Given that affective and cognitive processes interact in writing, it is important that interventions for developing writing ability focus both on strategies for developing motivation and cognitive processes. This article provides evidence for the efficacy of an instructional program that combines training in composition processes with strategies for developing motivation to achieve. Motivational training focused on multiple attributes: value and functional character, standards of performance, expectations, beliefs, self-efficacy, self-esteem and writing-related factors. Sixty-six fifth- and six-grade students with learning disabilities were assessed on a series of measures prior to and following the motivational intervention. Compared with a control group ( n=61), trained students showed significant improvements in the quality of their writing (measured in terms of text structure and coherence) and in their attitudes towards writing. They did not, however, show significant changes in productivity (quantity of text produced), self-esteem, beliefs and expectations, or in writing- related attributions.

SYNTHESIS OF ARTICLES DISCUSSED AS APART OF THE RESEARCH SYMPOSIUM AT THE 24th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON LEARNING DISABILITIES SPONSORED BY THE COUNCIL FOR LEARNING DISABILITIES, OCTOBER 11, 2002. Newly nominated must reads can be found on the Web at: www.cldinternational.org/shortly after the October 9-11 conference. Click on scholarly initiatives. Readers of professional literature know how difficult it is to keep up with the volumes of information published annually. Many confess to having stacks of materials waiting to be read that instead get shelved when a stack finally topples over. A total of 1,005 scholarly-academic education journals are published annually in the United States (a number that jumps to 4,708 when including trade magazines, newsletters and papers). Seventy-five of these are devoted to special education topics (311 when including trade publications) (Ulrich's Periodicals Directory, January 29, 2003). Despite the fact that busy readers can barely sample all that is published, professional publications are a primary means for communicating research, theory, and policy within the profession. Keeping up is a daunting challenge. To help special educators keep abreast of recently published research, the Council for Learning Disabilities (CLD) Research Committee organizes a panel at CLD's annual conference to nominate important research publications on learning disabilities (LD) from the previous year. The audience, primarily teachers, learns about published research that is important to understanding the field of LD today. Invited panelists each year are leading researchers and practitioners from a variety of traditions and interests within the learning disabilities profession. Methods for the 2002 Panel Panelists for the October 2002 session held in Denver, Colorado, responded to the invitation to nominate three to five research publications on LD from the past year that they considered must reads. Selection criteria were not specified beyond that charge so that each panelist would be free to form her or his own standards for what is most important to read from among the stacks of research on LD that had accumulated over the previous year. Interestingly, the 2002 panelists demonstrated considerable overlap in their selection criteria and, in several instances, in the publications they nominated. In this article, the panelists present their nominations in relation to topics that dominate the special education field today. So often, researchers, teachers, and administrators fleetingly acknowledge evolving movements as they go about their business of doing what they know works. However, at times initiatives so fundamentally impact how practice can be done that they cannot be ignored. We are in such an era. Three major movements currently shaping the field of LD include the rapidly emerging debate on identification and eligibility criteria for services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the now familiar practice of inclusion, and concomitant concerns for access to the general education curriculum for students with LD. None of the three movements has just burst onto the scene but their presence demands attention more than ever. The practice of inclusion has steadily emerged since at least Assistant Secretary of Education Madeline Will's 1986 regular education initiative (REI), and has received a substantial boost by the 1997 Amendments to the IDEA, which require efforts to provide all special education in general education environments. The impending congressional reauthorization vote on the IDEA has already resulted in debate on the identification and eligibility criteria for LD that would force reconsideration of current practices (e.g., LD Summit, 2001). The push for meaningful access to the curriculum is both a product of and a catalyst for the other two movements, and is strongly tied to standards and high-stakes accountability efforts as well. …

The purpose of this study was to determine if middle school students with learning disabilities (LD) identified as having phonological awareness deficits could improve their phonological awareness skills after instruction, and if these skills could impact word recognition skills. Forty middle school students with LD who were identified as having phonological awareness deficits were matched and split into two groups, A and B. Both groups received the same type of phonological awareness instruction. Results indicated that there was no group effect for the word identification subtest. However, there was main effect for occasion; for both groups, posttest scores were significantly higher than the midtest scores, and midtest scores were significantly higher than the pretest scores. With respect to the CTOPP scores, results showed an interaction effect. Followup t-tests indicated that for the midtest, Group A significantly outperformed Group B on the CTOPP, suggesting that the intervention had an effect on phonological awareness skills. Both groups also had significantly higher posttest scores compared to the pretest scores, implying that both groups improved their phonological awareness skills over time.

This article reviews instructional approaches for students with mild disabilities in the domain of social studies with an emphasis on methods that provide meaningful access to the general education curriculum. Following an overview of reform efforts in history and the special problems that social studies instruction presents for students with learning disabilities (LD), we discuss research on general literacy and learning strategies in the context of social studies instruction. Next, we describe a small body of research that has used domain-specific instructional approaches to teach social studies concepts such as historical understanding and historical reasoning. We end with a call for special education researchers and practitioners to respond to new educational challenges by focusing on important concepts and ways of thinking that are particular to the discipline of social studies.

This single-subject experiment explored the use of functional behavioral assessment to develop an intervention plan for a third-grade student with a learning disability, who exhibited high rates of problem behaviors during reading instruction. A functional analysis of the subject's behaviors revealed a relation between his problem behaviors and the nature of the academic tasks presented during reading instruction. The results provide preliminary evidence to support the use of functional behavioral assessment to influence instructional planning designed to improve the behaviors of students who exhibit escape-maintained problem behaviors related to academic tasks. The results are of particular relevance as researchers continue to explore effective interventions that support students with learning disabilities.

Eighty-six university students with learning disabilities (LDs) completed measures of self-esteem and of perceptions of their LDs. In addition, they rated their willingness to seek help from academic services in response to two experimental manipulations: (a) they read vignettes about a student requesting help from professors or peers and receiving positive or negative reactions; and (b) they listened to audiotaped radio advertisements for academic services on a college campus, emphasizing either learning or performance goals. Participants reported the most willingness to seek help after reading about a positive reaction from a professor and the least willingness to seek help after reading about a negative reaction from a professor. In a nonsignificant trend, participants were more willing to seek help after hearing the ad emphasizing performance goals, such as improved grades. Students who viewed their LDs as more stigmatizing, non-modifiable, and global were less likely to report a willingness to seek help in response to negative situations and had lower overall self-esteem. These results suggest that learning services departments could bolster use of academic support by (a) intervening with faculty to try to prevent negative reactions to requests for accommodations and (b) attempting to destigmatize LDs among students themselves.

Educators agree that students with disabilities need to acquire self-advocacy skills. Despite the existence of validated methods to teach these skills, evidence suggests that they are seldom explicitly taught. Time and opportunities to teach these skills in both the general and special education setting are minimal. One possible solution is to use instructional technology. The purpose of this project was to develop and validate an Interactive Hypermedia Program (IHP) to teach a self-advocacy strategy to secondary-level students with disabilities. The strategy for which the IHP was developed and tested is the Self-Advocacy Strategy (Van Reusen, Bos, Schumaker, & Deshler, 1994). The instruction for the strategy was originally validated by Van Reusen, Deshler, and Schumaker (1989). With input from student, teacher, design, and technical consultants, the IHP was created. Students who had learning disabilities, behavior disorders, and other health impairments learned the strategy via the IHP or through live instruction. A multiple-baseline design was used to show the effects of the instruction. In addition, a no-treatment comparison group was included for comparative purposes. At the conclusion of instruction, each student ran his or her own IEP conference. Results showed that the IHP was as effective in teaching students with learning disabilities to use the strategy as live instruction. Further research is warranted to determine if this medium is effective in teaching students other types of strategies.

This study illustrated how youth with learning disabilities (LD) perceive various aspects of their high school program. One hundred and eighty-five students with LD participated in an interview that explored their views of high school. Specifically, they responded to questions about the best and worst parts of school, recommended school, family, or personal changes that would improve their success in school, gave examples of how a teacher had helped them to learn, and offered general recommendations for improving school. The responses provide information on how they, as consumers of services, view their high school program. This information, in turn, offers insight into how educators might better tailor high school interventions to help more youth with LD to complete high school.

This article describes and summarizes research studies that analyze the shared and unique contributions of phonemic awareness and rapid naming to reading development. Three questions were addressed. Does phonemic awareness account for a proportion of the variance in reading development that is not accounted for by rapid naming? Conversely, does rapid naming account for a proportion of the variance not accounted for by phonemic awareness? Finally, do phonemic awareness and rapid naming contribute differentially to various subskills of reading development? Findings of the studies and implications for future research are discussed.

Although less frequently represented in the literature, inclusion on the secondary level represents a significant challenge for educators. Of particular concern are issues of academic complexity, pace of instruction, teacher attitudes, and the potential consequences of high-stakes testing. In this article, we first review the characteristics of effective inclusive classrooms and then discuss these characteristics with reference to secondary-level students with disabilities. Next, we describe recent undertakings in some areas of importance to secondary inclusive classrooms, including English, algebra, and biology classes, employing such interventions as peer tutoring, co-teaching, and strategy instruction. Inconsistencies in the observed patterns of results highlight the complexities of inclusive instruction on the secondary level.