Predicting a high rate of self-assessed and parent-assessed peer problems--Is it typical for students with disabilities?

Peer problems are common in children with special educational needs (SEN), but the reasons are poorly understood. This study aims to identify risk factors of peer problems (e.g., SEN, school setting, pro-social behaviour) for their occurrence. A subsample of 3900 children from the National Educational Panel Study in Germany was analysed. Children and parents answered the items of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) subscales 'peer problems' and 'pro-social behaviour'. Students with SEN (attending special schools or inclusive classes) were more likely to score within the abnormal range of the SDQ subscale peer problems than students without SEN. The results further show a low level of parent-child agreement on the subscale 'peer problems'. Logistic regression analyses showed that having SEN is always an explaining variable for 'peer problems' and that group differences cannot be fully explained by gender, school setting or 'pro-social behaviour'.

Learning capacity in adolescents with mild intellectual disabilities.

Scores on a learning potential test (the Hessels Analogical Reasoning Test) were examined to assess how to provide a better estimate of the learning capacity of students with mild intellectual disabilities compared to IQ scores. As a criterion, a dynamic test of chemistry learning was used. 46 adolescents from a special education institute participated. The results show that learning ability, as estimated with the learning potential test, did not correlate with a traditional measure of IQ (n = 23). Moreover, IQ did not predict who would profit from training in novel, school-related domains. Multiple-regression analysis confirmed the superiority of the learning potential test to predict scores on a chemistry test administered in training-posttest format. This study demonstrated that a learning potential test is able to better predict such specific future learning outcomes and may be of added value in the differentiation of the learning potential of students with mild intellectual disabilities.