What is Special in Special Education

MANOVA

(whatisspecial) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 15:07:23 -0500

MANOVA Basic

언제: 종속변인이 2개 이상일 때. 그래서 Multivariate 라고 부른다. 이러한 측면에서 ANOVA는 univariate라고 부른다.

조건: 종속변인들 간에 관계가 있어야 한다. 즉, correlated되어 있어야 한다.

왜 사용하는가: 1. Type I 에러의 통제 (Huberty and Morris, 1989) 2. 서로 상관 관계가 있는 종속변인들을 고려하여 효과분석

Assumptions

Multivariate Normality: 그러나 실제 MANOVA에서 이 조건이 결과에 미치는 영향은 매우 미비하다.

Homogeneity of the covariacne matrices

Independence of observation

MANCOVA 사용의 조건

공변인과 종속변인간에 통계적으로 유의미한 선형관계: 종속변인과 공변인간의 상관관계를 보면 확인 가능.
Homogeneity of the regressions: 독립변인 집단이 공변인에 대해 동일한 수준의 regression slopes를 가짐. 동일한 의미로, 공변인과 종속변인의 관계가 집단간에 차이가 없다.

Repeated Measures MANOVA
- 종속변인이 하나인 경우

Doubly multivariate repeated MANOVA
- 종속변인이 두개 이상인 경우

Critical principles of intervention to enhance motivation of students with learning disabilities

(whatisspecial) — Sun, 27 May 2007 09:18:17 -0500

Characteristics of students at risk in motivation

(e.g., Baker & Wigfield, 1999; Erbaum & Vaughn, 2001;Lynch, 2002; Pintrich and Schunk, 2002)

Ø Easily give up or avoid tasks similar to those previously failed

Ø Low self-efficacy: insufficient effort & persistence on tasks

Ø Difficulty in engagement during class activities

Ø In case of self-concept

Ø Interventions for middle school are more effective than other school level

Ø Counseling interventions are more effective than other types of intervention

Ø Interventions had more impact on student’s academic self-concept

Critical principles of intervention to enhance motivation of students with learning disabilities(e.g., Margolis & McCabe, 2004; Pajares 2003; Pintrich & Schunk, 2002; Rmrod 2000)

Ø Linking new work to recent successes

Ø Teaching learning strategies

Ø Stressing peer modeling

Ø Helping students create personal goals

Ø Providing the proper levels and sequences of tasks

Ø Providing contexts for learning

Universal design for learning

(whatisspecial) — Tue, 22 May 2007 13:25:35 -0500

[Concept]

Means for actively engaging all students in the learning process, regardless of age, gender, race, religion, ethnic origin, language, social class, sexual orientation, or disabilities – Barajas and Higbee (2003)

A curriculum that is effective for all students

For “Core Group” OR “For Outliers”

Outliers: Students with disabilities, Native language is not English, Students with talents

[Materials]

• Multiple media

• Print alternative

• Benefits of flexibility

• Digital contents

– Hyperlinks to glossaries

– Related background information in multiple media

– Graphic and animation to summarize or highly key relationship

– Queries to supports strategic thinking

– Sequenced supports for stepwise processes

– Tools for expression and organization

Classic Articles in Special Education

(whatisspecial) — Sun, 13 May 2007 20:32:38 -0500

특수교육 형성에 영향 준 아티클들

“Special Education for the Mildly Retarded: Is Much of It Justifiable?” by Lloyd Dunn, Exceptional Children (1968).

“Diagnosis and Remediation of Learning Disabilities” by Samuel Kirk and Barbara Bateman, Exceptional Children (1962).

“Behavior Modification of an Adjustment Class: A Token Reinforcement Program” by K. Daniel O’Leary and Wesley Becker, Exceptional Children (1967).

“Early Detection of Learning Problems: Questions, Cautions, and Guidelines” by Barbara Keogh and Laurence Becker, Exceptional Children (1973).

“The Effectiveness of Psycholinguistic Training” by Donald D. Hammill and Stephen Larsen, Exceptional Children (1974).

“A Strategy for Developing Chronological-Age-Appropriate and Functional Curricular Content for Severely Handicapped Adolescents and Young Adults”
by Lou Brown, Mary Beth Branston, Susan Hamre-Nietupski, Ian Pumpian, Nick Certo, and Lee Gruenewald, The Journal of Special Education (1979).

“Factors Associated with the Employment Status of Handicapped Youth Exiting High School from 1979 to 1983” by Susan Hasazi, Lawrence Gordon, and Cheryl Roe, Exceptional Children (1985).

“Curriculum-Based Measurement: The Emerging Alternative” by Stanley Deno, Exceptional Children (1985).

“Phonology and the Problems of Learning to Read and Write” by Isabelle Y. Liberman and Donald Shankweiler, Remedial and Special Education (1985).

“Educating Children with Learning Problems: A Shared Responsibility” by Madeleine Will, Exceptional Children (1986).

고전이 될 최근 아티클들

“Inclusive Schools Movement and the Radicalization of Special Education Reform” by Douglas Fuchs and Lynn Fuchs, Exceptional Children (1994).

Transformational Experiences of Teachers Educating Students with Disabilities” by
Michael Giangreco, Ruth Dennis, Chigee Cloninger, Susan Edelman, and Richard Schattman, Exceptional Children (1993).

출처: R E M E D I A L A N D S P E C I A L E D U C A T I O N
Volume 25, Number 2, March/April 2004, Pages 79–87

Analytic Memo Sample in Qualitative Research

(whatisspecial) — Sun, 13 May 2007 16:38:47 -0500

Concept of Analytic Memo.

"A brief note used during the coding and construction of data that summarizes a possible interpretation or analysis of the data. Memos help to remember particular analyses and focus future data collection and coding to explore ideas in the memos.

Analytic memos are used most often in qualitative observational approaches, such as ethnography or contextual inquiry, but they can be useful in the process of essentially any type of research. Some other types of memos may also be considered, though the boundaries between them blend: a "theoretical memo" considers possible theories that the data may support; an "integrative memo" seeks to identify relations between different pieces of data" (http://www.usabilityfirst.com/glossary/term_406.txl)

Sample I

analyticmemo.doc

Analytic Memo Sample in Qualitative Research

Sample 2 : View original document

AnalyticMemo2.doc

folk.uio.no/egilov/AnalyticMemo.doc

Sample 3: View original document

ex_AnalyticMemo_FMukama.doc

The Motivational Analysis of the Life of Chung, Ju-young (동기이론을 정주영 전 현대회장에게 적용하면... )

(whatisspecial) — Sun, 13 May 2007 15:09:23 -0500

Introduction

The founder of South Korea's Hyundai industrial empire and symbol of the country's post-war economic power, Chung Ju-yung, died at the age of 86 in 2001. Chung Ju-young will be placed as the first or second rank among people who were most influential in Korean modern history. The evaluation of Ju-Young’ contribution to Korean economics and his personal life are very controversial. Yet, there is little debate that his life was filled with interesting events. Motivation theories can provide the reasons why these events happened to him.

The biography written by Byung-do Lee describes his life including interesting events well. I selected a few anecdotes, especially interesting to me, from the biography based on the chronicle sequences. Chung Ju-Young’s major title was the owner of Hyundai industrial empire. He was one of the wealthy persons in Korea. Actually, Forbes ranked him in 9^th wealthy person in the world during 90s. The employees of his enterprise were about 210, 000. He was a congressman for 8 years in 1990s. He was the president of Korean sport association and lot of sub-associations, such as soccer, baseball, and archery. He established a huge foundation to help the poor workers. This is the bright side of his life.

However, his two sons committed suicide. He was attached to the honorary doctors. He was a failed candidate for the presidency. There have been serious troubles with his sons. He did not meet one of sons until he died though he always emphasized the happy family in public lecture. He was attached to playing the key roles in uniting two Koreas (South and North) at the end of his life. He could not visit his hometown for more than 50 years. As Guy Sorman mentioned as the best performance among 20 century, he visited the North Korea with 1,000 cattle 5 years before he died. However, his enterprise faced very severe financial problems from his self-righteous projects. Actually, he spent one thousand million dollars to the project related with North Korea including traveling and establishing factories in North Korea. All of these anecdotes will be used as the sources to understand his motivation and emotion.

Early Stage of Life

He was born at the north part of North Korea before Korean War in 1920. His home town belongs to the territory of North Korea now. Thus, he could not visit his home town for about 50 years. His father was a very poor framer like any other father in those days. Farming was regarded as the more valuable jobs than selling or manufacturing goods though they were poorer than a seller or a manufacturer. People in those days were influenced by the Confucian ideas that devaluating activities to make money. They accepted the poverty as destiny and did not think of it as a problem to overcome. There was also strict social class system. For the education, private schools for teaching the Confucian ideas were prevalent. Many people thought that this level (elementary level) of education was enough to live happily as a farmer. People emphasized diligence rather than higher education as a farmer.

His father, of course, forced him to be a diligent farmer. It was his natural scripts including belief system, value system, and goal system according to his social class and economic status. As he was a farmer, like his father, his son had no choice but to be a diligent but a poor farmer. A scripts of Ju-young’s father consisted of a sequence of goals (e.g., being a good father and not to make his family hungry) directed actions (e.g., diligence) that were causally and temporally ordered and includes the relevant jobs and roles as a farmer. The role scripts of Ju-young father included information about his typical behaviors (e.g., obedience to the land owners) in specific social situations (e.g. there were lots of competitors for the limited land) and includes knowledge about the expected sequence of decisions in a given situation (e.g., if he is not diligent, the land owner would not give permission to use land for farming). Through continuous experiences or learning from the long history as a poor farmer, the scripts as a poor farmer in real life situations becomes automatic scripts used in situational context to direct behaviors. And the scripts included the scripts which forced Ju-Young to follow his way of life instead of relearning the steps of appropriate behaviors.

However, a 13 years old boy, Ju-Young left a poor farming family to seek his fortune, selling his father's cow and keeping the money. Most people accommodated his own scripts to the social scripts to avoid the conflicts with other scripts (e.g., father’s scripts and social scripts). However, Ju-Young rejected to follow the typical social scripts (e.g., good son script) such as to be a diligent poor farmer. The reasons why he rejected the father’s scripts could be summarized into three. First, he felt the need for physiological and safety of Maslow. Many people in his home town died of a famine in those days. His home town was so cold that it was difficult to farm enough rice. Second, he regarded making money as the highest value as much as denying the needs for belongingness and good son scripts. He concluded that money could be the critical factor to meet his basic needs, such as security. Third, the social comparison theory can explain why he left his home. When he was 13 years old, there was a rumor that his friends (he was 7 years older than Ju-Young) became a very rich person. He also left home at the age of 14 years old. This rumor increased his perceived possibility to be a rich person.

Ju-Young’s early behavior or decision-making process could be explained with the expectancy-value theory. Most people were aware of the value of being a rich person. Definitely, being a rich person was regarded as high value by the most people. However, their expectance for success could be low due to their personal experiences or environmental influences (e.g. their social class and their father’s experiences). On the contrary, Ju-young gave more emphasis on value rather than expectancy (M = E X V). Of course, his expectancy also could be higher than other hometown people because the success of his best fried increased the possibility for success.

One possible explanation was his ability to create a clear short term goal rather than vague or difficult goal. The short term goal setting could increase his self-efficacy about his performance including leaving home and stealing cow. His ability to choice the proper levels of tasks and sequencing the tasks could increase the self-efficacy and self-esteem due to lots of success. When he left the home with a cow, his goal was to be an owner of a rice store. He just thought that if he became an owner of rice store, he could eat as much as he wanted. He set up his subjective goal with moderate level difficulty. After five years, he actually could be an owner of a rice store.

Ju-Young was likely to feel very positive feeling when he achieved his first goal he set for himself, not the objective level of success in a short time. This success could be the first source related to prior successful experience with the tasks he set up. This prior success led to increases in the level of aspiration to be richer person. Thus, he began a car repairing store. After 15 years, he became an owner of Hyundai motors. He had the high level of motivation in the three components of motivation, such as enough energy, clear direction, and persistence with tasks. At the same time, he had a high level of volition. He slept about 4 hours during working as a delivery boy at a rice store.

Prime Time of Life As a Successful Businessman

After the Second World War, he branched out into the construction business, gradually building the Hyundai enterprise into a conglomerate making everything from cars to mobile phones. He always said “Hard work, creativity and a capacity to never give up” This is the essence of Chung's life during his prime time of life as a businessman. He was not only trying to build the strong achievements but also placed high value on the tasks itself he carried out. He often mentioned “the tasks I am doing are for the nations and people not for me and my family” He placed higher values on his tasks. He invested much effort into doing many things better than others and into improving his previous personal performance. During this time, he primarily pursued a goal for its own sake (intrinsic motivation and learning goals). However, the extrinsic achievements (increase in the number of his companies and money) provided a very positive feedback to him and this feedback contributed to better motivation including learning goal and performance goal during this period. As both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation was high, his performance reached the highest point.

Many people remembered him as a person who did not much worry about the future. His anxiety level was relatively low. He enjoyed the uncertainties. His motivation was more likely to be intrinsic. His goal was also like to be learning goal. It showed that his higher level of self-efficacy or self-competence for his abilities to work. If case of two goals conflicted, he quickly selected one. Usually, the delay in a goal conflict situation decreased the motivation.

He was a success-oriented person by intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic motivation. The success-oriented person is high in motive for success and low in fear of failure. He was highly engaged in achievement activities and not was anxious or worried by his performances. He did not seem to be a type of person who was a failure avoider. He was not high in fear of failure and low in motive for success. He would not be very anxious and attempt to avoid failure by procrastinating and using other self-handicapping strategies. He was very creative in planning stages, beginning new projects, and overcoming difficulties. Especially, he begin a new task, he often said “I am learning, thus I am happy.”

His prior success influenced positively on the future activities and engagement. Actually, he did not experience failure at the beginning era of business. Most of his new businesses were successful due to his ability and the enough support from government. Expectancy-value theory could provide very meaningful explanation for his success as a businessman too. Motivation model predicts that motivation would be highest when tasks were of an intermediate level of difficulty. The product of multiplying the probability of success by the incentive value (as in all expectancy-value models) is greatest at this intermediate level (e.g., .5 X .5 = .25) in comparison to other conditions. However, Jung’s motivation was highest when the level of tasks was highest. This presumed that he had very high level of self-efficacy, thus actual difficulty of task was not so critical to him. He had very high perceptions of his own competence. As mentioned above, he did not experience a failure due to the full supports from government during the early period. If he tried a task and experienced repeated failure, then he would not engage in the new tasks. But, he did not have chance to experience failure in those days.

The Twilight Years of His Life

Whenever he talked about the competent employee his company needed, he emphasized the passion to work hard (e.g., effort and diligence) rather than the academic background. However, he received more than 8 honorary degrees from the famous Universities in compensation for the large amount of donations to the Universities. It showed that he had high self-efficacy for the abilities in business but low self-esteem on scholastic attainments. He graduated from just elementary level school. Another example which was showing his low self-concept on academic background was related with his son. He forced one of his sons to achieve the doctoral degree though his son didn’t like to do. His son was interested in the paintings. However, he studied economic in the most prestigious university at Korea. Finally, he was one of sons committed suicide his early age.

Another example of his low self-esteem is that he was the president of many sport associations including the Korean sport association. He wanted to increase the self-esteem through the higher social positions and the doctoral degrees. Especially, the owner of Samsung enterprise, his rival in Korea society, graduated from one of the most prestigious Universities. Medias often compared two persons with multiple dimensions including academic background and their roles in Korea. This social comparison with very similar and familiar person motivated him to engage in the activities to increase his self-concept.

In late 80s, his enterprise faced severe difficulties due to the large debt and tax evasions. Yet, he did not accept the social blames that he could make money by resorting to an expedient such as tax evasion or offering a bribe to the political leaders. He always attributed his success to his effort and creativity (ability). However, when he faced difficulties, he attributed his faults to the lack of his political power and luck. He explained his failure with the external attributions. However, he attributed his success to the internal attributions such as efforts and abilities.

An external attribution assigns causality to an outside force. An external attribution claims that some outside thing motivated the event. By contrast, an internal attribution assigns causality to factors within the person. If he admitted his failure as an internal attribution, he would say, "I'm guilty, grant me forgiveness." An internal attribution claims that the person was directly responsible for the event. If he made the internal attribution for his misbehaviors, it required the change of his attitudes and beliefs about himself. He could not change his long beliefs on reasons for the business successes. Failure was thought to be caused by not his fault. Thus, his failure didn’t hurt his self-esteem. He avoided hurting his self-efficacy, pride, and confidence as a businessman.

As he attributed his failure to the lack of power and he had a high level of self-efficacy and outcome expectation, he decided to get the political power through presidential election. His previous success in very difficult situations influenced on his expectations on political success, thus, motivated him to try presidential election. He always showed the characteristic of the person who had high self-efficacy and high outcome expectation. First, he decide to get the political power by himself rather than avoid tasks related to succeeding because he believed success was due to high ability and effort which he was confident of. Second, he selected challenges of high difficulty because the feedback from those tasks tells him more about how well he was doing, rather than very easy tasks which tell him little about his ability or effectiveness. Third, he contributed himself with a lot of energy because the results were believed to be determined by how hard he tried. However, in 1991, he finished third. After the election he was convicted of election law violations.

He had crossed into North Korea with a gift of 1,000 cattle. Why cattle? Why was he so attached to the project related with North Korea? First, when he left the home, he ran away with money from selling father’s cow. He could feel the loneness during his whole life because he could not meet his family and could not visit his hometown for 50 years. He could strongly felt the belongingness needs. Korean people have very strong attachment to the place where they were born. Koreans have lived at the same place for more than 5 thousand years with farming. They often identify themselves with the place they were born. This phenomenon is still political issues in Korean. Korea is a very collective society based on community, region, and large family. He wanted to recover the relationship with his family members. His father and mother had died, however he wanted to compensate his early faults (e.g., stealing cow and leaving home) and wanted to be the member of his previous community. He wanted to receive the positive evaluation from his home town. Thus, he visited his hometown and invested much money for his hometown.

At the last part of his life was closely related with two tasks. First one was to actively participate into the project to working with North Korea. He was regarded as a private agent to link South Korea with North Korea. He mentioned that contributing to the reunification of two Koreas was his last task to do. Second one was to establish the huge foundation for social welfare and poor workers.

In those years, his reputation as a business leader suffered as he failed to implement reforms aggressively within Hyundai. The once proud Hyundai had been plagued by cash shortages, internal fighting and criticism from the government that it had not slimmed down its overextended, family-controlled portfolio. He might find another task to keep his self-esteem high. In spite of much concerns for his new tasks, he engaged himself to the two projects. This could be the recovery stage of disengagement. For the fighting among his sons and the critics from media for his misbehaviors as businessman, he expressed strong anger and depression for about 4 years. After the 4 years’ depression, his new projects became clear. He did not hear others’ concerns about these projects. He wanted to meet the esteem needs. He wanted to recover his esteem from others because his high esteem as a businessman was severely damaged by the failure of cash shortages and internal fighting of Hyundai among his sons.

His behaviors also could be explained with the concept of self-actualization. At the last part of life, he wanted to contribute to the nations and people. He showed strong sympathy on the people in desperate situation. He wanted to contribute to improving their life. Klinger’s concept of meaningfulness can be a frame to explain Ju-Young’s behavior. The incentives he pursued were the reunions of the separate families for 50 years. It was the most valuable event in Korea in those days. It was the symbol of the recovery of his relationship with his family and hometown. He could place value on events and these could arouse positive affect. And this affect guided further behaviors.

The recovery of this relationship with his family in North Korea and his hometown members could be the meaning of life. He also could think of the recovery of social incentives (relationship with peoples) as a successful contributor of the reunification of two Korea. He had higher perception of the importance of the task, higher level of personal interest in the task, and his perception of the utility value of the task for future goals (e.g., his company’s prior occupation in North Korea or the fame from his contributions to the process of reunification of Koreas).

Jamsian and cognitive perspective on emotion

(whatisspecial) — Sun, 13 May 2007 14:52:49 -0500

Compared to common sense of emotional sequence such as perception-emotion-bodily changes, Jamesian perspective follows the sequence of perception-bodily response-emotion. This perspective emphasizes the unseen physiological response of human bodies to events which are important determinant of emotional experience. Most interesting idea of Jamesian perspective, though there is a controversy on it, is that particular emotional experiences appears associated with the posture, facial expressions, or other behaviors.

The position of James’ idea is related with Darwinian perspectives. Jamesian perspective contributed to frame the place of feeling in an evolutionary theory of emotions. The similarity between two perspectives is that human emotions, like animals, are useful adaptations to their environment to survive. Jamesian perspective, like Darwinian perspective, believes that all emotional body changes have their own reasons for doing those ways.

One of the issues Jamesian perspective can not explain was Cannon’s main critics. Cannon’s critic of James-Lange theory was that there are very similar bodily changes between emotions such as fear, rage, and pain. Cannon’s idea was that different motions should be followed different bodily changes. Five reasons why James-Lange was wrong were presented. The issue whether emotion can be artificially induced or not was discussed too.

Schachter’s two factor theory revealed that emotions consist of two components such as physiological arousal and situationally-appropriate cognition. Schachter insisted that physiological arousal alone is not enough to initiate a real experience of emotion. The bodily changes are perceived by the person and the person is put into a state in which he or she is motivated to find an explanation for these changes.

Jamesian perspectives also do not explain why certain stimuli come to have the power to elicit emotion. The cognitive perspective was introduced based on Magda Arnold to solve this problem. She thought that in order to understand emotions, one must understand how people make judgments about events in their environment. Emotions are generated by judgments about world.

The primacy of appraisal and the nature of appraisal including sequence of perception-appraisal-emotion. The similarity with James is that physiological changes serve as the basis of both felt experience of emotion and particular survival-related purposes. Then, he mentioned cognitive structural theories of emotion. Cognitive structural theories assumed that all of the cognitions associated with a particular emotion can be seen as reflection a relative small number of underlying meanings or dimensions.

This perspective showed how simple theory becomes more sophisticated and comprehensive to fill its gaps by the fundamental questions generating next framework of emotion. When James contemplated the emotion first, it was just response of bodily changes. James, as a pragmatist, maybe wanted to believe that all things including human emotion can be explained by observable phenomena like behaviors. Each bodily change was associated with just one emotion without crossed effects (same bodily changes with different emotions).

They need more comprehensive explanation about the relationship between cognitive and emotion. The cognitive structural theories were attempts to find the relationship between two with dimensions and emotions. They believe that same cognitive structures always give rise to the same emotions. However, how sensitively each dimension differentiates each emotion with full ranges of emotion and how to integrate a particular situation influenced by each individual’s goals and motivation are not easy to explain. Next question maybe can be how to make more fully functioning matrix of structure in the relation with situation, context, or culture.

과학적인 방법 (혹은 과학적 연구방법)이란 무엇인가?

(whatisspecial) — Sat, 12 May 2007 15:14:33 -0500

우리가 "과학적" 이라고 하는 것은 기타 다른 접근법과 어떻게 차별화할 수 있는가? 비과학적이란 무엇을 의미하는가? 양적접근과 과학적 접근은 동일한가? 우선, 간단한 수준에서 "과학적"이라는 것은 향후 일어날 사건이나 행동을 모델화할 수 있는 신뢰할 수 있는 정보를 체계적으로 얻으려는 방법이라고 할 수 있다. 특히, 과학적 방법론은 양화된 정보를 통한 보다 정확한 모델 개발을 강조한다. 흔히 이러한 과학적 접근법은 다음의 구체적인 방법을 통해 가능하다.

- 귀납 - forming a hypothesis by drawing general conclusions from existing data.
- 연역 - making specific predictions based on the hypothesis.
- 관찰 - gathering data related to a hypothesis (hypothesis-driven)
- 검증(verification) - testing the predictions to generate data that would support or refute a hypothesis

그러면, 과학적 접근의 어떤 단계를 거쳐 가능한가?

첫째, 문제를 정의.식별하는 단계 (Define/Identify the Problem)
둘째, 가설을 세우는 단계(Form a Hypothesis)
셋째, 관찰 및 실험을 을 통해 가설을 검증하는 단계 (Make Observations or Test Hypothesis and Perform Experiments)
네째, 자료를 구조화하고 분석하는 단계 (Organize and Analyze Data)
다섯째, 결론을 유도하는 단계
여섯째, 결론을 토론이나 다른 사람을 통해 검증하는 단계

그렇다면, 모든 지식에서 과학적 접근법이 가능한가? 인문학과 자연과학을 동일한 준거 위에서 논의할 수 있는가? 만약, 차이가 있다면, 인문학의 "과학적"이라는 것은 무엇인가?

발달장애 (Developmental Disabilities)의 개념

(whatisspecial) — Fri, 11 May 2007 20:45:31 -0500

특수교육 분야에서 흔히 사용하면서도 가장 모호한 개념 중 하나가 "발달장애"란 개념이다. 그렇다면 흔히 말하는 "발달장애"는 어떻게 개념화할 수 있는가? 많은 학자들은 발달장애의 개념을 정의하는 데 있어 다음의 여섯가지 특성을 발달장애의 개념에 포함시킨다.

첫째, 세 곳 이상의 영역에서 심각한 장애를 가지고 있다. 둘째, 적응적 행위(예를 들어, self-care)와 같은 행동에서 문제가 있다. 세째, 의사소통과 사회성에서 문제가 있다. 네째, 경제적으로 독립할 수 없다. 다섯째, 공통체 생활에 장애가 있다. 그리고 마지막으로 레져나 리크리에이션에 문제가 있다. 이상의 개념에서 볼 수 있듯이 발달장애란 개념은 매우 광범위한 영역을 포함함으로서 그 개념이 매우 애매한 용어라고 볼 수 있다.

http://www.usd.edu/cd/newsite/images/ddc.gif

TV와 장애에 대한 많은 연구

(whatisspecial) — Wed, 9 May 2007 21:57:07 -0500

TV와 장애에 대한 많은 연구 중 하나라고 생각이 듭니다. 즉, 많은 연구자들이 왜, 현대의 아이들은 이전의 아이들에 비해 상대적으로 집중력장애, 학습문제, 자폐, 행동장애 등이 많은가 고민을 했을 것입니다. 그러는 과정에서, 많이 언급되는 요인들을 변하는 사회적 환경에서 찾았습니다. 즉, 사람은 기본적으로 태어나는 시점에서는 동일한데 왜 과거의 아동과 현대의 아동은 다른가에 대한 고민에서, 결국은 현대의 변화된 생활 환경에서 그 원인을 찾고자 한 것으로 보입니다. 대표적인 요인으로, TV, 비디오 게임, 게이블 TV, 살충제의 활용, 유전자 변이 식품 등 다양한 환경적 요인들이 상관관계 연구에 바탕을 두고 진행되어 왔다고 봅니다. 그러나, 근본적으로 상관관계 연구가 인과관계를 보여주진 못한다는 것이 아쉽습니다.