Development of educational policy and early intervention for learning difficulties in Australia: In the case of Queensland

This paper aims to describe the historical outline and current development of the educational policy for students with learning difficulties in Australia, focusing especially on the state of Queensland. In order to develop educational policy of learning difficulities at the state level, the concept of learning difficulities had been discussed until the middle of the 1970's. Receiving the submissions which argued strongly against a diagnostically-oriented definition of learning disabilities, the Select Comittee concluded that there was much conceptual confusion regarding the definition and cause of learining difficulties that might take many years to resolve. Despite that it was recongnised that action was needed to assist children by looking at their "total learning environmerit", and recommended the development of an educational policy for students with learning difficulties. During 1980's, support teachers for students with learning difficulties were employed in many schools. Scince the early 1980's support teachers have been making their efforts in regular classrooms rather than in the resource rooms. Their roles have been to help students with learning difficulties using effective and specific skills, and to consult with the regular classroom teacher in solving the problems related to learning difficulties in regular classes. Currently, the support system for students with learning difficulties has been employed to organize a more systematic and broader approach in Queensland based on the accountability of schools. In the context of enphasizing literacy and numeracy, a systematic whole school approach and particular programs, such as the Year 2 Diagnostic Net and Reading Recovery, have been introduced into the educational system for early identification and early intervention.

An evaluative case study of a psychological skills training program for athletes with intellectual disabilities

The purpose was to develop an evaluative case study of six 3-hr sessions, spaced over 3 months, of psychological skills training (PST) provided to athletes with an intellectual disability who were training for the Basketball Australia State Championships. Participants were 7 males and 7 females, aged 15.8 to 27.1 years, with a receptive language level of 7 to 13.7 years, 2 female coaches, 2 psychologists, and I registered psychologist supervisor. Sessions focused specifically on stress management, with primary attention given to cue words, breathing techniques, and positive thinking. Findings, based on interviews and participant observations, revealed that all participants believed that the PST was appropriate and worthwhile.

Can anticipatory skills be learned through implicit video-based perceptual training?

The aim of this experiment was to determine the effectiveness of two video-based perceptual training approaches designed to improve the anticipatory skills of junior tennis players. Players were assigned equally to an explicit learning group, an implicit learning group, a placebo group or a control group. A progressive temporal occlusion paradigm was used to examine, before and after training, the ability of the players to predict the direction of an opponent's service in an in-vivo on-court setting. The players responded either through hitting a return stroke or making a verbal prediction of stroke direction. Results revealed that the implicit learning group, whose training required them to predict serve speed direction while viewing temporally occluded video footage of the return-of-serve scenario, significantly improved their prediction accuracy after the training intervention. However, this training effect dissipated after a 32 day unfilled retention interval. The explicit learning group, who received instructions about the specific aspects of the pre-contact service kinematics that are informative with respect to service direction, did not demonstrate any significant performance improvements after the intervention. This, together with the absence of any significant improvements for the placebo and control groups, demonstrated that the improvement observed for the implicit learning group was not a consequence of either expectancy or familiarity effects.