This in-depth study addressed the nature of general education teachers' planning for content area instruction for students with learning disabilities. Participants included 12 teachers, elementary through high school. Through interviews, classroom observations, teacher reflections, and surveys, we used the Flow of the Planning Process Model to investigate teachers' preplanning, interactive planning, and postplanning activities. Elementary general education teachers did more planning to include the needs of diverse students—and collaborated more with special education teachers—than did teachers at other levels. Other results indicated the extent of special help offered by teachers, as well as the pressures felt by teachers to cover the curriculum.
This study examined middle- and high-school students' perceptions of teacher adaptations to meet the special learning needs of students in the general education classroom. Individual interviews were conducted with 95 middle- and high-school students who represented the following groups: low achievers, average achievers, high achievers, learning disabilities, and English as a second language. All students felt they needed further teacher assistance to learn from their textbooks and that they would benefit from using learning strategies. Students also identified grouping preferences and the types of teacher adaptations they perceived as most helpful. Implications of the findings for inclusion of students with learning disabilities in general education classrooms are provided.
The primary purpose of this study was to examine middle and high school students' views of instructional practices teachers may use to facilitate reading of difficult textbooks. One thousand eight hundred nineteen students (776 middle school and 1,043 high school) completed the Student Textbook Adaptation Evaluation Instrument (STAEI). The STAEI consists of a list of 33 textbook adaptations for students to rate in terms of their preference and perceptions of teacher use of the adaptations. A secondary purpose of the study was to compare lower and higher achieving students' responses on the STAEI. To address this purpose, a subset of the initial cohort of students (120 lower achieving and 120 higher achieving) was selected. Results indicate a difference between students' perceptions of the desirability of textbook adaptations (high) and their perceptions of the frequency of use of these adaptations in the classroom (low). Students do not feel they are being exposed to the types of instructional adaptations they need. This is particularly true among high school students and higher achieving students. Discussion focuses on the disparity between student preferences and prevailing practices in secondary school classrooms, as well as the role of students' perceptions in teacher decision making.
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