Open Journal for Educational Research

57-74

Authors: Athina Mourelatou & Milen Zamfirov

In this survey a presentation of the difficulties of students with mild intellectual disabilities is performed. Intellectual disability is a neurodevelopment diagnosis and it refers to children who have developmental, adaptive behavioural and cognitive difficulties compared to their peers. Intellectual disabilities are categorized by their severity into: mild, moderate, severe, or profound. The purpose of this research is to construct a psychometric instrument for detecting intellectual disabilities in high school and specifically high school students aged 13-17. In order to find out if the specific psychometric test is appropriate to detect Intellectual disability, questionnaires have been given to special needs teachers. The research findings illustrate that the specific psychometric test is appropriate in order to detect intellectual disability.

91-108

Authors: Athanasios Vlachos & Milen Zamfirov

In this paper educators provide a valuable feedback in the use of concept maps in secondary education. More specifically their use in teaching dyslexic students Science. Almost 100 educators replied to an online questionnaire after they studied a set of evaluation sheets provided to them based on concept maps. We will begin with a brief presentation of the specific learning difficulty of dyslexia; following that are the main general characteristics and challenges that dyslexic students face. Also, the organization of Science classes for the dyslexic student is briefly discussed. Then information regarding concept maps is given. A presentation and quick discussion of four evaluation sheets with concept maps in the science subjects of Chemistry, Biology and Physics is performed. The main part of this paper presents the questionnaire along with a discussion regarding its results. Finally, conclusion are drawn and future work is mentioned.

15-30

Authors: Eleni Doni & Artemis Giotsa

The purpose of this research, which was carried out for the first time in Greece, is to focus on the early detection of preschool children’s internalizing problems, according to their teachers’ perceptions. The participants, 77 preschool teachers of 77 half-day and all-day preschool classes from the thirteen regions of Greece, completed: (a) the “Caregiver-Teacher Report Form (C-TRF) for ages 1½-5” of Achenbach (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2009) and (b) the “Demographic Questionnaire” (Doni, 2015), considering 1.234 mixed gender (617 boys and 617 girls) children 4-6 years of age. According to the results, preschool teachers detected internalizing problems in 10.4 % of the children, of whom 6.9% was included in the clinical range, while 3.5% was included in the borderline range. The highest rate, 10.9 % of the children, was included in either clinical or borderline range for withdrawal syndrome. Boys had higher rates of internalizing problems than girls. Moreover in all-day preschools, preschool teachers detected more cases of children with emotional reactivity. These findings could be useful in future studies specialized on children’s social and emotional functioning, in a future revision of universities curricula associated with early childhood education, as well as in preschool teachers’ training programs, by including modules related to the accurate and early detection and treatment of internalizing problems experienced by preschoolers.