Strategy Instruction for Students with Learning Disabilities / Edition 2 available in Paperback, eBook
Strategy Instruction for Students with Learning Disabilities / Edition 2
- ISBN-10:
- 1462511988
- ISBN-13:
- 9781462511983
- Pub. Date:
- 09/16/2013
- Publisher:
- Guilford Publications, Inc.
- ISBN-10:
- 1462511988
- ISBN-13:
- 9781462511983
- Pub. Date:
- 09/16/2013
- Publisher:
- Guilford Publications, Inc.
Strategy Instruction for Students with Learning Disabilities / Edition 2
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781462511983 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Guilford Publications, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 09/16/2013 |
| Series: | What Works for Special-Needs Learners |
| Edition description: | Second Edition |
| Pages: | 308 |
| Sales rank: | 383,945 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Why Use Strategy Instruction?
Students with learning disabilities (LD) constitute by far the largest group of students with special needs. According to the U.S. Department of Education, in 2010 there were more than 2,400,000 students from ages 6 to 21 served in federally supported programs for LD. Students with LD constitute 44.6% of the special education population and 4% of the total school enrollment, according to most recent figures (U.S. Department of Education, 2008). Although LD is by far the largest category of disability, the number of new students identified as having LD has shown a slight decrease over the last 4 years (U.S. Department of Education, 2010). Whether this is due to changes in the actual number of students with LD or to changes in identification procedures is still not clear.
A learning disability affects nearly every aspect of a child's life and is a lifelong challenge (Lerner, 2000). Students with LD are often caught in a vicious spiral of school failure. Their learning difficulties lead to a slower development of academic skills and abilities, which in turn impedes new learning (Stanovich, 1986). As a result of the repeated cycle of failure, these students fall further and further behind. According to the U.S. Department of Education (2008), students with LD are at greatly increased risk for dropping out: Nearly 40% of students with LD fail to graduate from high school with a standard diploma. The academic problems also result in a lower engagement rate in postsecondary schooling, employment, or both, compared to typically achieving students (Murray, Goldstein, & Edgar, 1997). Thus, the need to address the academic achievement of students with LD is critical in order to improve their academic outcomes.
The purpose of this chapter is to provide background information on LD, discuss those characteristics of students with LD that affect instruction in general and strategy instruction in particular, and provide a rationale for the use of strategy instruction. Readers who are interested in more in-depth information on these topics should refer to Swanson, Harris, and Graham (2003). In this chapter, we first present definitions of LD and briefly discuss the history of this category. Next, we describe some important characteristics of students with LD and how our conceptualization of LD has changed over time. Finally we make a case for the use of strategy instruction with students with LD. Note that the use of strategy instruction is not limited to students with LD. Research clearly indicates that strategy instruction is effective for the great majority of students who struggle in academic areas.
WHAT IS A LEARNING DISABILITY?
LD has been recognized as a category of disability under federal law since 1975. The current legal definition of LD is written into the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA); however, as Table 1.1 shows, other organizations have proposed their own definitions of LD that differ substantially, and exactly how to define LD has been, and continues to be, a controversial area. This controversy is due, in part, to the highly heterogeneous nature of the students who are defined as LD. Students with LD manifest a number of different problems in academic, behavioral, and social–emotional areas. Moreover, students with LD may exhibit vastly different profiles both within and across these areas. For example, some students may have serious problem with reading but will excel at mathematics. Others may have difficulties in mathematics, but not in reading. Table 1.2 shows examples of the subtypes of LD currently identified by researchers. Note that the problems of students with LD are not limited to academics. Some students will have serious problems with self-esteem or depression, whereas others have little or no problem in these areas but may exhibit serious behavior problems. Attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) also occurs in around 25% of students with LD (Reid & Johnson, 2012). Another factor that contributes to confusion in the area of LD is that the field cuts across a number of professional disciplines, such as education, psychology, medicine, and sociology. Each of these disciplines brings its own perspective to LD, and like the proverbial blind man and the elephant, each focuses on a different aspect of LD. As a result, there are differences across professional groups on the terminology that should be used to describe LD, and on which aspects of LD should and should not be included in the definition.
Although there is a lack of consensus on how to define LD, there is a practical consensus on how students with LD should be identified. Despite the fact that all of the definitions of LD contain references to its causes (e.g., disorders in basic psychological processes, neurological origins, central nervous system dysfunction) and that difficulties in academic areas are often described in medical language (e.g., dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia), these factors rarely, if ever, play a role in diagnosis. In practice, LD is a category of underachievement, and students with LD are identified by their chronic and severe academic difficulties. Until 2004, discrepancy formulas were commonly used to determine if a child should be labeled as LD. Mercer (1997) noted that over 90% of states include a discrepancy component in the identification process. These discrepancy formulas assessed the difference between ability, as determined by the results of intelligence tests, and academic achievement, as assessed by standardized tests. If the difference between the child's presumed ability and actual achievement was large enough, the child could be identified as having a learning disability. Discrepancy formulas, though commonly used, came under scrutiny due to concerns pertaining to their validity and also because the use of discrepancy formulas required schools to wait until a student exhibited serious academic deficiencies before they could intervene (Fuchs, Fuchs, & Compton, 2004).
Because of concerns over the validity of discrepancy approaches and the "wait-to-fail" approach inherent in their use, the latest version of IDEA (2004) made a dramatic change in the approach that schools are allowed to use in identifying students with LD. Schools are no longer required to determine whether any discrepancy exists. The approach now used in schools, response to intervention (RTI), is based on a principle of early intervention. In this approach, all students in a classroom receive effective instruction. If a student exhibits problems (e.g., fails to progress academically at an acceptable rate), the student is given additional instruction in an individual or small-group setting. For a student to be eligible for special education services related to LD requires only that the school document that a student continues to demonstrate significant academic underachievement when provided with instruction (based on scientifically supported principles) for a reasonable period of time.
CAUSES OF LEARNING DISABILITIES
The search for causes of LD has been the focus of research for more than 50 years. A number of possible causes have been put forward over the years with varying degrees of support. Table 1.3 presents some hypothesized causes of LD. No one has yet presented conclusive or compelling evidence to support any particular cause of LD, though researchers continue to make progress. In part this lack of clear etiology is due to the problems inherent in studying LD. Given the highly heterogeneous nature of LD, the differing theoretical orientations of researchers, and the problems with defining and accurately identifying a child as having an LD, this should not be too surprising. There are some clear trends in how LD has been approached that have direct implications for educators involved with instructional decision making for students with LD.
Medical Perspectives
Historically, LD have been viewed as brain-based disorders. That is, the learning problems evidenced by students were thought to be due to some specific neurologically based deficit or disorder. For example, James Hinshelwood (1917) coined the term word blindness to describe a child who had an inexplicable inability to learn to read, despite apparently normal intelligence and normal functioning in other areas. Hinshelwood speculated that the child's problem was due to a defect in the angular gyrus. Another early researcher, Samuel Orton (1937), noticed that many students who experienced difficulty in reading also tended to reverse letters such as b and d, or p and q. Orton termed this phenomenon strephosymbolia (twisted symbols) and attributed it to the failure of some individuals to develop "cerebral dominance" (i.e., neither of the brain's hemispheres was dominant). He hypothesized that reversals were due to mirror images of words or letters stored in the nondominant brain hemisphere.
This work was continued by researchers such as Kirk Goldstein (1936) and Alfred Strauss (Strauss & Lehtinen, 1947). Goldstein worked with soldiers who had suffered brain injuries during World War I. He noted that these soldiers commonly exhibited perceptual problems, impulsivity, distractibility, and hyperactivity. Strauss noted that students with mental retardation exhibited many of the same characteristics and theorized that the problems were due to brain injury. As a result, terms such as brain-injured child and minimal brain dysfunction were used to refer to students we would today call learning disabled. Strauss hypothesized that perhaps some extremely subtle brain damage was the root cause of a child's failure to learn. These labels were, understandably, unpopular with parents, and their relevance was also questioned. The medical influence on the field of LD is still strong. For example, use of medical terminology such as dyslexia or dyscalculia to refer to problems in reading and math is common. Current research on the brain and LD now uses extremely sophisticated tools and is beginning to shed further light on the relation between the brain and LD (e.g., Shaywitz, 2003).
Learning Disabilities as an Academic Problem
In 1963, a watershed event in the history of LD occurred at a meeting of concerned parents in Chicago (Mercer, 1997). The parents met to air their displeasure with medical practitioners who described their children as brain-injured or as having minimal brain dysfunction. Samuel Kirk, a psychologist with years of experience working with students with academic problems, coined the term learning disabilities to describe those students who had difficulty in learning to read. This relabeling shifted the prevailing perspective on learning problems. Rather than being attributed to organic damage to the brain, these problems were seen as related to underlying cognitive processes. That is, the students were neurologically intact but had difficulties with psychological processes (i.e., perceptual problems, as evidenced by difficulties with visual and auditory discrimination) that prevented them from receiving visual and/or auditory stimuli correctly and resulted in difficulty learning. This perceptual–motor approach shifted the focus from the medical aspects of LD to the academic, resulting in the creation of assessment instruments designed to measure underlying deficits, and of intervention programs designed to remediate them. The idea was that, if the hypothesized underlying deficit in perceptual processing were corrected, then the child would be able to progress academically in a normal fashion. Numerous programs were designed and implemented. Students learned to walk balance beams to improve motor skills, and to trace shapes to improve perceptual skills. Unfortunately, the training programs designed to remediate process deficits were found to be ineffective, and the assessment instruments were not reliable (Hammill & Larsen, 1974). However, the perspective on LD as a problem rooted at least in part in instruction remained and served to change LD practice.
Behavioral and Cognitive Approaches
During the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, new, influential perspectives on LD began to emerge. The first of these was behaviorism. This approach, developed by B. F. Skinner, was based on the theory that a functional relation exists between behavior (e.g., reading) and the environment. Behaviorists stressed direct observation and ongoing collection of objective (i.e., verifiable) information. Learning was viewed as a hierarchical process in which a child must master skills in a prescribed order. In this approach academic tasks were broken down into their component parts, and each part was taught in sequence. The application to LD lay in the notion that academic problems would be best addressed by effecting changes in the instructional environment. From the behaviorist perspective, a highly structured instructional environment that directly addressed the problem area was necessary for academic progress. Thus, if a child had reading problems, the solution was to directly teach the skills needed to read, by using appropriately sequenced, highly structured instruction. Several extremely effective instructional approaches, such as DISTAR (Engelman & Bruner, 1974) and Precision Teaching (Lindsley, 1964), were developed based on behavioral approaches.
In the 1970s, cognitive approaches to teaching and learning began to influence the LD field. The cognitive perspective focuses on the role of the individual in the learning process (Mercer, 1997). From this perspective, the key is the relation between demands of the learning environment (e.g., the task, instructional materials) and how the learner processes information. Learning problems may result from deficits in cognitive processes such as memory, failure to process information efficiently (e.g., failure to use an appropriate or effective strategy), or a combination of both. Metacognition (knowledge of one's own cognitive processes) also became important. During the 1980s, cognitive approaches became very influential, and a great deal of basic research was done to identify the cognitive characteristic of students with LD. Memory researchers developed new models for addressing how cognitive processes work. Perhaps the most important of these was the information-processing model, which envisioned cognitive processing as analogous to a computer with input, storage, and processing components. The information-processing model was extremely influential because it focused attention on the processes involved in memory and learning. Curriculum materials such as the University of Kansas learning strategies approach, which utilized cognitive approaches, were developed and implemented effectively. The work done on behavioral and cognitive approaches resulted in progress in our understanding of the nature of the problems encountered by students with LD and in the development of effective teaching techniques. The field of LD is still building on and refining the advances that occurred during this period.
CHARACTERISTICS OF STUDENTS WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES
It is important for educators to be knowledgeable about the characteristics of students with LD. Important characteristics of these students span emotional, behavioral, cognitive, and social domains of development. We focus on the information that is needed for teachers — whose job is to successfully educate students with LD. For this reason, the discussion of LD characteristics is limited to those that directly affect academic performance and that are thus relevant to strategy instruction.
Attention
Teachers who work with students with LD commonly note that "Things seem to go in one ear and out the other," or they remark on the need to "jog" students back after their attention has wandered. Attention is a critical aspect of successful learning. It is also a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. There are three important aspects of attention. First, there is task engagement. To succeed in school, students must be able persist at tasks. Students with LD are often off-task in the classroom. Research shows that, when left to their own devices, students with LD are on-task only around 30–60% of the time (Bryan & Wheeler, 1972; McKinney & Feagans, 1983). This has obvious educational implications. For example, students who do not complete practice tasks may fail to develop necessary fluency in important skills. Students who stop work when they encounter difficulty will learn less and are more likely to have negative classroom experiences. Maintaining focus is a common problem among students with LD (Hallahan, Kauffman, & Lloyd, 1996). Students with LD are often described as "spacey" or "not with it" or "distractible." Failure to maintain focus has serious consequences. Students whose minds wander while reading a passage will have difficulties remembering information. Students who are daydreaming and, as a result, don't attend to their teacher may not be aware of assignments or may miss important directions. Finally, difficulty with selective attention — the ability to identify important or meaningful information — is also common among students with LD (Brown & Wynne, 1984). As a result, students with LD may attend to unimportant components of a task and ignore relevant information. Exactly why students with LD experience these problems is still unclear, but we do know that much can be done as a part of strategy instruction to improve all aspects of attention.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Strategy Instruction for Students with Learning Disabilities"
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Table of Contents
1. Why Use Strategy Instruction?2. Building Background Knowledge
3. The Self-Regulated Strategy Development Model
4. How to Implement the SRSD Model
5. Self-Regulation Strategies
6. Implementing Self-Regulation Strategies
7. Integrating Strategies and Self-Regulation
8. Creating Lesson Plans Using the SRSD Model
9. Strategies for Handwriting and Spelling
10. Strategies for Written Language
11. Strategies in Reading Comprehension
12. Strategies in Mathematics
13. Study Skills Strategies
14. Mnemonics
Interviews
Classroom teachers and special educators in K-12; school psychologists; reading specialists. May serve as a text in special education methods courses.
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