Las dificultades educativas y los recursos psicológicos de la familia de niños con o en riesgo de padecer trastornos del desarrollo (nacidos prematuros)
- Autores: Anna Malgorzata Bujnowska
- Directores de la Tesis: Celestino Rodríguez Pérez (dir. tes.), Gonzalo Solís Sánchez (codir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universidad de Oviedo ( España ) en 2025
- Idioma: español
- Títulos paralelos:
- Educational difficulties and the family’s psychological resources in children with or at risk of developmental disabilities (born preterm)
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Corsino Rey Galán (presid.), Marisol Fernández Cueli (secret.), Raquel Fidalgo Redondo (voc.), Angeliki Mouzaki (voc.), Antonio Valle Arias (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Educación y Psicología por la Universidad de Oviedo
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: RUO
- Resumen
The objective of this doctoral dissertation is to analyze the educational difficulties and psychological resources of families with school-aged children who have developmental disabilities, as well as those at risk of developmental disabilitiesspecifically, children born preterm.
In the case of children with diagnosed disabilities, effective systemic solutions and psycho-educational interventions are proposed. Therefore, for this group of children, the present study focuses specifically on analyzing their family environments, which may serve as risk or protective factors in their development and education outcomes. In contrast, when it comes to children at risk of developmental disabilities (children born preterm), the literature is less consistent in describing their academic difficulties. For this group, the present study focuses on analyzing educational difficulties while taking into account variables related to their medical characteristics, family environment, and psychoeducational context. Given these differences, the research process was divided into two stages.
The first stage aims to analyze parents psychological resources in families of children with developmental disabilities (DD) compared to families with typically developing (TD) children. It includes two general objectives: (1) to explore styles and strategies of coping with stress among parents; and (2) to identify the intensity of parents future anxiety (FA) and its predictors. The study involved a sample of 270 parents from Eastern Poland, comprising 167 parents of children with DD and 103 parents of TD children.
In order to achieve the first objective, a MANOVA was conducted, using parent group (DD vs. TD) as the independent variable for both CISS and COPE Inventories dimensions, and repeated measures ANOVAs, treating coping style or strategy as repeated measures. The results were published in International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology (Bujnowska et al., 2021), and they indicated significant differences between parents of children with and without DD in one of three coping styles and one of eight coping strategies. Parents of children with DD used less often the avoidance-oriented style and emotional support strategy. The task-oriented style and strategies were the dominant approach in both groups of parents.
To address the second objective, the analysis involved t-tests, MANOVAs, and linear regression models. The 10 aspects of Future Anxiety were compared across the five parent demographic variables of gender, age, level of education, place of living (rural vs. urban), and number of children in the family. The results were published in Psicologia: Reflexao e Crítica (Bujnowska et al., 2025), and they showed that parents' education level, gender, and the number of children in the family were predictors of FA. Mothers reported significantly higher levels of anxiety than fathers, for both general future anxiety and helplessness. Parents who had only one child reported higher levels of helplessness. However, parents with only secondary education reported higher average scores on seven of the 10 aspects of FA.
The second stage aims to analyze academic difficulties in school-aged children at risk of developmental disabilities, specifically those born preterm. It includes the last general objective: (3) to explore reading competence and its predictors in children born preterm, in the context of their characteristics of prematurity. The sample was made of 112 school-aged premature children, born before the 37th week of gestation, classified into three groups: extremely low birth weight (ELBW), very low birth weight (VLBW), and low birth weight (LBW). They were former patients from the Central University Hospital of Asturias in Spain.
In order to achieve the third objective, MANOVA was performed to analyse differences between the BW groups (fixed factors) in the dependent variables studied (naming speed, attention skills, and reading skills). To study the relationship between the childrens reading skills and the predictors, hierarchical linear regression analyses were performed in three steps. The results were published in Reading and Writing (Fernandez Alba et al., 2025). The analyses revealed no significant differences between the ELBW, VLBW, and LBW groups in any of the predictors (naming speed, attention) or reading proficiency variables. Consistent with previous research, naming speed appears to be a predictor of reading proficiency, though it plays a relatively minor role in reading comprehension. The latter is more strongly influenced by cognitive variables such as IQ and, to a lesser extent, attentional capacities.
