An intervention programme for children with moderate learning difficulties.

BACKGROUND: Children with learning difficulties typically demonstrate problems generalising what they have learned in specific contexts to new situations. Intervention programmes that teach children regulatory skills have been shown to overcome these problems for children with reading difficulties. This study applies the principles that underlie such interventions to the design of a programme for children with more general learning difficulties. AIM: The aim of the study reported here was to design and evaluate an intervention programme which would facilitate the transfer of skills learned over the course of the intervention to different types of task. SAMPLE: A total of 41 children (aged 13-16 yrs; 14 females, 27 males) with moderate learning difficulties participated in the intervention programme. METHOD: The children participated in a twelve-week intervention programme designed to promote regulatory strategies over a range of activities. The children worked in pairs and were guided by an adult who provided explicit instruction and modelled appropriate strategies. The children were assessed before and after the programme to determine whether improvements in strategic behaviour were evident and whether this generalised to new situations. RESULTS: Gains made in regulatory skills over the course of the intervention were accompanied by improvements in other performance measures such as reading and IQ. CONCLUSIONS: Even after a relatively short intervention, which focused on the development of regulatory skills, significant improvements on a range of tasks were observed for a group of children with moderate learning difficulties.

Season of birth and gender effects in children attending moderate learning difficulty schools.

This paper examines the effects of season of birth and gender on academic achievement and cognitive abilities in children attending moderate learning difficulty schools. Given the high preponderance of both boys and children born in summer attending special schools it is important to consider how well these children perform in relation to their peers. A multivariate analysis reveals that both boys and summer born children perform better on tests of intelligence, mathematical ability, and reading comprehension. Summer born children also perform better on a test of communication skills. Discriminant functions analysis reveals that for both gender and season of birth IQ is the major predictor variable followed by reading comprehension, mathematical ability and communication skill. For gender, IQ discriminates more successfully than the other variables, whereas with season of birth the relative sizes of the effects are more comparable. The results of the analysis are discussed in terms of the implications for the identification of children for placement in moderate learning difficulty schools.