Anne Jobling

The University of Queensland | UQ · School of Education

The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is a new individualised disability funding scheme (full rollout commenced in 2016) in Australia that focuses on personalised planning. This article reports the perspectives of a small group of adults with intellectual disabilities as they engaged in the scheme. A focus group was used to collect the da...

A key goal of the NDIS, the federally funding individualised funding scheme for people with a disability in Australia, is to facilitate an ordinary life for them in their communities. This study examined family perceptions of the contribution NDIS made to create an ordinary life for their adult member with intellectual disability. Semi-structured i...

Background With the introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), creation and implementation of participants’ plans are becoming a research focus. As many families facilitate the implementation of plans, it is important to understand the enablers and barriers to this process. Method This study investigated the experiences of 20...

Background: The study reported here investigated the views of staff who worked with adults with intellectual disability regarding the likely future of such adults. Method: Staff were provided with a short vignette portraying an adult with intellectual disability and asked to describe that individual’s future in five years and then to indicate the l...

This study reports on Australian small-scale exploratory descriptive research into how young people with intellectual disability and their families construct their futures. The aims of this research were to (a) better understand the future aspirations held by young adults with intellectual disability and their parents, (b) identify enablers and bar...

Background: This article reports research about the experiences of families with an adult child with intellectual disability as they engaged in the NDIS planning processes in Australia. Method: Parents of 19 adults with intellectual disability responded to a number of closed and Likert-type items and provided comments. Responses are reported using...

People with intellectual disability do not often take part in research. We wanted to include people with intellectual disability on our research committee. We worked with two people with intellectual disability to help with their roles on the research committee. We talk about some ideas that made this work well. Two people with intellectual disabil...

There is limited research about learning outcomes for young people with intellectual disabilities (ID) in postschool education (PSE). This is a significant issue as PSE is a strong predictor of successful employment for individuals with ID. Tertiary education programs have been developed in several countries, including Australia. These programs rem...

Receptive vocabulary is an important aspect of cognitive functioning. It appears to be a relative strength with respect to language for individuals with Down syndrome (DS) but little is known about its development as individuals mature. This study was designed to establish the developmental trajectory of receptive language development in individual...

Background: Self-regulation has been found to be an important contributor to a range of outcomes, with delay of gratification (a self-regulatory skill) predicting better academic, social and personal functioning. There is some evidence that individuals with Down syndrome have difficulty with delay of gratification. We investigated the question of...

This study focused on current life circumstances, previous life events, and engagement with productive and enjoyable activities. It examined the association of these variables with mental health problems and mood in a cohort of young adults with Down syndrome. Participants were 49 adults with Down syndrome (age range 20-31 years) and their parents/...

Having friends and being a friend defines us as human beings. Friends can play many roles in our lives, and without friends, life can become increasingly lonely. For young people, friends often take a counselling role in times of emotional stress, so loneliness or a life without friends who can understand the emotional contexts of friendships and '...

Background: The study reported here was an examination of the reliability of a method for determining acquiescent responding and the capacity to respond to items using a Likert scale response format by adults with an intellectual disability. Method: Reliability of the outcomes of these procedures was investigated using a test-retest design. Asso...

This article reports the implementation of a specific teaching program (STP) to improve the numeracy skills (place value) of a cohort of young adults with Down syndrome. The STP was based on a range of teaching strategies that research had shown were effective across various groups who have difficulties with numeracy learning. The participants were...

Despite the importance of and advocacy for developing literacy skills for successful and rewarding participation in the community, there remains a common perception that becoming literate is not possible for people with intellectual disabilities. Until recently, limited research has been undertaken to investigate the literacy skills of adults with...

This chapter reports on the writing achievement, writing-related metacognition and motivation of students with learning difficulties. The students were in the middle years of schooling (Years 5, 6 and 7 in primary school and Years 8 and 9 in English in high school). The study examined how the students performed at pre-implementation, post-implement...

Introduction In the first year of life, typically developing infants make huge strides in motor development. They progress from a limited repertoire of spontaneous and reflex movements to more purposeful, goal-directed movements. Using their arms, they achieve greater balance in more upright positions and progress from sitting and crawling to stand...

This chapter seeks to stimulate thinking and reflection by exploring the position and place of young people with disabilities in research. In doing this, the authors contextualize the chapter within the subject area of physical education. By mapping out the research terrain of young people with disabilities they find these young people have been ma...

This article describes how photographs have been used in literacy activities for young adults with Down syndrome participating in a post-school literacy programme. We describe how the principled use of photographs in literacy teaching can: scaffold literacy learning, specifically in the writing of stories and recounts; support writing about abstrac...

A vision screening was carried out of 116 children with Down syndrome who were attending schools in Brisbane or in nearby districts. Of this group, 99 children (54 boys) represented 90% of the total population of children with Down syndrome registered at special schools in Brisbane at the end of 1986. Non-cycloplegic retinoscopy was successful in a...

This article reports on a case study of an exemplary teacher who was a participant in a professional learning project, WriteIdeas. The teacher provided instructional support in writing to a targeted student with learning difficulties in an inclusive Year 8 English classroom. Analytical frameworks were developed and applied to the data that had been...

Maternal behaviors and child mastery behaviors were examined in 25 children with Down syndrome and 43 typically developing children matched for mental age (24-36 months). During a shared problem-solving task, there were no group differences in maternal directiveness or support for autonomy, and mothers in the two groups used similar verbal strategi...

IntroductionData CollectionResultsLife style difference between younger and older persons with Down syndromeDiscussionReferences

Study 1: Mothers' Experience of MotheringStudy 2: Stress in Mothers and FathersStudy 3: Sibling relationshipsConclusion References

Popular culture has been part of English and literacy studies in Australia for several years. However, the issue of the inclusion of popular culture in literacy education for young adults with Down syndrome has been marginalised. Using examples of engagement with popular culture by young adults with Down syndrome attending a post-school literacy pr...

Being literate empowers individuals to be effective consumers, to be informed about lifestyle options, to read aesthetically for relaxation and enjoyment and to further their knowledge of people and places that can enable them to participate more fully in communities. However, there are limited literacy opportunities and programs specifically desig...

This article examines teachers' knowledge and attitudes and their implementation of practices around the teaching of writing to students with developmental disabilities and learning difficulties in inclusive classrooms in the middle years (Years 6 to 9). As part of a larger study undertaken in Queensland, Australia, we used evidence from a range of...

This paper reports on one aspect of a larger study, the WriteIdeas project (van Kraayenoord, Moni, Jobling, Koppenhaver & Elkins, 2004), which is concerned with writing and middle school students (Years 6 and 7 in primary schools and Years 8 and 9 in the English curriculum area) who have developmental disabilities or learning difficulties and who a...

Adults with intellectual disability have a range of significant health problems. If they are to live independently, they need to engage in behaviours that are health promoting, as well as avoiding behaviours that might directly lead to ill health. There is very little research about health-related knowledge and behaviour in this group. A group of 3...

This study examined parents' behaviours as they waited with their child. Children were presented with an attractively wrapped gift and then asked not to touch it until the experimenter returned from finishing some work in another room. Three parent groups and their children participated in the study - parents of children with Down syndrome, parents...

The teaching and learning of phonics are core elements of a balanced literacy program for people with intellectual disabilities. Studies have shown that individuals who have limited phonic and decoding skills will be unlikely to progress in their reading ability beyond an emergent level and are more likely to experience difficulty in comprehension.

There has been huge growth in the use of information technology (IT) in classrooms for learners of all ages. It has been suggested that computers in the classroom encourage independent and self-paced learning, provide immediate feedback and improve self-motivation and self-confidence. Concurrently there is increasing interest related to the role of...

The purpose of reading is for the reader to construct meaning from the text. For many young adults with Down syndrome, knowing what the text is all about is difficult, and so for them the activity of reading becomes simply the practice of word calling. It is suggested in the literature that for those individuals with Down syndrome, learning can con...

There is limited information available related to the literacy skills of adults with intellectual disabilities. In this project, information was collected about the contexts, current practices, and clients' abilities in literacy in two community‐based disability service programs. Individual assessments were undertaken to collect details of the curr...

Stanford Binet: Fourth Edition (SB:IV) assessments have been collected longitudinally for 195 individuals with Down syndrome. This article discusses individual assessments which were selected for their ability to highlight major concerns that practitioners need to consider when interpreting intelligence test scores with this population. In this stu...

This article describes a collaborative and cross-curricula initiative undertaken in the School of Education at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. The project involved developing an integrated approach to providing professional year pre-service secondary teacher education students with experiences that would assist them to develop th...

In this article, Hayley Fitzgerald, Anne Jobling and David Kirk consider the physical education and sporting experiences of a group of students with severe learning difficulties. Their study is thought provoking, not only because of the important and somewhat neglected subject matter, but equally for the research approach adopted. The way in which...

This study investigated the attitudes of 354 Australian parents who have a child with a disability and who attends a state school in Queensland. The types of disability of the children were broadly in accordance with accepted prevalence figures, except for a greater number reported as having autistic spectrum disorder and fewer students with a lear...

This article will report on the process of student-led research as an innovative pedagogical technique for learning more about the physical education (PE) and sporting experiences of young disabled people. The article draws on work from two school based curriculum projects that sought to work with young people in an empowering manner. We argue that...

Education programs for preservice general educators in Australia have previously given only brief attention to educating children with special needs. In recent years, training institutions have gradually begun to implement courses in special education for all regular preservice educators, although as yet this is not nationally compulsory. This rese...

This case study examined the impact of a series of tutoring sessions on the literacy development of a young woman with Down syndrome. The sessions were conducted within the LATCH-ON (Literacy and Technology-Hands On) program at the Schonell Special Education Centre at the University of Queensland and made use of technology resources in addition to...

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 le...

The case is presented of a female infant with a distal deletion of 8p (8p23.1-->pter) whose development was monitored over a 5-year period from 12 months of age. Although previous literature has suggested that 8p deletion is associated with mild to moderate intellectual disability, the child reported here has normal intelligence. Despite initial de...

Beyond the myths: representing people with Down syndrome / Jan Gothard -- Learning in young children with Down syndrome: public perceptions, empirical evidence / Jennifer G. Wishart -- Self-regulation in children and young people with Down syndrome / Sheila Glenn and Cliff Cunningham -- What matters most? A reflection on a quarter century of early...

The aim of this study was to determine the extent to which adults with Down syndrome (DS) are able to utilise advance information to prepare reach to grasp movements. The study comprised ten adults with DS; ten children matched to an individual in the group with DS on the basis of their intellectual ability, and twelve adult controls. The participa...

A number of researchers have argued that young adults with Down syndrome could benefit from continued literacy education beyond the years of compulsory education. Specifically, research has shown that, contrary to myths related to plateaux of learning, cognitive development in individuals with Down syndrome continues into adolescence and beyond. Fu...

Thirty-one young adults (17-23 years of age) with Down syndrome participated in two self-imposed delay of gratification trials. Thirty-six and forty-eight percent waited for the experimenter to return (15 minutes) on Trials 1 and 2 respectively, and thirty-six percent waited for the experimenter on both occasions. Expressive language differentiated...

Issues of health education programming for people with intellectual disability are discussed. As environments in which such individuals live become more inclusive, and they are encouraged to make their own choices, the issue of whether current health education is sufficient to enable them to make healthy life choices is considered. More attention s...

For members of the community, participation in leisure, sports and recreation is an important lifestyle choice. Individuals with Down syndrome live in our community and they, too, are equally entitled to active lifestyle choices. Children, adolescents and adults with Down syndrome have a wide range of interests and, although reported trends indicat...

Approaches for teaching literacyLATCH-ON (Literacy and Technology Hands-On)Conclusion AcknowledgementsReferences

Here is a rationale for a literacy instruction program for young adults with Down syndrome. The aims, features, theoretical perspectives, and main teaching approaches of the program, as well as its positive outcomes, are described.

This longitudinal research examined the development of motor proficiency in 99 children with Down syndrome born in Brisbane from 1973 to 1984. The Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency (BOTMP) was used to assess motor proficiency, and the Stanford-Binet L-M was used to obtain a measure of general intelligence. Although significant progress...

Movement is life! Motor development plays an essential role in the development of all children. From their earliest years, the attainment of motor milestones and the proficient development of motor skills provide the basis for the many other areas of development. Effective and efficient movement enhances confidence and has been shown to contribute...

Children and adolescents with Down syndrome have a range of physical problems and difficulties that may affect their motor development. Therefore it is important that programming which is directed towards facilitating motor skill development reflect quality practices. This article presents five elements regarded as demonstrating 'quality' in physic...

Play is a universal and dominant behaviour in childhood. It is pleasurable, spontaneous and positively valued. The feeling of enjoyment that children gain from play may be the primary motivating force but to remain enjoyable, a child’s play experiences need to balance the abilities of the child with the challenges of the play.

Resting metabolic rate and its relation with selected anthropometric measures was determined in 11 male and 7 female noninstitutionalized children with Down syndrome. Dietary analysis was performed to determine the nutritional status of the children and whether poor nutritional habits may be influencing factors in the development of obesity in this...

This paper examines the characteristics of ‘play’ within the conceptual framework of early education for intellectually disabled children, suggesting that early intervention programs and strategies may have transformed ‘play’ for these children into ‘work’.

The playground is a key environment where young children learn to navigate in both the physical and social world. However, little is known about how children with Down syndrome (DS) interact in the playground, engage with their peers, and whether the playground environment facilitates meaningful motor and social interactions. This paper addresses s...

En: Revista Síndrome de Down Santander 2002, v. 19 (2), n. 73, junio ; p. 54-66 Se ofrecen los resultados sobre la evolución de la habilidad lectora en 17 jóvenes adultos que han participado en el programa de capacidad lectora para adultos jóvenes con síndrome de Down en la Universidad de Queensland en 1998. Se analizan los resultados en función de...