This study compared two approaches for teaching a history unit on the Civil Rights Movement (1954–1965) to middle school students with learning disabilities (LD) in general education settings. The curriculum was designed to make the content challenging, but accessible. The major text was the documentary, Eyes on the Prize (DeVinney, 1991). Readings were brief and included primary sources from the time period. Curriculum content was constant in both instruction conditions, but in the experimental condition teachers isolated the video selections into brief 2- to 3-min segments to facilitate learning and used peer dyad activities to foster active processing of content. Students with and without disabilities in the experimental condition scored significantly higher on 2 of 3 content measures.

This study examined the trend in experimental studies by comparing the proportion of research grants with experimental designs that were funded by the Office of Special Education (OSEP) during 2 fiscal years (FYs) in the late 1980s (1987)(1988) and 2 FYs in the late 1990s (1997)(1998). Data from 2 FYs per decade were used to reduce the possibility that anomalous years were selected for comparison, as well as to strengthen the ability to ascertain trends over time.The findings indicate that there was a statistically significant decrease in the proportion of funded experimental research from FYs 1987-1988 to FYs 1997-1998. Implications of these findings in terms of the evolution of educational research, and in terms of contemporary issues in special education research, are discussed.

In many ways, the Office of Special Education (of the U. S. Dept. of Education) has been a major inno-vator in this area. The Office has supported numerous research to practice initiatives in the past fifteen years, and waves of projects to develop and then evaluate various strategies for successful research to practice transfer. Several years ago, the research and innovation division was renamed Division of Research to Practice to emphasize its commitment to this crucial issue.

Conducting high-quality, qualitative research within the field of learning disabilities is becoming an increasingly desirable goal. Evidence of this may be found in an ever-growing trend toward adopting qualitative methodologies such as interviewing, participant observation, and audiotaping of instruction while engaged in quantitative inquiry. The two research studies by Berninger and Butler et al. presented in this special section are excellent examples of researchers using qualitative research methods in this fashion, as opposed to conducting qualitative research in the traditional sense. By presenting fascinating examples of contemporary case-study research on instruction, these studies join a tradition of reflective studies of intricate issues in practice (Ball, 1993; Englert & Tarrant, 1996; Klingner, Vaughn, Hughes, & Arguelles, 1999). Ultimately, they produce "songs of experience" (Blake, 1794/1975 version)-reflective personal essays on the experience of teaching students with learning disabilities.