The IDEA reauthorization of 2004 highlights the application of responsiveness to intervention (RTI) to both early intervention (EI) service delivery and learning disabilities (LD) identification practices, creating the potential for wide-scale execution. Implementation of any educational reform necessitates more than simply changing practices: It…

Education seeks to cultivate dispositions and skills that promote effective participation in democratic institutions, including the capacity to produce thoughtful written arguments about controversial issues. Unfortunately, students' argumentative writing is generally neither effective nor persuasive, and this is especially so for students with…

The understanding and use of historical concepts specified in national history standards pose many challenges to students. These challenges include both the acquisition of content knowledge and the use of that knowledge in ways that require higher order thinking. All students, including adolescents with learning disabilities (LD), are expected to…

The process of submitting documentation to testing agencies as proof of a disability can be time consuming, expensive, and even intimidating to test takers with learning disabilities. Misconceptions about the accommodations review process employed by testing agencies add to the anxiety that many test takers feel around obtaining approval for…

This paper reports on one of the findings of a small study that aimed to explore how people with learning disabilities accessed and were supported to use a pictorial cancer information book. Five people with learning disabilities who were affected by cancer and their paid carers participated in the study. Support staff in the study were the people…

This digest presents definitions of 30 important terms in the field of learning disabilities. They are: accommodations, assistive technology, attention deficit disorder, brain imaging techniques, brain injury, collaboration, developmental aphasia, direct instruction, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, dyslexia, dysnomia, dyspraxia, learned helplessness,…

The proceedings of the 1980 first National Meeting of Learning Disabled (LD) Adults are presented. Topics focused on the history and current status of the consumer movement among LD adults. The concern of national and local LD groups with problems facing LD adults is traced, and current movements within ACLD (Association for Children and Adults…

Two digit span distraction tasks were used to compare performance of 32 learning disabled (LD) and 32 normal children (mean ages 16 and 15 years). On the first set of tasks, where the neutral and distraction conditions were matched for their ability to discriminate between groups, no differential distraction effect was found. The second task's…

In rebuttal to seven responses to a paper (EC 081 334) on differences between the fields of learning disabilities and reading, the author notes the disagreement among the respondents as to points of overlap and difference, and reaffirms that two fields of study continue to exist. (DB)

After an eight-lesson program in body awareness, learning disabled students demonstrated improvement in self portrait drawings and in the accuracy of body part connections. (CL)

The author addresses the problem of defining the learning disabled population and considers a solution to the dilemma in which different definitions serve different functions. (SBH)

Differences in visual-ocular function, particularly optokinetic nystagmus (OKN), were compared with 40 learning disabled and 40 normal children (8-12 years-old). No significant differences were found between groups on the variables tested (refixation saccades, smooth ocular pursuit, spontaneous nystagmus, gaze nystagmus, and OKN). (Author/DB)

In rebuttal to a critique of a previous paper, the authors stress the complexities of defining the term "learning disabilities" and the inadequacies of Kosc's approach to a prior definition based upon established definitions of "learning" and "disability" (Author/DB)

The position paper of the National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities provides five criticisms of the definition of learning disabilities developed in 1967 by the National Advisory Committee on Handicapped Children and proposes an alternative definition. (DB)