A Resource for Designing and Implementing Intervention Programs for At-Risk Learners
This authoritative resource provides step-by-step procedures for planning, selecting, and tailoring interventions for at-risk learners with a unique focus on how to individualize interventions using actual case examples. In addition, this volume offers guidelines for gathering and interpreting data in a manner that assists in identifying targets for intervention and rich discussion and information relating to specific academic, cognitive, and behavioral manifestations of students with learning difficulties in reading, math, writing, and oral language. Practitioners will also recognize and learn how to intervene with students from underserved and mis-served populations who are at risk for learning failure including English-language learners and students from impoverished environments.
Each chapter describes how specific difficulties interfere with classroom tasks and explain how to select, modify, or otherwise tailor an intervention based on that information. As with all volumes in the Essentials of Psychological Assessment series, this volume includes callout boxes highlighting key concepts, extensive illustrative material, and test questions. The companion CD-ROM provides additional worksheets, case studies, and handouts.
Part I Intervention Planning: Diagnostic Assessment, Response to Intervention, and Consultation
One A Systematic Method of Analyzing Assessment Results for Tailoring Interventions (SMAARTI)
Jennifer T. Mascolo
Dawn P. Flanagan
Vincent C. Alfonso
The term intervention is one that is familiar to anyone working in a school system. Adjectives such as research-based and evidence-based when placed in front of this term elevate it to an indubitable status. This is primarily because these descriptors suggest that the intervention was subjected to a rigorous evaluation and was found to be effective, meaning that when implemented with fidelity, it leads to positive outcomes (e.g., Cooney, Huser, Small, & O'Connor, 2007; Flanagan & Alfonso, 2011).
Not surprisingly, then, evidence-based interventions are often the ones that are used first in either general or specialized instructional settings as compared to those interventions and techniques without such support. In general, it is incumbent upon practitioners to use evidence-based interventions with students who struggle academically. It is also prudent to use comprehensive interventions that can meet students' multiple manifest academic difficulties (e.g., remedial reading programs that contain the five essential components of reading; Feifer, 2011). However, it is clear from the literature that despite their overt relevancy, not all comprehensive, evidence-based interventions address the academic needs of every student effectively (e.g., Della Tofallo, 2010; Hale, Wycoff, & Fiorello, 2011).
In a tiered service delivery model, interventions are planned for and selected based on universal screening data. For example, students who are at risk for reading difficulties may receive Wilson if their reading difficulties are related primarily to decoding difficulties or Read 180 if their reading difficulties are related primarily to comprehension difficulties (e.g., Feifer, 2011, and Chapter 5, this volume). When a student does not respond as expected to evidence-based interventions, a comprehensive evaluation is often recommended to gain a better understanding of the nature of and basis for the student's learning difficulties. It is through a comprehensive and focused evaluation that the intervention process moves from planning and selecting interventions to tailoring interventions. Planning and selecting interventions is typical of a standard treatment protocol Response to Intervention (RTI) service delivery model, whereas tailoring interventions is more consistent with a problem-solving RTI model.
Planning and Selecting Interventions versus Tailoring Interventions
Planning and selecting interventions is conceptualized here as the process of identifying evidence-based interventions that are most often used in standard service delivery models to address manifest academic difficulties that are revealed via progress monitoring (e.g., a particular reading program is selected by a district as a Tier II intervention for students with reading fluency difficulties). On the other hand, a primary focus of tailoring interventions involves understanding the student's pattern of cognitive and academic strengths and weaknesses and how this pattern interacts with the instructional materials used by the student as well as classroom instructional factors, environmental factors, and other individual/situational factors that may facilitate or inhibit learning. The goals, therefore, are (a) to use information about a variety of intrinsic and extrinsic factors to tailor specific interventions; and (b) to ensure that a student has appropriate access to the curriculum by minimizing or bypassing the adverse affects that cognitive and other weaknesses have on the student's learning. Tailoring interventions may include Modification (e.g., instructional, curricular), Accommodation, Remediation, and Compensation. The acronym, MARC, can be used to assist in remembering these methods of tailoring interventions, which are defined in Rapid Reference 1.1.
Rapid Reference 1.1 Methods of Tailoring Interventions
Tailoring Method
Brief Description
Examples
Modification
Changes content of material to be taught or measured; typically involves changing or reducing learning or measurement expectations; may change the depth, breadth, and complexity of learning and measurement goals.
Reducing the amount of material that a student is required to learn
Simplifying material to be learned
Requiring only literal (as opposed to critical/inferential) questions from an end-of-chapter comprehension check
Simplifying test instructions and content
Accommodation
Changes conditions under which learning occurs or is measured, but does not change or reduce learning or assessment expectations. Accommodations may include timing, flexible scheduling, presentation, setting, and response accommodations.
Extending time on exams
Assigning a project in advance or allowing more time to complete a project
Aligning math problems vertically, as opposed to horizontally
Providing a separate room to work
Having a student dictate responses to a scribe
Remediation
Techniques or programs used to ameliorate cognitive and academic deficits. Academic interventions typically focus on developing a skill, increasing automaticity of skills, or improving the application of skills. Cognitive interventions typically focus on improving cognitive processes such as working memory capacity and phonological processing. There are many techniques, published programs, and software designed for the purpose of remediation.
