The effect of isolated vs. contextual functional vision assessment results on teacher planned vision instructional activities.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine if teachers of low vision children with concomitant disabilities were influenced by the results of two kinds of functional vision assessments, isolated and contextual. Teachers wrote 72 activities to teach vision use, which were classified by the raters as isolated or contextual and judged by the experts as appropriate or inappropriate for instruction. Six teachers selected were certified to teach children with low vision, six were certified to teach children in another area of special education. The investigator and two raters reached a 79% level of agreement for classification of the activities as isolated or contextual. Three of four experts reached a 68% level of agreement for judgments of appropriate and inappropriate for teacher activities. The judgments of appropriate activities were analyzed to determine if school setting, teacher preference for one kind of assessment, teacher preparation for instructing children with low vision, teacher preparation for using functional vision assessments and years of teaching experience significantly influenced the judgments of appropriateness for activities written by teachers. Results of the study indicated that teachers with and without certification in vision were rated as writing more isolated than contextual activities regardless of the kind of assessment instrument used. Teachers certified in vision received about the same number of judgments of appropriate for activities written as the result of both assessments. Teachers not certified in vision received more judgments of appropriate for activities written from contextual assessment results. There were no significant differences in the number of expert judgments of appropriate activities for teachers as related to the five variables of preference for a kind of assessment, school setting, years teaching experience, preparation for using a functional vision assessment, and preparation for teaching children with low vision. Further research is needed to investigate the use of contextual and isolated activities in instructing children and to educate teachers to write contextually based vision activities. Teachers need instruction in how to recognize, label and use the dimensions of appropriate (visual performance abilities and the chronological age of the child) as related to visual instructional activities.