Viewpoints on Interventions for Learners with Disabilities

Festus E. Obiakor, Jeffrey P. Bakken

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781787432475
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education

Interventions in special education are results of advocacy, legislation, litigation, research, and trends. Since interventions come in many forms, they represent multidimensional viewpoints and perspectives and need to be handled with professional care, integrity, fidelity. This book highlights the fact there are skill-sets needed to work with divergent disability categories. The chapters begin with introducing readers to contextual bases of interventions for learners with disabilities and end with futuristic perspectives that go beyond tradition. Other chapters focus on students with learning disabilities, emotional and behavioral disorders, and intellectual disabilities. Additional chapters focus on students who are deaf and hard of hearing, and students with visual impairments, autism, severe disabilities, traumatic brain injury, speech and language impairments, and physical and other health impairments.
This volume presents the voices of leaders in the field of special education and addresses critical issues related to identification, assessment, labeling, placement, and instruction. Furthermore, it responds to what makes special education "special." Not only does this volume present historical contexts, it also authenticates the legitimacy of helping all learners to maximize their fullest potential, the real essence of special education. To a large extent, this book will be an excellent resource for undergraduate and graduate students, regular educators, special educators, educator preparation professionals, researchers, scholars, and practitioners.

Chapter 1

Viewpoint on Interventions for Students with Learning Disabilities: Instruction Matters

Margaret P. Weiss

Abstract

Students with learning disabilities (LD) have a wide range of academic needs. Since the passing of P.L. 94-142, significant research has been done on effective interventions for this group of students. Starting with the Learning Disabilities Research Institutes through the recent Handbook of Learning Disabilities, reviews of lines of research make several broad ideas about interventions clear. Primary among these is that students with LD can learn if provided with appropriate, effective instruction. Specifics about this idea and its implications are discussed in the following chapter.

Keywords: Learning disabilities; interventions; effective instruction; evidence-based practice

Students with learning disabilities (LD) make up the largest group of individuals identified with disabilities in K-12 schools (39.2%; U.S. Department of Education, 2016). This group is also probably the most diverse in terms of academic needs and characteristics. The definition of LD, alone, provides a glimpse into the vast array of possible characteristics that these students may exhibit:

1. IN GENERAL – The term “specific learning disability” means a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, which disorder may manifest itself in imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or do mathematical calculations.
2. DISORDERS INCLUDED – Such a term includes such conditions as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia.
3. DISORDERS NOT INCLUDED – Such a term does not include a learning problem that is primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities, of mental retardation, or emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage (U.S. Department of Education, 2006, 34 CFR 300.8(c)(10))

How students are identified as having a learning disability is a completely different and often controversial issue that has evolved over time (Fuchs & Fuchs, 1998; Maki, Burns, & Sullivan, 2017; Williams, Miciak, McFarland, & Wexler, 2016). However, the reality is that in Mrs. Jones’s fifth grade class, there may be three students with LD; one exhibits difficulty in consistently and accurately pulling multiplication facts from memory, another may not be able to automatically provide the sound related to a specific letter of the alphabet, and the third may be able to share well-formulated thoughts when speaking, but cannot put together a complete sentence or use punctuation rules correctly when writing. To meet the needs of these students and all of the others in the class is quite a task. However, given the fact that students with LD are experiencing unexpected underachievement, and this underachievement is not caused by intellectual disabilities or other economic, cultural, or socioeconomic reasons, the research the field has accumulated over time on interventions consistently indicates at least one thing: instruction matters.

State of LD

Roughly 3.4% of the school-age student population was served through Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) as students with LD in 2014. Of these students, 69.2% spent 80% or more of their day in a regular classroom (U.S. Department of Education, 2016). Nearly 71% of students with LD exited school with a regular high school diploma in 2014; compared to 83% of the public school population (National Center for Education Statistics, 2017). However, according to the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD, 2017) with data from the U.S. Census Bureau, only 46% of working-age adults with LD are employed, compared with 71% of working-age adults without LD. In the 2014 Annual Report to Congress, results of state assessments are not disaggregated by disability area; however, the results of students with disabilities as a whole are telling. In the report, 36.1% of students with disabilities were proficient on state grade-level tests in grade 3 math. By high school, it drops to 18.7%. In reading, 32.1% of third graders with disabilities are proficient; by high school, it is 25% (U.S. Department of Education, 2016). In the State of LD document (2017), NCLD found that 33% of classroom teachers and other educators think “learning or attention issue is really just laziness” and 43% of parents would not want others to know that their child has a learning disability. Clearly, there is still work to be done to help students with LD achieve their goals and dreams. The path begins with effective instruction delivered to target specific student need.

Summary of Research on Interventions for Students with LD

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, after false starts with a variety of approaches such as psycholinguistic and perceptual process training programs, the U.S. Office of Education funded five research centers to pursue an evidence-based approach to instruction for students with LD (Hallahan & Mercer, 2002). These original centers were at Columbia, University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Kansas, University of Minnesota, and the University of Virginia. Each center had a specific focus (see Table 1). Columbia was led by Dale Bryant and focused on aspects of information processing with researchers such as Jeannette Fleischner, Joanna Williams, and Walter MacGinitie. The University of Illinois at Chicago group was led by Tanis Bryan and conducted research on social competence and attributions. The University of Kansas Center was directed by Don Deshler and focused on interventions for adolescents. The University of Minnesota group was directed by James Ysseldyke and focused on identification and curriculum-based assessment with the likes of Stan Deno. Finally, the University of Virginia Center, directed by Dan Hallahan, focused research on attention issues, cognitive behavior modification techniques, and strategy instruction with researchers such as John Lloyd (Hallahan & Mercer, 2002). These research teams engaged in systematic lines of research, with elementary and high school students, including interventions and analyses of skills with replication and generalization, which laid the foundation for our thinking about learning and interventions for students with LD today.

Table 1: Learning Disabilities Research Institutes.

Institute	Focus	Director
Columbia University	Memory and study skills, arithmetic, basic reading and spelling, interaction of characteristics of the text and the reader, and reading comprehension	Dale Bryant
University of Illinois at Chicago	Social competence and attributions	Tanis Bryant
University of Kansas	Adolescents with LD	Don Deshler
University of Minnesota	Identification and curriculum-based assessment	James Ysseldyke
University of Virginia	Attention issues, cognitive behavior modification, and strategies for use on academic tasks	Dan Hallahan

Source: Adapted from Hallahan and Mercer (2002).

LD Research Institutes’ Findings

In an article summarizing the Institutes, Barbara Keogh (1983) drew the following conclusions: (a) they were productive and shared findings in formats for both researchers and practitioners; (b) the research was programmatic, progressing from understanding student characteristics to developing ways to intervene; (c) the research was of good overall quality; and (d) the major contribution “is the systematic study of learner and instructional variables” (p. 120). She also identified three broad generalizations that resonate in evidence-based practices (EBPs) today. The first is “the recognition of learning disabilities as a strategic, information-processing problem provided important conceptual direction to the field” (p. 122). This recognition provided an operational foundation that students with LD have functional issues, not structural issues, which can be addressed with instruction and targeted attention on teaching strategic approaches to tasks. The second generalization is that the interventions developed worked. As such, she states: “Taken as a whole, the results suggest that LD pupils can and do learn when instruction is derived from an information-processing perspective” (p. 124). These interventions were developed and tested in a thoughtful, conceptually based manner and resulted in positive outcomes for students. The final generalization Dr. Keogh identified was that, “it is clear that LD is a complex condition; that is, that social, motivational, and affective, as well as intellectual, components are involved” (p. 124). The complexity of a learning disability cannot be minimized and instructional interventions must address these complexities in order to be effective. This is clear in the multicomponent nature of current EBPs. Perhaps the statement from the article that is very simple and yet provides the most impact is: “The effect of the interventions has been documented, and the work as a whole has demonstrated impressively that LD pupils can learn” (p. 126). To put it another way, students with LD can learn if their needs are targeted and effective interventions are implemented with fidelity. Instruction matters.

Meta-analyses

In a series of meta-analyses conducted in the late 1990s, Swanson (1999), Swanson, Carson, and Sachse-Lee (1996), and Swanson and Hoskyn (1998) attempted to evaluate the impact of intervention studies on outcomes of students with LD. The focus was on group design studies and interventions that targeted a variety of domains, including reading, math, attitude, intelligence, social skills, perceptual processes, vocabulary, and creativity. In the first analysis (Swanson et al., 1996), 78 studies fit their criteria, and the authors calculated 325 effect sizes (ESs), yielding an average ES of 0.85 (ES of 0.8 and above is considered substantial; Cohen, 1988). When parsed out by a teaching strategy, eclectical strategies (not falling into any category) yielded an ES of 0.59, remedial (individual tutoring) yielded an ES of 0.68, direct instruction an ES of 0.91, and strategic (cognitive) instruction an ES of 1.07. A general conclusion was that no domain was resistant to change, particularly those whose interventions included components of strategic and direct instruction. In the later two analyses, 180 studies were included, resulting in 1,537 ESs and an average ES of 0.79. When parsed out by interventions that included components of specific models, results from studies showed that a combined model of strategic instruction and direct instruction (ES = 0.84) sign...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Viewpoints on Interventions for Learners with Disabilities: An Introduction
• Chapter 1. Viewpoint on Interventions for Students with Learning Disabilities: Instruction Matters
• Chapter 2. Promoting Positive Freedoms for Secondary Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders: The Role of Instruction
• Chapter 3. Interventions for Students with Intellectual Disabilities
• Chapter 4. Interventions for Students Who Are Deaf/Hard of Hearing
• Chapter 5. Interventions for Students with Visual Impairments
• Chapter 6. Interventions for Students with Autism
• Chapter 7. Viewpoints on Interventions for Students with Extensive and Pervasive Support Needs
• Chapter 8. Interventions for Learners with Traumatic Brain Injuries
• Chapter 9. An Overview of Classroom-based ­Speech-Language Pathology Services
• Chapter 10. Interventions for Students with Physical Disabilities and Other Health Impairments
• Chapter 11. Viewpoints on Interventions for Learners with Disabilities: Beyond Tradition
• Index