Intervention Research In Learning Disabilities

Recently, in the area of learning disabilities, a subarea of special educa tion, an interesting development has become discernible. This develop ment centers on the increasing focus of learning disabilities professionals on theory building and empirical research, and it is reflected in the spate of books currently being published. With their clear emphasis on con ceptual and methodological issues along with directions for future re search, these newly published books differ essentially from the bulk of learning disabilities textbooks. They include S. Vaughn and C. Bos (Eds. ), Research in Learning Disabilities: Issues and Future Directions, published in 1987 by College-Hill; T. E. Scruggs and B. Y. L. Wong (Eds. ), Intervention Research in Learning Disabilities, published in 1990 by Springer-Verlag; and L. Swanson (Ed. ), Learning Disabilities: Theore tical and Research Issues, published in 1991 by Lawrence Erlbaum Asso ciates. As reflected in these three books, the discipline began with a service orientation and has evolved beyond that to come of age with aspirations of becoming a scientific discipline. These books can be taken to voice the concerted efforts ,of learning disabilities professionals to promote theory building and empirical research. Undeniably these books provide valuable information on conceptual issues and research in learning disabilities. Nevertheless, they appear to have one drawback, namely, they focus exclusively on learning disabilities research in North America.

Intervention Research in Learning Disabilities is based on proceedings of the Symposium on Intervention Research sponsored by the Division for Learning Disabilities (DLD) of the Council for Exceptional Children and held at Purdue University, November 14-16, 1988. It presents a wide range of critical issues and insights, both theoretical and practical, related to research with learning disabled individuals. The book is divided into four broad sections: issues in intervention research, academic interventions, social and behavioral interventions, and postsecondary interventions. It considers both present and future directions of such research. Topics explored include variance and verities in learning disability interventions, instruction derived from the strategy deficit model, enhancement of academic performance with mnemonic instruction, the content enhancement model for promoting content acquisition, interactive teaching and learning, social skills training (and an alternative approach to social skills training), the use of schema in research on the problem solving of learning disabled adolescents, and intervention effectiveness at the postsecondary level.

This book reviews systematic training programs that are designed to enhance the language, reading, literacy and cognitive skills of individuals with Learning Disabilities in various disciplines. Most titles on Learning Disabilities intervention often focus on the linguistic area of the disability, while there are many more areas of difficulty. Students with learning disabilities struggle with such as math, cognitive abilities, and organizational skills. Adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, this book encompasses a wide variety of remedial treatments and therapies developed by expert researchers and scholars in the Learning Disabilities area.

The first comprehensive quantitative analysis of intervention research in the learning disabilities field, this volume synthesizes the results of 272 scientifically credible group and single-subject studies in an effort to identify what works best for learning disabled children. The book examines pertinent findings on all academic, cognitive, and behavioral domains. Intervention outcomes are evaluated across instructional domains, sample characteristics, intervention parameters, methodological procedures, and article characteristics. Addressing such questions as the merits of inclusion settings and the relative benefits of direct and strategy instruction, Swanson offers timely recommendations for instructional design, assessment, and policy.

In this chapter, we described issues in conducting intervention research with students with learning disabilities on the secondary level. We main tained that interventions should be well-grounded in theories of learning as well as characterizations of learning disabilities (Pressley, Scruggs, & Mastropieri, 1989); that they should first be conducted in a series of highly controlled, laboratory-like experiments to carefully assess the potential utility of the intervention; and that, if the intervention is suc cessful in highly controlled settings, it should then be evaluated in class room applications. We maintained that research designs should evolve as the research questions become more applied, and that the results of laboratory research should be used to support the findings of classroom applications. Finally, we described several research designs that we have found useful in conducting classroom intervention research. There is a great deal more to conducting intervention research, of course, than experimental or quasi-experimental design. Intervention strategies likely to be effective must be identified, relevant literature must be reviewed, experimental materials must be developed, and cooperative schools, teachers, parents, and students must be located. Nevertheless, inadequate research designs can invalidate the best and most successful efforts in all of these areas, while effective and practical research designs can do much to document the best practices and advance our knowledge of effective interventions with students with learning disabilities. References Brigham, F. J. , Scruggs, T. E. , & Mastropieri, M. A. (1992).