Janet E. Graetz

Case Studies in Co-Teaching in the Content Areas Successes, Failures, and Challenges

This article presents recent findings from several long-term qualitative investigations of co-teaching in science and social studies content-area classes, in which collaborating teachers and students with and without disabilities were observed and interviewed regarding effective practices and challenges associated with inclusion. In some sites, collaborating teachers were provided with research-based effective strategies and materials for including students with disabilities in specific activities. Results were equivocal in that in some cases, collaboration was extremely effective and conducive for promoting success for students with disabilities in inclusive classes. In others, challenges remained that presented barriers for successful collaboration and inclusion for students with disabilities. Important mediating variables were identified as academic content knowledge, high-stakes testing, and co-teacher compatibility. Findings are discussed with respect to both successes and remaining challenges.

Reading Comprehension Instruction for Secondary Students: Challenges for Struggling Students and Teachers

This article describes research on reading comprehension instruction with secondary students with learning disabilities. Specific difficulties for the struggling reader at the secondary level are described, followed by a review of reviews of the reading comprehension instruction research. Specific details from the most promising practices that have scientific evidence are highlighted. These practices include peer tutoring that incorporates comprehension strategy instruction and elaborative strategies in history and science classes. Research using Inspiration software to generate spatially organized graphic organizers to facilitate comprehension of content-area instruction is presented. Finally, implications for practice and for future research are discussed.

Do Special Education Interventions Improve Learning of Secondary Content? A Meta-Analysis:

The authors describe findings from a research synthesis on content area instruction for students with disabilities. Seventy studies were identified from a comprehensive literature search, examined, and coded for a number of variables, including weighted standardized mean-difference effect sizes. More than 2,400 students were participants in these investigations. Studies included interventions involving content areas, such as science, social studies, and English, and employed a number of different interventions, including study aids, classroom learning strategies, spatial and graphic organizers, mnemonic strategies, hands-on activities, classroom peers, and computer-assisted instruction. The overall effect size was 1.00, indicating an overall large effect across studies. Implications for future research and practice are described.

Teacher—Researcher Partnerships to Improve Social Behavior Through Social Stories

In this project, a partnership between school and university personnel addressed, in a systematic, research-oriented fashion, a classroom problem. A young child with autism exhibited excessively loud screaming, yelling, humming, and other distracting noises during class activities in a special education setting. These disruptive behaviors were a serious concern and also hampered the teachers efforts to place the child in more inclusive environments. The partnership members first systematically assessed the target behaviors and then consulted existing research interventions addressing those behaviors. Basing their efforts on previous research, the partnership members developed social stories and implemented them through a single-subject research design. Ongoing observations and consultations, as well as input from all partnership members, formed the basis for any changes made to the intervention. At morning circle time, data on inappropriate behavior (yelling) and appropriate sitting were collected during baseline, Intervention Phase 1, Intervention Phase 2, and return-to-baseline conditions. The intervention yielded positive behavioral changes for the target student. Findings are discussed with respect to effective social story interventions for young children with autism and establishment of effective partnerships through which teachers may become active researchers.

Cognition and Learning in Inclusive High School Chemistry Classes

The purpose of this investigation was to compare outcomes associated with peer tutoring vs. teacher-directed instruction for secondary level students with mild disabilities in inclusive chemistry classes. Thirty-nine students of whom 10 were classified with disabilities participated in a 9-week chemistry unit, under either experimental or traditional instruction conditions. The same co-teachers, including one chemistry and one special education teacher during the regularly assigned chemistry classes, taught both classes. The students in the experimental condition participated in classwide peer tutoring of important content required on statewide high stakes testing. Mnemonic and other verbal cues were included to facilitate verbal recall, and peer questioning provided for comprehension and elaboration of the concepts. Post-tests revealed that students in the tutoring condition outperformed students in the traditional condition, and that the gains of the students with learning disabilities descriptively exceeded those of the typically-achieving students. Students without learning disabilities outperformed students with learning disabilities, and students scored higher on factual items than on comprehension items. Implications for instruction and future research are discussed.

Inclusive Practices in Content Area Instruction: Addressing the Challenges of Co-Teaching

This chapter reports on the results from several extended qualitative investigations of co-teaching in science and social studies content area classes, on both elementary and secondary levels. In these investigations, co-teaching partners were studied and interviewed over several years, with the view of uncovering attitudes and procedures closely associated with successful collaborative partnerships. In some cases, these investigations took place in the context of implementation of research-based instructional strategies. Analysis of data from these investigations revealed that there was considerable variability in the way co-teaching practices were implemented, the attitudes toward co-teaching expressed by teachers, and the success of the co-teaching partnerships. It was thought that several variables, including content expertise, concerns for high-stakes testing, and the personal compatibility of co-teachers played an important role in the success of the co-teaching relationship.