This investigation was intended to examine the effects of teaching middle school students with learning disabilities and mild mental retardation to tutor one another in reading comprehension strategies. All students were reading significantly below grade level and many students exhibited behavior problems in addition to their primary disability area. Students were randomly assigned to a tutoring or traditional reading instruction condition. Within the tutoring condition, students were matched into tutoring dyads, trained in the tutoring procedures, and taught specific reading comprehension strategies. Reciprocal tutoring was employed, such that students assumed roles of both tutor and tutee during daily reading periods. Performance on reading comprehension tests following tutoring yielded significant performance advantages for students involved in tutoring. Observational, survey, and interview data revealed that students enjoyed tutoring more than their traditional instruction, appeared to see the value and benefits of the tutoring, and wanted to include tutoring as part of their other classes, such as science and social studies. Findings are discussed with respect to the strengths and challenges associated with the use of tutoring to provide strategic instruction to students with special learning needs.

The purpose of this investigation was to compare qualitative and quantitative outcomes associated with peer tutoring versus teacher-directed guided notes in world history for secondary-level students with mild disabilities. Sixteen students with mild disabilities (15 of whom had learning disabilities) participated in a nine-week quarter of one of the two instructional conditions. The same special education teachers taught students during world history classes. Measures included pre-and posttests of reading fluency, comprehension strategies, and content tests, including end-of-chapter tests, cumulative-delayed-recall tests, and a delayedrecall end-of-year final exam covering the entire academic year. In addition, qualitative procedures were employed, including interviews of teachers and students regarding their instructional preferences. Findings indicated that students who participated in peer tutoring significantly outperformed those who participated in the guided-notes condition on content-area tests. No significant differences were obtained on oral-readingfluency measures, but students in the tutoring condition performed significantly better at using a reading comprehension summarization strategy independently, and at remembering the strategy steps. Results of student interviews suggested that students responded positively overall to tutoring and guided notes, and provided specific relevant insights on each procedure. Students in the tutoring condition indicated that the time spent tutoring felt like one of the shortest academic quarters for them. Findings are discussed with respect to both benefits and challenges associated with implementing peer tutoring in high school special education content-area classes.

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This study investigated the use of integrated explicit strategy instruction in social studies classes using a peer tutoring format. Thirty students attending social studies classes in a middle school for students with emotional or behavioral disorders studied social studies content in a crossover design, in which all students received each of two instructional conditions. In one treatment condition, students served as peer tutors using a paragraph summary strategy. In the other condition, students received traditional instruction. After 4 weeks of tutoring, results indicated that students scored higher on content tests and on-task behavior while in the tutoring condition. Qualitative data suggested that students enjoyed peer tutoring relative to traditional instruction and reported that they would like to use it in other classes. Teachers agreed that peer tutoring and strategy instruction had exerted a facilitative effect on student performance. The authors discuss implications for practice.

This study investigated the impact of cognitive organizers, with the integration of technology, Inspiration 6 software, compared to a traditional textbook instruction format on content-area learning in high school inclusive social studies classes. Twenty-nine tenth-grade students in general education and 20 students with mild disabilities were randomly assigned to receive instruction using a cognitive organizer or traditional textbook instruction format. A pretest/posttest treatment control group design was used to examine the effectiveness of cognitive organizers. Dependent measures included a 35-item open-ended production pre/posttest of declarative social studies knowledge to assess the effectiveness of the intervention. Students in the cognitive organizer condition significantly outperformed students in the traditional textbook instruction condition. Limitations of the study, implications for practice for both general and special education teachers, and future research are discussed.