Accessible summary The tree of life group is based on ideas from narrative therapy. Narrative therapy is about using stories about ourselves to understand how we make sense of our lives. We ran a tree of life group for women with learning disabilities. In the group, people drew trees to show different things that were important in their lives. People liked hearing about each others' lives and hearing what other people liked about their trees. Abstract Background: This study describes how a specific narrative therapy approach called ‘the tree of life’ was adapted to run a group for women with learning disabilities. The group consisted of four participants and ran for five consecutive weeks. Materials and Methods: Participants each constructed a tree to represent their lives and presented their tree to the group who responded with positive feedback and affirming statements. This led to discussion about overcoming the storms of life and a celebration of the journey the group had been through together. Key Results: Although no change was found on quantitative measures of well‐being and self‐esteem, participants reported benefitting from the peer support and social connectedness that the group offered, particularly in relation to themes of loss and change in their lives. Conclusions: ‘The tree of life’ approach has potential value as an intervention for people with learning disabilities. The benefits and challenges of this approach within the context of working with people with learning disabilities are discussed.

This paper reports the findings of a survey of views on the early education of gifted children in New Zealand and identifies where challenges for professional support, resourcing, and educational administration might lie. The 125 respondents represented a range of roles connected in some way with education and most (71%) also had first-hand experience of caring for or teaching a gifted child. Various views on how giftedness should be defined were expressed, indicating that no agreement on a definition existed. Notwithstanding this, it was considered important to identify if a child was gifted or not. Talking with parents about their child's abilities, along with formal and informal observation of the child were the preferred methods for identifying giftedness. The findings suggest further research and consultation on a definition or definitions of giftedness relevant to the early years of education and the developmental characteristics of the young child is needed. Incongruence between what respondents believed teachers should do and what they actually did in practice on a number of aspects of working with young gifted children was found. Respondents' suggestions of resources included: ideas for extension activities; identification and assessment tools; and recognition of parents as an important resource for information. Written, online and media resources and the provision of teacher professional development is clearly wanted and should help to raise understanding and knowledge about giftedness whilst also assisting teachers to more fully put beliefs into practice. In regards to an educational administration question of where responsibility for gifted education should sit within the Ministry of Education 74% of respondents thought it should be brought under the Special Education section, though concerns were expressed the adequacy of resourcing in Special Education. Opinion was more divided on a question of whether gifted children should be permitted to start primary school before their fifth birthday. This question generated the most feedback from respondents covering issues such as acceleration and appropriateness of the school setting for (any) children under-5 years.

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We investigated whether the efficacy of directed rehearsal could be enhanced by increasing a student's motivation through task variation. The efficacy of three conditions (directed rehearsal, directed rehearsal combined with task variation, and no-training control) on the spelling performance of four students with learning disabilities was compared in an alternating treatments design. Following each spelling error during the directed rehearsal condition, the teacher pronounced the word, the student pronounced the word, the teacher said aloud each letter of the word, and the student said aloud each letter of the word as he wrote the word correctly. This sequence was repeated five times. The same procedure was used during directed rehearsal plus task variation, except that previously learned words were alternately presented with new words. Results showed that although the two training conditions were more effective than no training, there was no difference between the two training procedures in terms of the cumulative number of words learned to criterion. This study showed that the addition of task variation to directed rehearsal does not increase the spelling proficiency of learning disabled students.