What we do
The LDRP is a clinical and educational research unit that focuses on children with specific reading, spelling, writing, and language learning difficulties.
Our research addresses assessment issues in learning disabilities like:
- What are the core learning impairments?
- What causes transfer-of-learning problems?
- How general/specific are core learning deficits?
We also investigate intervention issues in determining the most effective remediation for learning disabilities, such as:
- What constitutes the most effective treatment for specific learning problems?
- What diagnostic factors predict response to particular programming approaches?
- What programming components facilitate generalization and result in optimal long-term outcomes?
Background on the Learning Disabilities Research Program
Our program specializes in developing and evaluating educational treatment programs that can address the basic learning problems that interfere with children's ability to become literate. The programs developed by the LDRP are not solely intervention programs for children with diagnosed learning disabilities, but also are relevant to children at risk for reading acquisition failure for a range of environmental and constitutional factors. In 2007-08, the LDRP operates more than 40 PHAST research classes and oversees more than 100 Empower™ Reading classes in 6 school boards in southern Ontario.
Research and service to children are intertwined in the work of the LDRP. By conducting research into the core learning deficits affecting these children and how best to re-mediate these deficits, and by sharing our results locally and internationally, we are attempting to help many more children than we could ever see in our classrooms. Our current intervention programs have produced the best results we have seen in 25 years.
Commencing in 2006, the programs developed by the LDRP at The Hospital for Sick Children have operated in almost 20 elementary schools in Toronto, Waterloo, Hamilton, Brampton, and inner-city Atlanta. The LDRP programs are being offered as part of a cross-national research partnership with Georgia State University funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Elementary students in grades 5 to 8 receive one of two multi-component reading intervention programs or the standard special education program offered by their school, as part of a controlled randomized research design.
From 1996-2006, the LDRP at The Hospital for Sick Children, in partnership with Georgia State University and Tufts University, conducted a research study that evaluated the efficacy of evidence-based multidimensional intervention programs for primary-grade children at risk for reading acquisition failure. The research initiative was funded by the US National Institutes of Health. In Toronto, Boston, and Atlanta, half of all the children served in our research classrooms were from low socioeconomic status backgrounds.
From 1999 to 2006, the LDRP initiated an innovative and ambitious research partnership with the Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB). For the first time, the evidence-based interventions developed in our LDRP laboratory classrooms were being offered in elementary community classrooms, with designated community-based teachers trained and monitored in their teaching of the LDRP programs through continuous mentoring. This systems-based model was designed using rigorous research standards so that the data collected permitted a carefully controlled evaluation of a set of integrated interventions developed to optimize outcomes for children with reading and language learning difficulties. Our Systems-Based programs were offered in more than 25 TCDSB elementary classrooms.
Since 2000, the LDRP has been offering remediation to struggling readers in high school as part of a research project involving adolescents with RD. The PHAST PACES Program has been offered to more than 500 students in 19 TCDSB high schools. The 70 hour program focuses on developing decoding, word identification and reading comprehension skills.
Since Fall 2006, we have been conducting a controlled roll-out of our newly published Empower™ Reading program in collaboration with the following six southern Ontario school boards: Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board, Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board, Peter Victoria Northumberland Clarington Catholic District School Board, Toronto Catholic District School Board, Waterloo Region District School Board and Peel District School Board. Since its inception, over 1000 students have participated in the Empower™ Reading program with almost 100 teachers having been trained to deliver the program.