Reported on is a practicum involving training of ten teachers from five schools to conduct screening and educational process evaluation of potential learning disabled students. Brief sections cover the project's background, statement of the problem, objectives, and approach to the solution. Activities of the practicum are reported to include…

Designed to help elementary school teachers deal with the concept of perception, the document provides a breakdown of perceptual components to enable the teacher to define and remediate student deficits. Informal screening devices for perceptual disorders are included. Discussed are visual, auditory, and other developmental factors (such as body…

Flexibility and creativity are essential skills for aiding learning-disabled students. In addition, specialized knowledge of specific learning disabilities is essential and will enhance the overall skills of the counselor. The counselor's personal warmth, empathy, and understanding will enhance relationships with the students as well as their…

Shows that mentally handicapped preschool children can learn to read words when word cards become tools for communicating their wishes. Indicates also that language skills improve and that these transfer to other situations. (FL)

Personnel preparation in learning disabilities should stress a broad theoretical understanding of individual differences, interdisciplinary collaboration, and working with families. These goals can best be met by generic programs with specialization only in terms of severity of learning impairment. An outline for such a 2-year program is given.…

Recent cognitive analyses of the reading process indicate that learning disabled children with word decoding problems will be limited in the development of higher level reading comprehension skills. Microcomputer technology affords the repetitive word recognition practice necessary for successful decoding. (JC)

Examination of case studies of four learning-disabled college students experiencing severe problems learning a foreign language suggested that all subjects had deficiencies in listening comprehension and concomitant difficulties with the audiolingual teaching method. Other characteristics of these students which may have caused learning…

Special education programs and support services for individuals with learning disabilities must be part of an education agency's total instructional program and must not be regarded as a separate and parallel system. Recommendations regarding program and service planning and implementation and service options are presented. (CB)

This study sought to evaluate a measure of dyscalculia to determine its validity and reliability. It also tested use of the instrument with seventh graders and ascertained where errors attributed to dyscalculia were also present in an average sample of seventh graders. Results varied. (MNS)

Following a review of metalinguistic abilities and their relation to reading ability in learning-disabled students, special consideration is given to phonological awareness. Both developmental/preventative and remedial approaches for heightening sound awareness are described, focusing on the characteristics of speech sounds themselves rather than…

Teaching experience at The Lab School of Washington has shown that learning-disabled children and adults cope with their lack of self-esteem and feelings of stupidity by developing masks to hide their hurt. These include masks of super-competence, helplessness, invisibility, clowning, injustice collecting, indifference, boredom, outrageousness,…

Collateral teaching offers an alternative to using commercially prepared social skills programs for learning-disabled students, by enabling teachers to instruct social skills that are required of their students as opportunities arise in normal contexts. Strategies for instructing social skills include coaching, modeling, reinforcement, cognitive…

In response to Kenneth Kavale's theoretical objections to the model of severe discrepancy in determining the existence of learning disabilities, this article describes advantages of discrepancy considerations and presents a model that emphasizes the role of the learning disabilities teacher in diagnosing and remediating specific learning…

This critique of H. Lee Swanson's "Toward a Metatheory of Learning Disabilities" comments on Swanson's concept of learning disabilities, cognitive science, and information processing theory. A different research and theory-building agenda is proposed, focusing on society's definition of learning disabilities and instructional issues and…

Reports on a study designed to document that learning-disabled (LD) students make errors in estimating the passage of short time durations, and to determine if LD students were different than nondisabled in time estimation. Non-LD and LD students differed significantly in estimations of 15-second intervals, but not 3-second intervals. (PK)