The author: Julie Tollefson, managing editor, Center for Research on Learning. This article originally appeared in the November 2000 issue of Strategram, a newsletter for SIM teachers.
Return to Article ArchiveIn the last 40 years, the field of learning disabilities has grown up.
Despite some false starts, researchers and educators have amassed valuable information about what constitutes an effective intervention program for students with learning problems, participants during July's International SIM Trainers' Conference were told. Dr. Sharon Vaughn of the University of Texas presented her "Big Principles" of instruction for students with learning disabilities during her keynote address.
"One of the reasons I call this presentation 'Teaching on Purpose' is that we often say when we're growing up 'I didn't do it on purpose,'" she said. "I say to teachers just the opposite: 'Do it on purpose.'"
Vaughn's address incorporated the knowledge accumulated throughout 25 years of research as presented in four research syntheses representing more than 400 studies. What she found in reviewing these findings is that although there isn't an easy way to solve problems, the findings do offer guidance.
Although Vaughn's principles encompassed the broader scope of all interventions in the learning disabilities field, it was clear from her presentation that the Strategic Instruction Model and the work of the Center for Research on Learning stand on solid ground. Many of her principles reflect the very foundation on which SIM was built.
Principle: In general, effective interventions produce even higher effect sizes for students in the general education classroom without learning disabilities.
"As you know, this is no small finding," Vaughn said of this principle. "Those of you that are working in general education classrooms are always at the point at which you have to answer the question, 'Well, yeah, maybe it's good for your kids, but what about the rest of the kids?'"
Not only do effective interventions help students without learning disabilities, too, but students overwhelmingly approve of appropriate adaptations that help students learn. The positive responses of average-achieving and high-achieving students help ensure that effective practices and interventions are adopted and accepted by teachers and students alike.
This finding reflects what we have learned in our own studies over the years. In designing our Content Enhancement devices and routines for use in general education classrooms, for example, we have paid close attention to the benefits realized by all groups of students as well as to how teachers feel about using the devices and routines. What we have learned through this process strengthens our products, increases the likelihood that beneficial interventions will be adopted, and leads eventually to success for more students in general education classrooms.
Principle: Making instruction visible and explicit is an essential feature of effective intervention.
The practice of making instruction visible and explicit involves such activities as teachers thinking aloud and walking students through a process, as SIM teachers do in the modeling stage of strategy instruction. It means providing not only positive examples but also negative examples so students see what the teacher does not mean. It means arranging instruction so students do not have to discover what the teacher wants them to learn.
"It's absolutely the most fundamental principle of content instruction," Vaughn said. "Let them know what the most important things are that you want them to know and then teach these things relentlessly."
Another part of this principle means acknowledging limits on the amount of content students can master.
"We all know that the students aren't going to learn everything, but we want them to learn something and we need to decide what it is we want them to learn. And it actually frees teachers up to think about it that way," Vaughn said.
SIM's Content Enhancement Routines help teachers make the big decisions regarding what content is most important for students to learn. Defining the big course questions and relating instruction throughout the year to those questions helps teachers focus on what is really important for students to learn. Concurrently, helping students learn how to learn, as we do with learning strategies instruction, enhances students' chances of success in these classes.
Vaughn noted that when teachers use strategic processes to focus on understanding text and reading comprehension, effect sizes are very high. Interventions that include a combined model of direct instruction and strategy instruction yield the highest findings, she said.
"I know this is precisely what you all have been doing for the last 20 years," Vaughn said of the combination of direct instruction and strategy instruction. "These are the two methods that when combined are associated with overall highest effect sizes. So you were right all along!"
Principle: Interactive dialogue between teacher and students and between students appears to be a critical component of effective interventions.
Students gain a deeper understanding of the information they are expected to learn when they have opportunities to talk about it with teachers and with each other. This holds true across age levels, Vaughn said. Students benefit when teachers allow time for them to talk about what they read and write in deeper and richer ways.
SIM materials deliberately build in many opportunities for discussion: Content Enhancement devices are completed collaboratively. The eight-stage instructional process for Learning Strategies calls for frequent student input and many opportunities for feedback and discussion.
Principle: What would typically be considered lower-level elements such as sounding out words in reading or handwriting or math facts are essential elements.
In the last 10 years, what we think of as lower-level elements of any process often have been "swept under the rug" in the search for effective interventions, Vaughn said. We now know, however, that a strong foundation of these elements is essential for student success. Achieving a certain speed of writing is necessary to support written expression, for example. People can't think about what they're writing if they have to concentrate solely on forming letters. Likewise, students need to understand basic letter-sound associations if they are going to read fluently.
Much of CRL's work has been directed toward adolescents, students whose lack of basic skills puts them far behind their peers in general education. Many of our learning strategies assume a certain level of competency. That's why, in recent years, more attention of those affiliated with CRL--the teachers and trainers in the field--has turned toward adaptations for younger students or slower learners. Preskills (Strategram Vol. 9, No. 3) and Fundamentals in the Sentence Writing Strategy (Strategram Vol. 11, No. 5) are two examples of recent work in this area.
Principle: Students who are taught in small groups and pairs are associated with improved outcomes in reading and writing.
Despite the widely known value of small group instruction, the prevailing practice in many classrooms in many states and districts still involves a teacher lecturing to a large group of students, Vaughn said. Yet teachers can find ways to organize instruction for small groups and pairs. In fact, they should, because the gains in student performance as a result, especially for students with learning disabilities, are huge.
Many SIM materials were designed with small group instruction in mind, and activities teachers have developed to enhance instruction frequently break students into groups. Examples of these activities can be found in most issues of Strategram.
Principle: Motivation to learn, task difficulty, and task persistence are critical variables associated with effective interventions.
Two of the components of this principle--motivation to learn and task persistence--are directly linked, Vaughn said. Both of them are strongly dependent on the third component--task difficulty. For a student to be motivated to learn and stick with a task, the task's level of difficulty must be close enough to the student's performance level to allow the student to acquire information. That's why SIM's learning strategy instruction begins practice with controlled materials designed to allow students to experience success using the strategy. As students gain confidence and skills, instruction builds toward practicing with grade-level materials and finally actual content class materials.
Principle: Procedural facilitators or strategies assist students in developing a plan of action to guide their learning activities.
Procedural facilitators are tools teachers can use to help students learn. In written expression, for example, planning guides serve as procedural facilitators that may prompt students to think about characters, setting, and purpose and to think about what they are going to write before they begin.
"Probably KU has the most examples of ways in which procedural facilitators can serve as guides for learning," Vaughn said. "And they're highly effective for students."
Procedural facilitators have been especially effective in the area of written expression, Vaughn said. Ten years ago, students with learning disabilities wrote little and had very low expectations for their writing. In the intervening years, however, the performance of students with learning disabilities clearly reflects the benefits of instruction in that area.
"In the field of learning disabilities within the last 10 years, there's little question in my mind that the greatest progress has been made in the area of written expression," Vaughn said. "One of the things we learned is that when students were able to write, there were unexpected findings about what they knew, what they could do, and how they could do it. It was a nice window into how they thought and their capabilities. It was a place in which they often could shine."
Principle: Self-concept improves through different intervention types at different age levels.
Many educators in the United States today reject ideas, practices, and programs out of fear that these will somehow damage students' self-esteem, Vaughn said. Instead of letting this fear drive instructional decisions or attempting to improve students' self-esteem through contrived circumstances, educators need a better understanding of the factors that truly influence self-esteem.
"Self-concept is improved in one and only one fundamental way," she said. "It is through genuine success."
Students' self-esteem goes up, she said, when they see that they are indeed performing better through an objective, documented measure such as progress monitoring or portfolio assessment. This success does not even need to be comparable to other children; it must only be better than their own previous performance.
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