Ken Linfoot

Behaviours of Concern to Teachers in the Early Years of School.

Teachers of students aged from five to eight years at 21 primary schools in western Sydney were surveyed about child behaviour that concerned them and their needs for support in dealing with such behaviour. Although most teachers were confident of their ability to manage classroom behaviour, teachers reported a need for support in dealing with distractibility and concern about aggressive behaviours. Less confident teachers expressed higher levels of concern about aggression, distractibility, and disobedience and wanted more support for dealing with distractibility and disobedience. No relationships were found between teacher concerns or support needs and teacher experience, class level or size, Local Government Area income grouping, and whether or not the school received additional funding for disadvantaged schools.

Pictures as Communication Symbols for Students with Severe Intellectual Disability

The use of pictographic symbols for expressive or receptive communication can be a valuable skill for persons with severe intellectual disability. This article reviews knowledge about picture recognition and use derived from cross-cultural studies, studies with young children, and studies with persons with intellectual disability in an attempt to clarify how picture skills emerge and how pictures come to be used as symbols for the objects they depict.

Intentional Communication and Graphic Symbol Use by Students with Severe Intellectual Disability

Communicative intent is an important construct in pragmatic theory that is based, in part, on the study of language acquisition among normally developing children. This article discusses communicative intent in persons with severe intellectual disability in the context of intervention studies reporting the acquisition of graphic symbol use.

Choice-making as a natural context for teaching early communication board use to a ten year old boy with no spoken language and severe intellectual disability

Graphic symbols displayed on communication boards are a communication option for learners with severe intellectual disability, but require symbol discrimination skills and the learning of object/symbol associations for effective use. In this study a student with severe intellectual disability, no spoken language, poor language comprehension and who had failed to learn basic symbol discrimination in extended table-top teaching, learnt to use nine object symbols when these were taught directly in a functional choice-making context. The research design followed the logic of a multiple baseline design across settings, but with the target behaviour more loosely defined than is traditional for this design. Difficulties with research methodology for this type of intervention are briefly addressed.

Preventing Conduct Disorder: A study of parental behaviour management and support needs with children aged 3 to 5 years

Managing antisocial behaviour in very young children presents many problems for parents, often leading to personal difficulties for them and the possible development of delinquency in their children as they grow older. This paper examines literature on the early onset of this behaviour and presents data from a sample of 265 parents of children enrolled in preschools or child care centres on their perceptions of their young childrens behaviour and of their own support needs. Results suggest that most parents preferred informal sources of support on child management and that only minor behaviour management problems were experienced by most families in this sample. For those experiencing more aggressive behaviours in their children evidence was noted, among other things, of inconsistency in their use of management strategies, greater use of punishment and a lack of confidence, and a need for help with personal coping strategies. Implications for parent support programs are considered.

How teachers of young children respond to problem Behaviour in the Classroom

The strategies that teachers of young children use to deal with problem behaviour in their classrooms were investigated. Teachers of Kindergarten, Year 1 and Year 2 classes in a sample of schools in western Sydney completed a questionnaire that provided information on teacher, class, school and community characteristics as well as their frequency of use of a range of strategies. Teachers reported use of a wide range of strategies with a preference for positive approaches. There was no relationship between the strategies teachers reported using and most teacher, class, school and community variables. The implications of these findings for inservicing and support to teachers are discussed.