Behavioural/attentional problems and literacy learning difficulties in children from non-English language/cultural backgrounds

This article reports the findings of studies of the relationship between off-task behaviours and measures of educational achievement. The work focused on children from an Arabic-speaking/cultural background rarely studied in the literature. The first study involved children within a mainstream school context and found that measures of literacy and mathematics were related to scores on questionnaires designed to assess poor levels of attention and high levels of hyperactivity/impulsivity. The second study focused on intervention work in a special school for children with learning disabilities ( LD). The data indicated that interventions designed to reduce off-task behaviours while targeting spelling improvements showed good gains in learning. Overall, the findings are consistent with negative relationships between learning and behaviour problems that may be reduced by combined education-behavioural intervention methods.