Response to Intervention: Educators' Perceptions of a Three-Year RTI Collaborative Reform Effort in an Urban Elementary School

Abstract

What are educators' perceptions of the adoption and effectiveness of the Response to Intervention (RTI) model in their own schools? Over a three-year time span, the authors interviewed educators at an urban elementary school about their perceptions of an RTI model, tracking the model's development and the effectiveness of the implementation. The study was conducted through a university-school partnership that involved these elementary school educators from the initial planning through the implementation of the model while providing the professional development that was required to support the model. While the educators initially viewed the model as an administrative directive, they began to assume responsibility for the model's implementation during the second year as they considered themselves change agents and problem solvers for their school. During the third year, with continued administrative support and evidence of the model's effectiveness, participants engaged in the additional development and growth of the model and assumed responsibility for the model's sustainability as part of the school change process. Results suggest that RTI's collaborative structures, related professional development, and co-shared leadership supported the implementation process and contributed to the effectiveness of the model. Implications for practice are discussed.

Teachers’ collaborative professional development for inclusive education

“…Finally, the fourth category collects articles with a focus on identifying and helping at-risk students who experience difficulties at school. In this category, inclusive education is strongly connected to the content taught and including all students with a focus on making knowledge accessible for all (Bos et al 1999;Greenwood et al 2003;Rinaldi, Averill, and Stuart 2011). This category is named content inclusion (see the dark grey shading in Table 4), which focuses on methods used to find at-risk students at an early stage to prevent them from experiencing failure in subject learning resulting in future exclusion at school (n = 3 or 14% of the articles).…”

“…Finally, the fourth category, content inclusion, captured the studies focusing on content knowledge development to avoid future school failures by identifying at-risk students at an early stage to prevent their later exclusion. Three such studies were found (Bos et al 1999;Greenwood et al 2003;Rinaldi, Averill, and Stuart 2011), all in the field of literacy/ reading and all from the USA. The studied methods were reading instructional methods of efficacy (Bos et al 1999), curriculum-based measurement (CBM) reading fluency (Greenwood et al 2003), and response to intervention (RTI) (Rinaldi et al 2011, Rinaldi, Averill, andStuart 2011).…”

“…The studies' focuses are mainly on general issues, such as inclusive education, or more specific topics, such as theory of mind, literacy or technology. Four studies reported findings on a design where the teachers and researchers collaboratively designed and implemented the research in the classroom (Paul, Duchnowski, and Danforth 1993;Nevárez-La Torre and Sanford-De Shields 1999;Greenwood et al 2003;Rinaldi, Averill, and Stuart 2011). The researchers who worked collaboratively with teachers to define the focus of their research and implementation identified new perspectives on what questions could be defined.…”

“…Paul, Duchnowski, and Danforth (1993) found that the teachers were not meeting the needs of schools, while Greenwood et al (2003) found that the sustainability was weak after the researchers left the school because the teachers did not subsequently increase their use of the new strategies. Only one of the studies (Rinaldi, Averill, and Stuart 2011) explicitly involved the teachers as co-leaders of the project, which resulted in their ownership of the process and a change in the staff culture at the school and an increased feeling of self-efficacy. One explanation of the teachers' sustainability difficulties, might be that the teachers do not share the interest or focus of the study with the researchers.…”

Response to intervention : a qualitative case study at an urban elementary school in New Mexico

“…While teachers felt more confident in measuring and identifying at-risk students, they desired more training and skill development to match instruction and interventions to best address the child's learning gaps (Meyer & Behar-Horenstein, 2015). Teachers cited their enthusiasm for collegial collaboration in the problemsolving process, but also shared the need and importance for more team skill development (Meyer & Behar-Horenstein, 2015;Rinaldi et al, 2011). Teacher buy-in was cited as a factor that principals needed to monitor and address during initial implementation (Hoover & Love, 2011;Hoover & Patton, 2008).…”