Handbook of Educational Psychology and Students with Special Needs

Andrew J. Martin, Rayne A. Sperling, Kristie J. Newton, Andrew J. Martin, Rayne A. Sperling, Kristie J. Newton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781351586740
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica generale

Handbook of Educational Psychology and Students with Special Needs provides educational and psychological researchers, practitioners, policy-makers, and graduate students with critical expertise on the factors and processes relevant to learning for students with special needs. This includes students with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, other executive function difficulties, behavior and emotional disorders, autism spectrum disorder, intellectual disabilities, learning disabilities, dyslexia, language and communication difficulties, physical and sensory disabilities, and more. With the bulk of educational psychology focused on "mainstream" or "typically developing" learners, relatively little educational psychology theory, research, measurement, or practice has attended to students with "special needs." As clearly demonstrated in this book, the factors and processes studied within educational psychology—motivation and engagement, cognition and neuroscience, social-emotional development, instruction, home and school environments, and more—are vital to all learners, especially those at risk or disabled.

Integrating guidance from the DSM-5 by the American Psychiatric Association and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) by the World Health Organization, this book synthesizes and builds on existing interdisciplinary research to establish a comprehensive case for effective psycho-educational theory, research, and practice that address learners with special needs. Twenty-seven chapters by experts in the field are structured into three parts on diverse special needs categories, perspectives from major educational psychology theories, and constructs relevant to special needs learning, development, and knowledge building.

1

Introduction

Educational Psychology and Students with Special Needs

Andrew J. Martin,Kristie J. Newton and Rayne A. Sperling

Introduction

Educational psychology is a discipline that attends to the factors and processes relevant to and implicated in learning. These factors and processes include motivation, engagement, and achievement—to name a few. It is fair to say that the bulk of educational psychology as a discipline has been focused and based on “mainstream” or “typically” developing learners. Relatively little educational psychology theory, research, measurement, or practice has attended to students with special needs. Because these students experience significant academic difficulties, this limited scholarly attention is a significant gap in educational psychology and also limits the potential for educational psychology to meaningfully contribute to other disciplinary areas that seek to assist students with special needs.

Addressing these limitations will provide researchers and practitioners with critical domain-specific expertise on the factors and processes relevant to learning for students with special needs. Indeed, addressing this gap is the driving purpose of this handbook. By synthesizing what has been learned in educational psychology and building on existing work in other educational and psychological disciplines, this handbook lays a broader base for effective theory, research, measurement, and practice as relevant to students with special needs.

Because educational psychology fundamentally focuses on learning factors and learning processes, it is in a unique position to understand and study students who are at academic risk wholly or partly because of a special need. Answers unearthed here will substantially augment current understanding of at-risk students among educational psychology researchers and practitioners. Importantly also, answers unearthed here can in turn contribute to other important channels of knowledge and practice in developmental psychology, school psychology, and counseling psychology—and also educational (e.g., special education) and medical (e.g., pediatric) disciplines. Thus, we envisage this handbook can substantially guide the development, implementation, assessment, and refinement of successful multidisciplinary interventions to support and optimize these at-risk students’ educational trajectories.

Students at Academic Risk—The Starting Point for This Handbook

In our previous work in this space (Newton, Sperling, & Martin, 2017), we were drawn to conceptual frameworks that shed important light on at-risk children and young people (e.g., Coleman & Hagell, 2007). Harnessing such frameworks, we noted that students with special needs were at particular academic risk on a potentially frequent and ongoing basis and in a diversity of ways. These ideas were developed in a special issue of Contemporary Educational Psychology (Martin, Newton, & Sperling, 2017), guest-edited by us, focusing on students with learning disabilities, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and executive function disorders. Focusing on these students, we identified various risk factors and risk behaviors that have significant relevance to these academically at-risk students more broadly, and especially those with special needs.

Risk Factors

Harnessing Coleman and Hagell’s framework (Coleman & Hagell, 2007), risk factors were identified as factors increasing the probability of maladaptive outcomes, including illness, dysfunction, and disorder. Thus, for example, major conceptual models of ADHD and learning disabilities emphasize impairments to self-regulation and executive function that have adverse educational implications (Loe & Feldman, 2007; Nigg, 2001). Other models relevant to these disabilities emphasize cognitive, neuropsychological, neurological, and biochemical risk (Barkley, 2006; Brown, 2005; Chandler, 2010; Gray & McNaughton, 2003; Sergeant, 2005). Moreover, from a risk perspective, there are factors that interact with or compound existing challenges and their negative effects. For example, anxiety (a prevalent comorbidity for many students with special needs), can compound the academic risk experienced by students with learning disabilities, ADHD, and so on (Bauermeister et al., 2007; Cooray & Bakala, 2005; McGillivray & Baker, 2009). Taken together, a student’s academic risk status has significant implications for major and salient educational outcomes that are the cornerstone of educational psychology. We intentionally extended risk factors in this volume to include students with maltreatment histories (Panlilio & Corr, Chapter 9), and Hall, Capin, Vaughn, and Cannon (Chapter 7) acknowledged the prevalence of risk factors in English-language learners within the United States.

Risk Behaviors

A second major dimension of risk relates to risk behaviors (Coleman & Hagell, 2007). Risk behaviors refer to challenging and potentially harmful behaviors and practices that can disrupt educational and developmental processes. Our special issue in Contemporary Educational Psychology also considered risk behaviors as relevant to students with learning disabilities, ADHD, and other executive function disorders. We noted that, for each of these groups, there were maladaptive behaviors across a wide range of educational outcomes that threatened to disrupt their educational development (e.g., see Barkley, Murphy, & Kwasnik, 1996; DuPaul & Stoner, 2003; Martin, 2012). Among these students, for example, there are elevated levels of off-task behavior, problematic self-regulation, and poor task completion (Vile Junod, DuPaul, Jitendra, Volpe, & Cleary, 2006). The educational consequences of these risk behaviors included poor achievement, school exclusion, schoolwork non-completion, school refusal, and grade repetition, (DuPaul & Stoner, 2003; Martin, 2014a, 2014b; Pliszka, 2009; Purdie, Hattie, & Carroll, 2002). Again, then, a student’s academic risk status has significant implications for major educational factors that are fundamental constructs and processes in educational psychology.

This handbook was inspired by the recent special issue in Contemporary Educational Psychology (Martin et al., 2017). However, that special issue focused on only a few aspects of special needs and at-risk status. We were thus mindful there remained an enormous range and diversity of conditions, disabilities, and disorders that can place a student at academic risk. We were also mindful of the many psycho-educational theories, processes, and factors that were not represented in its collection of empirical papers. Therefore, comprising a comprehensive range of psycho-educational perspectives, this handbook represents a major advancement in progressing current understanding of students with special needs.

Special Needs in Educational Psychology—A Quiet Space Requiring More Voices

As noted earlier, theory, research, measurement, and practice in educational psychology have been relatively quiet when it comes to students with special needs. The educational psychology research that has been conducted has tended to be sporadic and diffuse, at best. More voices in this area—and more consistently sounded—are needed in educational psychology. In fact, when considering the psychological and cognate disciplines that have attended to students with special needs, it seems as though school psychology, clinical psychology, and special education outlets have been more active than educational psychology. For instance, in a search of empirical studies in PsycINFO by Martin (2012), some 100 published articles were identified under one or both of the keywords “attention deficit with hyperactivity disorder” or “ADHD” between 1990 and 2010, in three major journals of school psychology (Psychology in the Schools, Journal of School Psychology, School Psychology Quarterly). In an update of this search, from 2011 to the time of writing (March 2019), there were 38 articles published in these school psychology outlets. In contrast, between the years 1990 and 2010, 7 articles derived from the same search parameters were published in three major journals of educational psychology (Contemporary Educational Psychology, Journal of Educational Psychology, British Journal of Educational Psychology). In an update of this search, from 2011 to the time of writing (March 2019), there were 19 articles published in these educational psychology outlets. This represented an improvement on 1990–2010 activity, but it hardly constitutes a major line of work in educational psychology—and 5 of the 19 articles were in our own special issue in Contemporary Educational Psychology. Although some special needs have received more attention in major educational psychology outlets, a similar pattern is present. For example, Newton et al. (2017) reported that, in Contemporary Educational Psychology, 7 peer-reviewed articles published since 1990 were identified when PsychINFO was searched with “learning disabilities” as a keyword, and 38 peer-reviewed articles in the flagship outlet Journal of Educational Psychology were published during this time.

We hope this handbook inspires a great deal more scholarly activity in the educational psychology space than has been evident to date. We see this handbook as enabling opportunities for new conversations about students with special needs. We maintain that psycho-educational perspectives and voices will greatly strengthen current understanding of students with special needs. As highlighted in this handbook, there are tremendous and as-yet untapped opportunities and “green fields” of research among these students.

Educational Psychology Informing Our Knowledge of Students with Special Needs

This handbook is obviously concerned with how educational psychology can contribute to a better understanding of students with special needs—particularly as relevant to the factors and processes implicated in their learning. Thus, across the handbook, many theories of educational psychology are unpacked, with particular interest in how they can explain and inform the academic development of students with special needs. Major theories, such as expectancy-value theory (Wigfield & Ponnock, Chapter 17), self-worth theory (Martin, Chapter 16), achievement goal theory (Bergin & Prewett, Chapter 14), self-determination theory (Strnadová, Chapter 4; Wehmeyer & Shogren, Chapter 12), social cognitive theory (Cassady & Thomas, Chapter 3; Schunk & DiBenedetto, Chapter 11), control-value theory (Pekrun & Loderer, Chapter 18), self-regulation theory (Perry, Mazabel, & Yee, Chapter 13), and cognitive load theory (Tricot, Vandenbroucke, & Sweller, Chapter 15), are addressed in significant detail.

In each case, the authors have identified how major tenets under a respective theory align with the learning processes and principles for students with special needs, as they do for students without special needs. Thus, an important point made is that there is substantial congruence in the theoretical implications and applications of educational psychology for students with and without special needs. Importantly, however, as described below, many authors also identify some boundary conditions to major theory—and, in such cases, students with special needs play a major role in informing our knowledge of educational psychology.

When reading the chapters in this handbook, it became clear that major theories of educational psychology map onto distinct areas and aspects of special needs in ways that are difficult for other disciplinary theories to do. For example, with its clear and present focus on working and long-term memory, cognitive load theory is uniquely placed to shed significant light on how to improve reading for students with dyslexia (Tricot et al., Chapter 15) or with mathematics difficulties (Jordan, Barbieri, Dyson, & Devlin, Chapter 19). Similarly, engagement theories can help us understand and create interventions for students with attention difficulties or behavioral problems (O’Donnell & Reschly, Chapter 23), and findings related to academic self-concept have implications for supporting students with mild disabilities in inclusive classrooms (Tracey, Merom, Morin, & Maïano, Chapter 24). For students with ADHD and who experience significant academic failure, self-worth theory speaks specifically to some of the maladaptive strategies they may engage in to protect their self-worth in the event of such failure (Martin, Chapter 16). And, balancing the need for guidance and autonomy, self-determination theory has much to say about autonomy-supportive structures and how to operationalize them for students with special needs (Strnadová, Chapter 4; Wehmeyer & Shogren, Chapter 12). In all such cases, major educational psychology perspectives uniquely target specific areas and aspects of special need, in ways that are distinct from what other disciplinary perspectives can offer.

Students with Special Needs Informing Our Knowledge of Educational Psychology

As the handbook developed, it was equally clear that there was much for educational psychology to learn from the focus on students with special needs. For example, by closely considering psycho-educational theories, some authors identified potential boundary conditions of these theories, or identified special considerations that researchers need to accommodate when conducting their investigations among special needs populations. As a case in point, the chapter on self-worth theory and ADHD (Martin, Chapter 16) recognized that an important assumption of self-worth theory is that students are sufficiently aware and reflective to know that they are at risk academically, as it is this awareness that leads to self-worth threat and then self-worth protection. Yet it is a capacity to self-reflect that may be diminished among students with ADHD. Thus, self-worth theory research conducted among students with special needs must in some way account for any potential confounding between aspects of the special need and fundamental tenets of the theory being applied.

Importantly, however, understanding of boundary conditions can also inform the generality or generalizability of psycho-educational theories, factors, and processes. As was observed above, there is substantial alignment between students with special needs and students without special needs in how psycho-educational theories, factors, and processes function. In a discipline that is dedicated to gaining reach across all students, generality and generalizability are critical elements. A test of this is how key educational psychology ideas and principles can explain learning among students with special needs. Indeed, because the bulk of psycho-educational ideas and principles have been developed on the basis of research among students without special needs, exploring generality among special needs populations is ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1 Introduction: Educational Psychology and Students with Special Needs
• Part I: Students with Special Needs and Educational Psychology
• Part II: Perspectives from Major Educational Psychology Theories
• Part III: Special Needs and Constructs Relevant to Psycho-Educational Development
• Contributors
• Index