A Systematic Review of Meta-Analyses in Special Education: Exploring the Evidence Base for High-Leverage Practices

It is crucial that special education teachers are equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary to improve outcomes for students with disabilities. Despite federal legislation and efforts of the field to identify and disseminate evidence-based practices for students with disabilities, it is uncertain whether all special education teachers provide instruction based on the best available research. To better prepare special education teachers, McLeskey et al. proposed 22 high-leverage practices (HLPs). We conducted this systematic review of meta-analyses to provide an initial investigation of the experimental evidence reporting on the effectiveness of the HLPs for students with, or at risk for, a disability. Results indicated the largest amount of evidence from meta-analyses related to intensive instruction, explicit instruction, and social skills, with few meta-analyses reporting on collaboration and assessment. The results highlighted disproportional evidence according to disability categories. Implications for future research, practice, and teacher education are discussed.

An On-Ramp to Student Success: A Randomized Controlled Trial Evaluation of a Developmental Education Reform at the City University of New York

Most community college students are referred to developmental education courses to build basic skills. These students often struggle in these courses and college more broadly. CUNY Start is a prematriculation program for students assessed as having significant remedial needs. CUNY Start students delay matriculation for one semester and receive time-intensive instruction in math, reading, and writing with a prescribed pedagogy delivered by trained teachers. The program aims to help students complete remediation and prepare for college-level courses. This article describes the results of an experiment at four community colleges (n ~ 3,800). We estimate that over 3 years, including one semester that students spent in the program and two-and-a-half years after the program was complete, CUNY Start substantially increased college readiness, slightly increased credit accumulation, and modestly increased graduation rates (by increasing participation in CUNY’s highly effective Accelerated Study in Associate Programs [ASAP]).

Changes in L2 pronunciation

This special issue revisits an extraordinarily influential paper for L2 pronunciation research and teaching (Munro & Derwing, 1995) by looking again at the original paper with new eyes and new analyses. The special issue also includes invited papers addressing current approaches based on the three key constructs in Munro and Derwing (1995): Intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness. Papers in the issue include a reconsideration of the Intelligibility and Nativeness principles from Levis (2005), applications of the constructs to L2 Spanish (Nagle & Huensch), a consideration of how everyday L2 use affects comprehensibility (Zielinski & Pryor), long-term effects of intensive instruction (French, Gagné & Collins), influences on listener reaction to L2 speech (Isaacs & Thomson), empirical evidence for the dynamic nature of comprehensibility (Trofimovich et al.), a study on ELF intelligibility and functional load considerations (Thir), the relationship between comprehensibility and social evaluation of speech (Vaughn & Whitty), and one book review.

Long-term effects of intensive instruction on fluency, comprehensibility and accentedness

We assessed the long-term effects of intensive instruction on different aspects of L2 oral production. Adopting the tridimensional model of oral production (Munro & Derwing, 1995a), we compared high school learners who had received intensive ESL instruction (N = 42) with non-intensive learners (N = 39) on perceptual measures of L2 fluency, comprehensibility, and accentedness 4 years after a 5-month intensive instruction period. After controlling for academic ability and L2 proficiency, listeners’ ratings of fluency and comprehensibility were significantly higher for the IG; however, there was no specific group advantage for accentedness, suggesting both groups exhibited similar L2 accents. This study provides new empirical evidence that the oral fluency and comprehensibility benefits of an intensive experience may be long lasting, even when learners’ subsequent classroom exposure to the language is much more limited.

Emma’s Negotiation of Number: Implicit Intensive Intervention

We investigated the extent to which one elementary school child with ­working-memory differences made sense of number as a composite unit and advanced her reasoning. Through ongoing and retrospective analysis of eight teaching-experiment sessions, we uncovered four shifts in the child’s real-time negotiation of number over time: (a) initial “2s” and symmetry to consider counting on, (b) participatory awareness of 10 and use of algorithmic knowledge, (c) break apart and growing anticipation of tacit counting, and (d) advanced participatory tacit double counting. The results suggest a possible link between the child’s participatory knowledge and the extent to which her enacted activity met her goals for solving the problem more than her current “knowing.” The implications regarding a possible proof of concept toward implicit, intensive instruction are shared.

“Copied Out Big”

This chapter argues that James Joyce’s Ulysses seeks to counter the labor-saving and “liberating” discourse of progressive education, a discourse that begins with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and culminates with John Dewey. Joyce reimagines the pensum, or the punitive copying-out of text, as a model for both his own creative practice and his readers’ experience. This becomes especially vivid in Ulysses’ fourteenth episode, “Oxen of the Sun.” Here, copying the styles of others in a series of painstaking prose pastiches, Joyce also sends his readers back to school, administering a version of the labor-intensive instruction that he thematizes even while he also considers the labor that takes place in the maternity ward in which “Oxen” is set. Against Dewey’s demand that teachers do away with wastes of time for the sake of students’ freedom, Joyce sets these very wastes to work. As he makes the past palpable as dead weight that is not for all that dispensable, Joyce challenges the reproductive heteronormativity, as well as what Elizabeth Freeman would call the “chrononormativity,” that marks progressive educational theories from Émile through Dewey’s Democracy and Education. Joyce suggests strikingly that it is the old school, not the new, that shelters queer forms of life.

Teaching and learning L2 in the classroom: It's about time

One of the challenges facing second and foreign language (L2) teachers and learners in primary and secondary school settings is the limited amount of time available. There is disagreement about how to meet this challenge. In this paper we argue against two ‘common sense’ recommendations for increasing instructional time – start as early as possible and use only the L2 (avoiding the use of the first language (L1)) in the classroom. We propose two better ways to increase the instructional time: provide periods of intensive instruction later in the curriculum and integrate the teaching of language and content. Studies in schools settings around the world have failed to find long-term advantages for an early start or exclusive use of the L2 in the classroom. Nevertheless, many language educators and policy makers continue to adopt these practices, basing their choice on their own intuitions and public opinion rather than on evidence from research.

KEEPING OUR STUDENTS SAFE DURING SCHOOL CRISES

As educators and parents of children with disabilities, we recognize that students with significant disabilities benefit from research-based strategies to support the development of academic and social learning. We regularly use systematic instruction and behavior supports to provide day-to-day instruction, yet this same detailed planning is not always carried through to support these students in preparation for school crises. Whether a student with a significant disability is in a weather-related event such as a tornado or a larger crisis such as a school shooting, she or he likely needs intensive instruction with research-based strategies in order to survive. In this article, we discuss the critical issue of systematically inquiring about the specific needs of students with significant disabilities as they pertain to staying safe in school crises and introduce why and how to write an Individual Emergency and Lockdown Plan (IELP) for these students.

A Descriptive Analysis of the Error Patterns Observed in the Fraction-Computation Solution Pathways of Students With and Without Learning Disabilities

Developing an understanding of fractions is critical as a significant predictor for the learning progression of advanced domains; however, students face significant challenges in learning fractions because of their unique properties. To systematically approach remediation, this study examined the common error patterns committed by middle-school students with and without learning disabilities in mathematics when solving fraction computations involving addition. Based on the logic that errors reflect meaningful misconceptions, errors associated in each solution stage established in a solution algorithm were analyzed. Findings provide instruction implications to develop practical guidelines for researchers, insights into a starting point of instruction when teaching students in diverse achievement levels, and an awareness about specific problematic areas requiring more intensive instruction and intervention. Careful consideration of errors associated within a solution pathway can maximize the efficacy of instructions. Future research directions, educational implications, and limitations are discussed.