Teacher literacy expectations for kindergarten children with cerebral palsy in special education

Teacher expectations are important for the literacy development of children. The goal of this study was to investigate to what extent teacher expectations for future literacy success at the end of elementary school differed for children with cerebral palsy (CP) as compared with peers without disabilities in kindergarten. In addition, we investigated to what extent teacher literacy expectations of children with CP were related to additional impairments such as speech, intellectual and physical impairments, and to the current level of emergent literacy skills. Forty-nine teachers of children with CP and 71 teachers of non-disabled children responded to the questionnaire. The results showed that teacher expectations for future reading and writing success of children with CP were lower (all P values are <0.001) but also of a different nature, as eight teachers had no idea what to expect for the future reading development, and 12 teachers did not know what to expect for the future writing development of the child with CP. Multiple regression analysis showed that teacher reading expectations could best be predicted by both intelligence and emergent literacy skills (P<0.001), whereas teacher writing skills could best be predicted by intelligence (P<0.001).