Browsing by Subject "learning disability"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Adapting to Online Instruction: Disparities Among Graduate and Professional Students
    (SERU Consortium, University of California - Berkeley and University of Minnesota., 2020-06) Soria, Krista M.
    Nearly two-thirds of graduate and professional students enrolled at five large, public research universities reported that they were able to adapt to online instruction “well” or “very well” according to the Graduate Student Experience in the Research University (gradSERU) COVID-19 survey of 7,690 graduate and professional students (Figure 1). Preliminary survey results suggest that 24% of students adapted “very well” to the transition to remote learning while 42% of students adapted “well” to the transition to online learning implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, approximately one-third (34%) of graduate and professional students indicated that they adapted only “slightly well” or “not at all well” to the transition to remote instruction implemented by their universities. Although many students adapted well to online instruction, the data suggest that students from low-income or working-class backgrounds and students with disabilities did not adapt as easily to online instruction.
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    The Experiences of Undergraduate Students with Physical, Learning, Neurodevelopmental, and Cognitive Disabilities During the Pandemic
    (SERU Consortium, University of California - Berkeley and University of Minnesota., 2020-10) Soria, Krista M.; Horgos, Bonnie; Chirikov, Igor; Jones-White, Daniel
    The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted students with physical, learning, neurodevelopmental, and cognitive disabilities who are enrolled at large public research universities, according to the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Consortium survey administered from May to July 2020 of 30,099 undergraduate students at nine universities. Approximately 6% of respondents (n = 1,788) reported having at least one disability (physical, learning, neurodevelopmental, or cognitive). Students with physical, learning, neurodevelopmental, and cognitive disabilities were more likely than students without disabilities to experience financial hardships during the pandemic, including unexpected increases in spending for technology, unexpected increases in living expenses, and loss or reduction in income (from family members or personal wages from off-campus employment). Furthermore, students with disabilities were also more likely to experience food and housing insecurity compared to students without disabilities. Students with physical, learning, neurodevelopmental, and cognitive disabilities were less likely to believe that they feel like they belong on campus and less likely to agree that the campus supported them during the pandemic. Students with those disabilities also experienced higher rates of major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder than students without disabilities. Students with disabilities were also less likely to live in safe environments compared to students without disabilities. As institutional leaders continue to adapt to higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic, we encourage them to consider the impact different instructional modalities may have in perpetuating disparities for students with disabilities.
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    Measuring Written Language Proficiency of Elementary-Aged Students with Writing Difficulties: Evaluating the Technical Quality of Complementary Scoring Mechanisms in Writing Curriculum-Based Measurement and Language Sample Analysis
    (2024) Reno, Emily
    Achieving proficiency in core foundational oral language (OL), reading, and writing skills remains difficult for students with specific learning disabilities (SLD) and foundational OL difficulty (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2022). Despite evidence linking OL skills in grammar (morphosyntax, syntax) and vocabulary (semantics) to writing quality (Dockrell et al., 2014, 2015; Kim et al., 2011, 2014, 2015; Kim & Park, 2019; Kim & Graham, 2022; Kim & Schatschneider, 2017) and a high co-occurrence of OL difficulty and SLD (Adlof & Hogan, 2018; Graham et al., 2020) OL difficulties remain under-identified (Adlof & Hogan, 2018; Georgan et al., 2023). To improve identification of these language-based learning disabilities, school-based practitioners must adopt a comprehensive, cascading levels of language assessment approach that examines linguistic skills across modalities (i.e., oral, written), domains (i.e., phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics), and levels (i.e., word-, sentence-, discourse-level) (Berninger et al., 2015). To support comprehensive oral and written language assessment, Reno and McMaster (2024) applied metrics from language sample analysis (LSA) as a complementary scoring mechanism for sentence-level picture-word writing curriculum-based measures (PW CBM-W) that provide discrete estimates underlying syntactic and semantic skills not possible with current CBM-W metrics (Dockrell et al., 2014). Three metrics, mean length of T-Unit in words, mean length of T-Unit in morphemes (MLTU-M), and number of different words (NDW) showed evidence of adequate reliability, criterion-related validity, and sensitivity to growth in a group of typically developing first through third graders. However, the extent to which complementary PW CBM-W and LSA scoring mechanisms exhibit technical quality in students with writing difficulties is unknown. The purpose of this dissertation was to determine the technical quality of complementary PW CBM-W and LSA scoring mechanisms in 123 first through third graders with writing difficulties. Using descriptive statistics, Pearson product-moment correlations, and Spearman’s correlations, I determined that two LSA metrics showed evidence of adequate reliability and criterion-related validity with existing CBM-W metrics and the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement, Third Edition Written Expression subtest (Kaufman & Kaufman, 2014): MLTU-M, using the mean score of two PW CBM-W forms, and NDW, by individual form or the mean of two PW CBM-W forms. Results support research on the role of foundational OL skills in writing (Kim & Graham, 2022) and offer a promising method to support comprehensive sentence-level written language assessment. Future research in PW CBM-W and LSA should investigate sensitivity to growth and identification accuracy for language-based learning disabilities, technical quality with bilingual and emergent bilingual populations, and school-based practitioners’ experiences with PW CBM-W and LSA scoring mechanisms as a feasible and acceptable practice.