In the last two and half decades, much has been learned about conceptualizing and developing measures for use by practitioners designed to inform their intervention decision making, such as when a child would benefit from receiving additional instructional support (universal screening) and whether the child is responding positively to the…

Classroom behaviors that enable academic learning are the focus of this article. A brief perspective is offered on the development and validation of one enabler--engagement in academic responding--and recent findings are provided of an effort to bridge the gap between research and practice by employing this knowledge in Title 1 elementary schools…

This article first assesses the existing "state of awareness of the research to practice gap" among 111 preservice educators. It then discusses the potential benefits associated with the improvement of this knowledge and describes a variety of programmatic options, structural and instructional, that may enhance preservice educators' knowledge,…

This article considers reasons for the gap between research and practice in special education including the unique separation of the research and practice communities in special and general education, the limited relevance of educational research, the failure to articulate manageable research-validated interventions, and the weak opportunities for…

This report describes research and development activities concerned with developing a set of tools for planning interventions for individual children, birth to age 8. It is part of a 5-year project to develop a comprehensive system of assessment within a decision-making framework for programs serving children with and without disabilities, birth…

This paper identifies nine lessons learned from five federally funded special education research to practice projects. Four projects are school-university collaborative partnerships and one is local-school- based. Both models stress research-validated practices to improve performance of students with and without disabilities across multiple years.…

This introductory article notes the special issue's purpose of highlighting ways to close gaps between research and practice in special education from the perspective of teacher preparation, inservice training, professional development, and collaborations between researchers and teachers in local schools. (DB)

This article describes a multistep method for identifying effective teacher-developed instructional procedures and translating them for wide-scale use. The method employs both objective and naturalistic assessments of academic gain and engagement and was used to identify effective practices of teachers of 59 fourth- and fifth-grade students with…

Comments on several papers addressing professional development and instructional improvement for students with learning disabilities in regular classrooms. It urges the linking and alignment of professional development, classroom practice, and changes in student performance with measurement and training that expect the influence of one on the…