Burnout and decreased levels of self-efficacy are contributors to the high attrition rate and increasing demand for highly-qualified special educators nationwide. This has led to a national shortage of special educators, which is a critical reason why current special educators are encountering high stress levels, dissatisfaction, and overall…

Apprentices with a learning disability can face significant barriers to completing their training. This paper explores what these apprentices, their lecturers and disability support staff see as the most effective strategies for helping them to overcome these difficulties. Instructional approaches which accommodate students' learning styles,…

Students with learning disabilities face real reading challenges. Research into the reading performance of culturally diverse students indicates improved reading performance for culturally diverse students when text matches students' cultural perspective. This quasiexperimental research investigates whether Caucasian and African American students…

The use of virtual environments for special needs is as diverse as the field of Special Education itself and the individuals it serves. Individuals with special needs often face challenges with attention, language, spatial abilities, memory, higher reasoning and knowledge acquisition. Research in the use of Virtual Learning Environments (VLE)…

Two major pieces of legislation, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (2004) and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) (2001) mandate that students with disabilities be placed in the Least Restrictive Environment and have access to the general education curriculum. To provide access to the general education curriculum, inclusion in general…

The purpose of this study was to provide an evaluation of the undergraduate special education teacher preparation program at King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. A final sample of 160 LD teachers provided the data used for analysis. Data for the study were collected by a survey consisting of five subscales: coursework, internship quality,…

Response to intervention (RTI) can be both a system for providing early interventions to struggling students and a special education diagnostic tool for evaluating and identifying students with specific learning disabilities. Contributing to the very limited literature on state-level approaches, this report describes how nine states define and…

This pilot research project examined the use of sign language as a communication bridge for non-Deaf children between the ages of 0-6 years who had been diagnosed with, or whose communication difficulties suggested, the presence of such disorders as Autism, Down Syndrome, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), and/or learning disabilities.…

A person-oriented approach was used to examine the role of parenting in the associations between single learning disabilities and multiple learning disabilities and the adjustment difficulties in 8-11-year-olds. The results revealed that multiple, but not single, learning disabilities were associated with greater difficulties in emotional and…

Education is a fundamental right for all children which must be guaranteed in every nation. Unfortunately, children with disabilities have been marginalized in many countries preventing them from accessing an appropriate education. Although some countries have legislation that guarantees educational rights to children with disabilities, some of…

A state administrator considers the controversy concerning overrepresentation of students in learning disabilities (LD) classes and examines the implications of serving LD students. He asserts that students in LD classes are those who can tolerate intensive teaching and have a good chance of returning to the regular class. In discussing the fate…

The author reviews developments in the field of learning disabilities (LD). She traces the emergence of three models or perspectives of the causes and cures of LD: the psychological process model, the behavioral model, and the holistic model, which the author suggests is the model for the 1990's. Trends leading to acceptance of each model are…

In order to study the characteristics of learning disabled (LD) college students and the coping strategies developed to deal with college demands, 57 LD students--enrolled at a selective university that offered no special program for LD students--were identified through questionnaires, self referral, and teacher referral. Analysis of a variety of…

Two studies were conducted to examine the extent to which the category "learning disabilities" (LD) meets the major criterion for classification systems, specifically that the category demonstrates at least one universal and one specific characteristic. Analyses were conducted on psychometric data for 248 students in regular 3rd, 5th,…

Three types of definitions of learning disabilities (LD) (ability-achievement discrepancy, low achievement, and scatter) were examined to determine the extent of common variance within 48 school-identified LD children and 96 nonLD children (all elementary students). Both samples had previously been administered a battery of psychoeducational…