School Psychology Review 4/1993. [antikvár]

Over the last several years, school curricular have shown significant shifts to an emphasis on writing skills for all areas of instruction. Indeed, a student's success in school is clearly affected by their ability to express themselves in writing across areas of the curriculum. The process of teaching writing requires that students be instructed in both the development of skills specific to the writing process as well as be taught how to apply these skills in all of the content areas like history, biology, English literature, and so forth. Despite the increased emphasis on writing within the school curriculum, the assessment and remediation process for students showing difficulties in writing has not often been reported in the school psychology literature. It is likely that the increased emphasis on the writing process will result in the emergence of more students with learning difficulties in the area of written expression. Clearly, school psychologists will be expected to identify and recommend remediation strategies for these students. The purpose of the mini-series for this issue of the School Psychology Review is to increase the knowledge base of school psychologists in the area of writing disabilities. A particularly important aspect of the mini-series is its interdisciplinary nature. To effectively understand students who show problems in writing, it is critical to understand the writing process from cognitive, developmental, linguistic, and neuropsychological perspectives. Likewise, strategies used to remediate these problems must alsó be considered from the multidisciplinary perspective. I believe this miniseries successfully accomplishes this goal. Beyond the mini-series, the journal offers five unsolicited manuscripts. The first, by McGrew and Knopik provides a direct link to the mini-series. In their article, the authors provide a criterion-related validity study of the Writing Skills and Written Expression clusters and the cognitive clusters of the Woodcock-Johnson Psychoeducational Battery-Revised. This article is an excellent addition to the entire series on writing disabilities. In their next article, Cynthia A. Riccio and George W. Hynd discuss the relationships between language disorders and comorbidity for learning disabilities and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The high rates of these problems occurring concurrently in children has important implications for assessment and prognosis for treatment. LeAdelle Phelps and Deborah Cox provide an in-depth examination of children exposed during the prenatal period to cocaine. As these children are now appearing on a regular basis in the elementary schools, this article offers an excellent overview of what we know (and don't know), about the relationships of this type of drug exposure and development. The following article by Lynn S. Fuchs, Douglas Fuchs, Norris B. Phillips, and Deborah Simmons offers an interesting study regarding the types of instructional adaptations generál education teachers might require in working with difficult-toteach students. Their study examined how contextual variables such as the academic content, available resources, and how ideas are generated by the teachers affect the recommended adaptations. Finally, Thomas J. McMahon provides a thought provoking article on the concept of child advocacy. Offering both a theoretical framework and historical analysis, McMahon discusses many aspects of child advocacy and how it should impact our functioning as school psychologists. I would like to express my sincere appreciation to Tanya L. Eckert, who has served as my editorial assistant on the Journal for the past 2 years. Tanya has done an incredible job and her talented organizational skills provided me with relief from the anxieties associated with many aspects of journal management. Tanya has moved on to her doctoral internship, and anticipates beginning her own professional career in school psychology shortly. I would like to welcome Kristin D. Arndt, another doctoral student in the school psychology program at Lehigh University, who has taken over