Investigating the effectiveness of group-based positivethinking training on academic motivation and academic vitalityof students with special learning disorders

Specific learning disorders are among the problems that have long been the focus of child psychologists and specialists. Children with specific learning disabilities, despite their normal intelligence, are unable to make academic progress in reading, writing, and mathematics. The purpose of this research was to investigate the effectiveness of group-based positive thinking training on academic motivation and academic vitality of students with special learning disabilities.

This research was a semi-experimental with a pre-test-post-test design with a control group. The statistical population of the research included all the male students of the first secondary school with a specific learning disorder who referred to the learning disorders center in Birjand city in the academic year of 2022-2023. Among the statistical population, 30 male students with special learning disorder were selected by available sampling method and randomly assigned to two experimental groups (15) and control group (15). The experimental group was trained for 10 sessions of 60 minutes. In order to collect research data, Harter's academic motivation questionnaire, Hossein Chari and Dehghanizadeh's academic vitality questionnaire and positive thinking training were used. The research data were analyzed using multivariate and univariate analysis of covariance.

The results of the analysis of research hypotheses showed that group-based positive thinking training is effective on academic motivation and its components (intrinsic and extrinsic motivation) and academic vitality of students with specific learning disorders (p<0.005).

According to the findings of this research, it can be said that one of the useful teaching approaches to increase the academic motivation and academic vitality of students with special learning disabilities is teaching positive thinking in a group way.