Catherine Medina

Learning at the Margins

Educational limitations for Mexican American students in American public schools remain in the 21st century. Although Hispanics are the fastest growing ethnic population in the United States, education has difficulty meeting the teaching and learning needs of Hispanic students. Beyond ethnicity, Mexican American students suffer from distinct educational, social, and cultural pressures that play out in class. This study represents the voices of six Mexican American students enrolled in special education for learning and/or behavioral disabilities. The students express alienation, disinterest, and anxiety regarding their classrooms, teachers, and classmates. Ever-present concerns and barriers expressed by these students, coupled with current research, point to the ongoing challenges to education and school culture in particular.

Promising Practices and Challenges: E-Advising Special Education Rural Graduate Students

Rural graduate students face numerous barriers and obstacles in attending higher education. One such obstacle is academic advising from a distance. The intent of the authors was to examine the advising experiences of masters degree level special education students who had received e-advising from their academic advisor. A short email survey was designed to collect data relating to e-advising received by rural, part-time students. Results of the survey indicated that in-person advising at a university site (traditional advising model) would not have been suitable and e-advising was meeting their needs at this point in their graduate education. The participants also explained that the necessity of being advised in person is no longer valid.

Concrete-Semiconcrete-Abstract (CSA) Instruction: A Decision Rule for Improving Instructional Efficacy.

A concrete–semiconcrete–abstract (CSA) instructional approach derived from discovery learning (DIS) was embedded in a direct instruction (DI) methodology to teach eight elementary students with math disabilities. One-minute abstract-level probes were the primary metric used to assess student performance on subtraction problems (minuends 0–9). A single-subject, multiple-baseline across-participants design was used to identify the differential effects of discontinuing instruction at crossover (i.e., the point when the correct response rate exceeded the incorrect response rate). Results indicate that the commonly accepted practice of teaching an entire CSA unit of lessons may not be the most efficacious approach for classroom teachers. Instead, through daily data collection and application of the “crossover decision rule” (discontinue rule), teachers can selectively target those students appropriate for additional concrete- and/or semiconcrete-level instruction and those students for whom continued practice at the abstract level is more appropriate. Implications for teaching computational skills are examined.

Teacher as caregiver: making meaning with students with emotional/behavioral disabilities

Abstract Students with emotional/behavioral disabilities often come to the classroom with an array of problems. What is it that helps these students become successful in the school environment? In interviewing five Mexican-American adolescents enrolled in public school special education classes and their four teachers, their voices illustrated that special education teachers who exhibit care-giving qualities create positive student–teacher relationships with their students identified as having emotional/behavioral disabilities.