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Evidence Based Instruction

Brief summaries of Research Evidence To Support Instruction Advances in Teaching Students With Disabilities

This initial summary of research findings was adapted from the Nineteenth Annual Report to Congress on the Implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. This summary was conducted by David Lillie in the Summer of 2000 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is now at the University of North Carolina and directs the evaluation of the North Carolina State Improvement Project (NCSIP II).

Over the last decade advances in what we know about “best practices” or what works for students with disabilities have been significant. Focused curriculum research, much of it stimulated and funded through the Office of Special Education Programs and the National Institutes of Health, has provided the field a wealth of information on which to base decisions for planning instruction for students with disabilities. However, in North Carolina, as well as in many other states, there has been little systematic and statewide application of this knowledge to classroom instruction. Planning and implementation decisions concerning classroom instruction for students with disabilities are frequently made on the basis of personal philosophies and beliefs, as well as on ease of implementation.

A major goal of the new Special Education: General Curriculum license is to assure that the instructional strategies used have been validated through research with students with disabilities. This summary reviews the importance of explicit instruction for students with disabilities. This research has been used to establish a foundation for the instruction approaches that have been adopted for use by the North Carolina State Improvement Project. Significant portions of this review of the research were adapted from the Nineteenth Annual Report To Congress published by the U.S. Department of Education in 1997.

The Need for Explicit Instruction

As the learning characteristics of children with many types of learning disabilities have been examined, the understanding of how these children learn has lead to the development of more sophisticated instructional interventions. Deshler and Schumaker (1993) and Englert and Thomas (1987) observed that students with learning disabilities were, typically, unaware of the "tricks of the trade" and that proficient learners use problem solving strategies to organize their thoughts or plan an approach to solve complex problems. Building upon these and other studies, as well as on theoretical models (e.g., Swanson, 1988), special education researchers began to develop and validate the use of explicit instructional approaches that teach such strategies to students with disabilities.

The research of Williams (1992) described a major comprehension problem of many students with disabilities and helped provide direction for instructional interventions. When asked to retell (or summarize) stories, many students with disabilities tended to add seemingly extraneous elements. Williams found that the elements were based upon their personal feelings and their experiences, rather than being derived from the text. These personal experiences and associations tended to "override" information presented in the book they were reading. An important goal of instruction is to show students how the academic material studied is related to their lives (Kinzer, Gabella, & Rieth, 1994) or the lives of others (Harniss, Hollenbeck, Crawford, & Carnine, 1994). When this instructional practice is utilized, retention of material increases.

Explicit instruction is an important technique in special education. It provides explicit frameworks for students with disabilities to use as they write or study or engage in group activities. The explicit frameworks offer a shared language that teachers and students can use as they engage in cognitive activities and as they work with one another (Mathes, Fuchs, Fuchs, Henley, & Sanders, 1994). The ultimate rationale is that by immersion in a learning environment that is rich in clear, explicit discussions of relationships, and full of a systematic use of relevant examples, students increasingly make linkage on their own.

To introduce students to complex concepts and to build essential skills in reading and mathematics, teachers, and the instructional materials they use, should be "explicit about what needs to be done, or said, or written--rather than leaving it to learners to make inferences from experiences that are unmediated by such help" (Cazden, 1992, p. 111).

The principles of explicit instruction summarized below were adapted from Carnine, Jones, and Dixon (1994), and Gersten, Carnine, and Woodward (1987) Principles of Explicit Instruction

• Providing students with an adequate range of examples to exemplify a concept or problem-solving strategy;

• Providing models of proficient performance, including step-by-step strategies (at times) or broad, generic questions and guidelines that focus attention and prompt deep processing-,

• Providing experiences where students explain how and why they make decisions;

• Providing frequent feedback on quality of performance and support so that students persist in activities, and

• Providing adequate practice and activities that are interesting and engaging.

The need for explicit instruction for many students with disabilities was derived from the understanding that often students with learning disabilities and other problems related to academic performance: (1) have a difficult time organizing information on their own (especially abstract information), (2) bring limited background knowledge to many academic activities (especially those involving abstractions), and (3) need a good deal of feedback and practice to retain abstract information (U.S. Department of Education, 1997)

In addition to the documentation of the importance of EXPLICIT INSTRUCTION, the NC SIP II project has conducted the following research literature reviews to use in the development of in-service as well as pre-service training of special education teachers:

Early Literacy Instruction

Reading Instruction

Writing Instruction

Mathematics

Positive Behavioral Supports

Learning Strategies

Instructional Leadership

Reseach Base References