The national focus on teacher accountability and the resulting emphasis on raising the bar for teacher evaluations challenge teachers of students with learning disabilities (LD) to rethink instructional design and delivery. In response to these challenges, this article introduces a two-part protocol for planning and teaching strategy instruction…

Founded in 1967, The Lab School of Washington (LSW) has been educating students with learning disabilities using an arts-based curriculum for over 50 years. Sally Smith originally started the school out of frustration with the inability of traditional educational environments to reach her intelligent, but learning disabled, young son and others…

Promoting self-determination has become a best practice in special education. There remains, however, a paucity of causal evidence for interventions to promote self-determination. This article presents the results of a group-randomized, modified equivalent control group design study of the efficacy of the Self-Determined Learning Model of…

This paper describes research (involving six postsecondary students with learning disabilities) that reflects the effectiveness of Strategic Content Learning as an instructional model for supporting students to generate individualized strategic approaches to cognitive activities. The model's effectiveness is attributed to students' task analysis…

This paper argues that the shift from behaviorist learning theories to constructivist and social constructivist theories provides an opportunity to develop a hybrid model of mathematics instruction for students with learning disabilities. The proposed model embeds important skill learning in meaningful contexts. Evaluation data on such embedded…

This paper suggests that Edwin Ellis' model for integrative strategy instruction, as applied to teaching adolescents with learning disabilities, requires further development in two areas: (1) the issue of what constitutes a thorough and valid educational model, and (2) the issue of how educational change can be successfully implemented. (JDD)

The Strategic Learner Apprenticeship for college students who are academically at risk or have learning disabilities involves task-specific learning strategies, course-specific learning strategies, coconstructed learning strategies, and a methodology for strategic instruction. Implementation of the apprenticeship with 56 at-risk student athletes…

This commentary on C. Addison Stone's paper on the scaffolding metaphor for the learning disabilities field urges that all available literature, rather than a particular metaphor, should be used to evaluate the efficacy of instructional procedures in interpreting findings of instructional research. (Author/DB)

This commentary on C. Addison's Stone's paper on the scaffolding metaphor for the learning disabilities field suggests: (1) repositioning the metaphor in its theoretical frame; (2) considering the ways in which contexts and activities, as well as individuals, scaffold learning; and (3) examining the relationship between scaffolding and effective…

This article presents the strategies instruction model as an effective intervention for students with learning disabilities. It describes the model's components (curriculum, instruction, environment), its theoretical basis, the teacher's role, teacher-student interaction, and appropriate contexts. Studies of the model's effectiveness are…

This paper reports on a meta-analysis of the research literature on effective teaching models for students with learning disabilities. It concludes: that the most effective models combined components of direct and strategy instruction; that eight major instructional factors captured most intervention programs; and that the explicit strategy…

This article presents the interactive, collaborative teaching and learning model developed to teach content area reading to students with learning disabilities or other learning problems. It identifies interactive and collaborative aspects of the model and explains its theoretical underpinnings, instructional decisions, the role of the teacher,…

A model of writing instruction integrating word processing, strategy instruction, and a process approach, within a social context for writing as a meaningful task, was tested with 113 elementary students with learning disabilities. Students in experimental classes made greater gains in quality of their narrative and informative writing than did…

Considerate instruction, defined as combining effective teaching practices with effective teaching tools such as textbooks and media, is seen as successfully enabling students with sensory and mild cognitive disabilities to achieve. The concept is applied to the teaching of mathematics, science, reasoning, and history. (DB)

This commentary on C. Addison Stone's paper on scaffolding for the learning disabilities field suggests that many current applications prevent rather than encourage transfer of responsibility to students for learning and task accomplishment and that current practices in many schools may result in "reverse-scaffolding". (DB)