Abstract
The present work examined the efficacy of combining behavioural and academic interventions and their effect on off-task behaviour and educational outcome. Studies also established relationships between behavioural/attention problems and educational achievement in an Arabicspeaking Kuwaiti population. In the first Study, 181 Kuwaiti children in mainstream schools from grades 4-7 were tested on measures of literacy and assessed using The Attention Hyperactivity questionnaire in Arabic (AHQA) and an Arabic version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). A second Study was conducted to develop the methods and procedures used in subsequent studies. Study 3 aimed to determine whether the interventions used were beneficial for children in a mainstream school group setting and focused on improvements in spelling scores produced by typical teaching methods paired with a behavioural intervention. Children from the 5 grade were assigned to three different treatment conditions: Positive Self-Statements (PSS), Relaxation Technique (RT), and PPS combined with RT. The interventions were applied for the first 5-7 minutes of each normal English lesson, twice weekly for three weeks. Children in the 4 grade were used as baseline with the only similarity being the pre- and post-spelling task. Study 4 tested the usefulness of combining behavioural and educational interventions on students with learning disabilities (LD) and behavioural difficulties. Three groups of children from grades 4-9 were chosen and were randomly assigned to two intervention groups (PSS and RT with MSL, PSS and RT with copying) and one baseline. Overall, the findings indicated that by combining behavioural and educational interventions, positive effects on both off-task behaviour and educational outcome could be achieved, especially with LD children under conditions of individual tutoring. A key finding was that relaxation techniques showed particularly successful effects and may provide a simple strategy for support in many classroom contexts.