Carol Sue Englert

Making Strategies and Self-Talk Visible: Writing Instruction in Regular and Special Education Classrooms:

Expository writing is an important skill in the upper-elementary and secondary grades. Yet few studies have examined the effects of interventions designed to increase students’ expository writing abilities and their ability to generalize their knowledge to write expository texts using novel text structures. The present study examined the effects of an intervention that attempted to improve students’ expository writing abilities through an instructional emphasis on teacher and student dialogues about expository writing strategies, text structure processes, and self-regulated learning. The findings suggested that the dialogic instruction was effective (a) in promoting students’ expository writing abilities on two text structures taught during the intervention (explanation and comparison/contrast) and (b) in leading to improved abilities on a near transfer activity, in which students wrote using a text structure not taught during the intervention. Although students in the control group exhibited some pretest-posttest gains on specific text structures, they were not successful in using their knowledge to write about student-selected topics and text structures. The results support the importance of instruction that makes the writing processes and strategies visible to students through teacher-student and student-student dialogues.

Creating Collaborative Cultures for Educational Change

Teacher-researcher communities constitute an imporant forum for change in the educational reform movement. yet little is known about the construction of these communities in special education contexts. in the early literacy project, we found that the discourse inthe teacher-researcher community provided a public space in which participants constructed new literacy meanings. a more careful examination of the discourse revealed that talk related to six issues: theoretical principles, teaching practice, problem solving about difficulties related to curricular enactments, the effects of the literacy curriculum on students, case studies of particular children, and references to prior events in the community. further, talk about principles and teaching practice formed a tightly woven braid ofmeaning that came to represent common assumptions about ways-of-doing and ways-of-thinking about literacy.

From deficit thinking to social constructivism: A review of theory, research, and practice in special education

Currently special education is in poor health. Plagued by criticisms about program efficacy, many educators, policymakers, and researchers now argue for changes in how students with disabilities are educated. In the midst of heated debates about redefining current practices, social constructivism has emerged as a theory that has the potential to make instruction in special education more holistic and relevant and emphasize more the strengths and knowledge that children bring to the classroom setting. While we do not elevate social constructivism as a cure for the complex problems now facing the field, we do believe that instruction emanating from social constructivist theory can inform instructional practices and can contribute to improved learning outcomes for children with disabilities. Thus, the purpose of this chapter is to outline the emerging contributions that social constructivism has made to the field of special education, specifically in the area of literacy instruction for students with mild disabilities. We focus on literacy because of its central importance in the education of students, particularly those with disabilities. In addition, we limit the discussion to the mild disabilities group because it is the largest segment of the special education population in the United States. In the first section, we contextualize the significance of social constructivism by offering a historical sketch of the evolution of special education social organization. We emphasize that this summary is not an exhaustive account of historical periods or events, nor is it an indictment against instructional approaches derived from a deficit perspective. Rather, our goal is to illustrate how special education has relied too heavily on deficit thinking and must now enhance existing practices with alternative approaches that consider the sociocultural contexts in which children with disabilities learn. We next summarize some basic theoretical principles

An Analysis of Errors and Strategies in the Expository Writing of Learning Disabled Students

This study examined the expository writing errors of learning disabled students and two groups of regular class students. The results suggested that learning disabled students did exhibit quantitatively and qualitatively different writing performances than normally achieving students, and to a lesser extent, than regular class students who were matched to learning disabled writers on IQ and reading achievement. Learning disabled writers had significant difficulty sustaining their expository writing efforts, and their errors suggested a reliance on the knowledge-telling strategy as a basis for expository discourse production.

Learning to read words: The effects of internet-based software on the improvement of reading performance

Two design experiments were conducted to improve the word recognition performance of students at risk of school failure. In Study 1, an Internet-based software from the TELE-Web project was used to remediate the word recognition performance of 4 students at risk of retention and reading disabilities in first grade. In Study 2, the Internet-based software was used with an entire classroom of first-grade students in an effort to prevent reading difficulties and to accelerate reading performance. The results indicated that TELE-Web was effective in improving sight-word recognition and that these improvements transferred to a standardized measure of reading achievement. These findings suggest the promise of Internet-based software in supporting the reading programs of young readers at risk for retention or referral.

Measuring Special Education Teacher Effectiveness

Teacher effectiveness in regular education classrooms has been widely examined and discussed. However, there is little research on teacher effectiveness in special education settings. This study focused on specific teacher behaviors associated with the academic achievement of mildly handicapped students. Two groups of teacher trainees found to be differentially effective in accomplishing student performance outcomes were contrasted on specific direct instruction variables. The results suggested that teacher trainees who maintained a high presentation rate with many correct pupil responses per minute were more successful in effecting pupil achievement than teachers with a slower presentation and correct rate. Implications for research and instructional practice are discussed.

Lesson Talk as the Work of Reading Groups The Effectiveness of Two Interventions

This study compares the effectiveness of two interventions that differed in the nature of dialogic interactions among teachers and students in the reading group. One hundred nine children with mild disabilities were instructed by 35 teacher-interns in special education resource rooms. Sixty-three and 46 students, respectively, participated in the two instruction interventions. The analyses indicated that the intervention that produced the greatest effects was the one in which dialogue, social interactions, and scaffolded instruction figured prominently. Limitations and implications of the study are discussed.

Web-Based History Learning Environments: Helping All Students Learn and Like History

This article explores the benefits of the Internet to enhance history instruction for all learners. The authors describe a Web-based learning environment, the Virtual History Museum (VHM), that helps teachers create motivating, inquiry-based history units. VHM also allows teachers to build supports for learners with disabilities or other learning challenges. A pilot study that demonstrated the impact of the VHM on history learning and participation of eighth-grade students with mild disabilities is discussed.

Shared Understandings Structuring the Writing Experience Through Dialogue

When teachers view writing as a social process in which authors write for real audiences and authentic purposes, they change their instruction accordingly to meet the needs of writers with learning disabilities. As more experienced members of a larger community of writers, teachers play a primary role in apprenticing students into the inherently social functions of writing. Through teacher-student dialogues about the complexities of the writing process, students gradually develop and control their own writing “voice” as they use and transform the shared understandings of the group process. Text structure, writing strategies, and metacognitive knowledge of the writing process provide opportunities for teachers and students with learning disabilities to interact and create shared understandings about the composition process. This article reviews some recent attempts to use text structures and the writing process as frameworks to guide the composition dialogue.

The Learning-to-Learn Strategies of Adolescent Students With Disabilities: Highlighting, Note Taking, Planning, and Writing Expository Texts

This study focuses on an examination of the learning-to-learn strategies of seventh-grade students as they highlight, take notes, plan, organize, and write expository texts. Participants consist of 125 students, 41 with disabilities and 84 without disabilities. The results reveal that the students with disabilities have more difficulties in using the learning-to-learn strategies as they read, study, and write expository texts, although neither group is judged to be highly proficient. The implications point to a renewed emphasis on preparing content-area teachers to teach the literacy and learning strategies that support the development of learners who know how to read to learn and how to write to learn.