The effectiveness of family-based functional educational program on writing skills of slow paced students with down syndrome

Functional education is one of the criteria and indicators of success and efficiency of education system in societies. The design and development of functional learning materials should be based on individual, family, group, and social characteristics and needs, so as to ultimately lead an independent life. Given the problems of expressive language, such as writing language in the slow paced of students with Down Syndrome, can the use of functional written language improve their communication and social self-efficacy skills?

The aim of this study was survey the effectiveness of family based functional educational program on writing Skills of slow paced children with Down Syndrome.

This is a quasi-experimental study (pretest – posttest with control group). 30 slow paced students with Down Syndrome studying in special schools in Tehran were selected by convenience sampling method and were randomly divided into experimental and control groups. The experimental group participated of 10 sessions of 45-minutes researcher-made family based educational program (2017) and both groups evaluated in the pre-test and post-test stages by the Reading and Writing scale of Shirazi and Nilipoor (2011) was used to evaluate writing skills of children.  

The results showed that the family-based functional educational program has led to an increase in the mean scores of the transcription and spelling test participants' writing skills compared to the control group(p≤0/001).

Therefore, it can be argued that the family based functional educational program is an effective way to improve the writing skills of students with Down Syndrome.