Students with disabilities often receive test accommodations in schools and on high-stakes tests. Students with learning disabilities (LD) represent the largest disability group in schools, and extended time the most common test accommodation requested by such students. This pairing persists despite controversy over the validity of extended time…

Families of students with learning disabilities (LD) have much to offer school professionals. When effective collaboration between schools and parents occur, cultural considerations are made to ensure that a relationship of mutual respect and trust is developed. Families can assist teachers and service providers by implementing supplemental…

This study compares the state, trait, and test anxiety scores of 145 college students with and without learning disabilities against categories such as demographics, general anxiety, test anxiety, and disability experience. This study used a questionnaire and compared answers among groups. The analysis indicated that students with learning…

The article explores the professionalism and the standards debate as it relates to teachers with specific learning difficulties in the context of Further Education in England. There is a tension between the government's policy of defining teachers more tightly in terms of entry qualifications and standards whilst espousing a policy of creating a…

This study reports the case of a patient (AG) whose main calculation problem was with multiplication that was severely affected at all levels including that of conceptual knowledge. In contrast AG's problems with addition, subtraction and division were much less conspicuous and just involved the use of procedures. For all these latter operations,…

Children with developmental dyslexia (DD) may differ from typical readers in aspects other than reading. The notion of a general deficit in the ability to acquire and retain procedural ("how to") knowledge as long-term procedural memory has been proposed. Here, we compared the ability of elementary school children, with and without…

Response to Intervention (RTI) has become the gateway to identification for many students with specific learning disabilities. Those include students in the 17 states that require RTI as the source of eligibility data as well as many students in the 33 states that allow districts to choose RTI among other options (e.g., discrepancy). There is…

This review investigates effective interventions for teaching algebra to students with learning disabilities and evaluates the complexity and alignment of skills with the Common Core State Standards in math. The review includes the results of 10 experimental and 5 single-subject designs (N = 15) producing a moderate overall effect size (g = 0.48).…

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of email modeling and scaffolding on the social writing quality of students with cognitive disabilities. Ten students from a university-affiliated lab school (mean age = 19.3; SD = 1.2) with an average of IQ of 55.30 (SD = 5.98) and 10 teacher candidates in a university teacher education…

Response to intervention (RTI) emerged from the 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, but the roots of RTI are found embedded within the history of the field of learning disabilities (LD) as well as other sources of influence. In what follows, we provide a brief history of LD and highlight the connection between…

This article briefly reviews the history of intellectual assessment of children and youth in the United States of America, as well as current practices and future directions. Although administration of intelligence tests in the schools has been a longstanding practice in the United States, their use has also elicited sharp controversy over time.…

The purpose of the present studies was to test the hypothesis that the psychometric characteristics of ability scales may be significantly distorted if one accounts for emotional factors during test taking. Specifically, the present studies evaluate the effects of anxiety and motivation on the item difficulties of the Rasch model. In Study 1, the…

In countries that have developed special education (SE) provision, whether in segregated settings or "included" in mainstream, racial, ethnic and immigrant minorities continue to be disproportionately represented. Explanations for placement in SE programmes continue to centre round assumptions of deficiencies in student abilities to…

I examine special educators' professional identity emergence and tensions within a researcher-facilitated teacher learning community. I introduced tools to evoke and challenge inequities in educational systems and via which participants examined and planned general education instruction for students with dis/abilities. Initially, professional…