Project Summary

Children with specific learning disabilities (SLD) often have difficulties in controlling their behavior, developing appropriate social and self-regulation skills besides having difficulties in academic skills. Because of this, they mostly have problems with their parents and people around them, and parents often do not know how to support their children. There is a need for evidence-based and family-based practices for parents, but there are very limited interventions with this feature.

The goal of the project is to increase the positive behaviors of children with SLD by eliminating their problem behaviors, to improve their social and self-regulation skills; to develop and implement a "Home-Based PBS Education Model" based on "Positive Behavior Support Approach", which is an evidence-based intervention to support functional parental behaviors and communication skills of parents, and to investigate the effectiveness of education model. During the research process it is aimed that; (1) determining the needs of children with SLD and their families, developing a Home-Based PBS Family Education Model and to investigate its effectiveness; (2) determining children's problem behavior, social and self-regulation skill levels, parents' stress level, functional parental behaviors and family communication skills; (3) reducing/eliminating children's problem behavior, improving social and self-regulation skills; (4) improving parents' functional parental behavioral and functional communication skills, reducing parents' stress level and (5) finally, to create a national family-based education model, which offers evidence-based content, to the field. Since this model will be a hybrid training model by including online participants and face-to-face participants during the development and pilot implementation process of the education model, despite the possibility of continuing pandemic conditions during the implementation process of the project, it can be applied in person or online after the project is completed.

The project is important because it offers to develop a national hybrid family education model for primary school children with LD who are a disadvantaged group and their parents, and parents take an active role in the development and implementation of the intervention and the decision-making process for their children and the project also offers an evidence-based implementation model. The research was designed as a "convergent parallel mixed-method" design, one of the mixed method research designs in which quantitative and qualitative research methods are used together. The quantitative dimension of the research is designed as quasi-experimental research with a control group, and the qualitative dimension is designed as descriptive research. Each of the experimental and control groups will consist of 15 participants.

Descriptive analysis will be made for quantitative data and parametric or non-parametric tests will be applied depending on the normal distribution of the data; qualitative data will be analyzed with content analysis technique. It is planned to expand the education model by collaborating with the relevant stakeholders. It is also planned to transform the project outcomes into a scientific article, to prepare a scientific book on PBS, to present the project findings as a paper in national and international congresses, to hold a panel and workshop and to create a national website about PBS.

Lastly, the project coordinator developed and implemented a School-Wide PBS Education Model (EÇODEM) for teachers to support children's behaviors and social skills within the scope of her doctoral studies. With this project, she aims to gain skills about families and to develop her career in developing a Home-Based PBS Family Education Model to support primary school children's appropriate behaviors, social and self-regulation skills.