This study investigated the effect of a social and emotional learning skills curriculum, the "You Can Do It! Early Childhood Education Program" (YCDI), on the social-emotional development, well-being, and academic achievement of 99 preparatory and grade 1 students attending a Catholic school in Melbourne, Australia. One preparatory and one grade 1…

Many students who experience reading failure are inappropriately placed in special education. A promising response to reducing reading failure and the overidentification of students for special education is Response to Intervention (RTI), a comprehensive early detection and prevention system that allows teachers to identify and support struggling…

Targeted or universal pre-K? Direct instruction or learning through play? These and other debates are heating up as more and more young children across the country gain access to pre-K programs. Now there's a single volume that spotlights today's most urgent pre-K debates, explores each one from all sides, and paves the way for sound, educated…

"Empowerment Starts Here" covers an experimental approach to social change within urban communities by way of seven distinct principles for student empowerment. Turning classroom methods into a school model, Preparatory School for Global Leadership was the first to experience student empowerment at a school-wide level. This book provides insight…

Teacher behavior research has shown that teacher behaviors, as well as specific teaching strategies, make a difference with regard to student achievement. Ten durable instructional strategies are discussed: set induction, stimulus variation, reinforcement, questioning, recognizing attending behavior, lecturing or direct instruction, planned…

In this article, the author suggests that children with language impairments have difficulty working in groups because of deficits in the area of pragmatic language. Pragmatic language skills are identified and suggestions for intervention in the general education classroom are discussed. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)

The perception of high school special education math students and their teachers regarding the collaboration and provision of specially designed instruction was explored in this qualitative study. The theoretical framework proposed that a balance between constructivism and direct instruction within a student-centered classroom would encourage…

Today's classroom differs greatly from the classroom a decade ago. This is due, in part, to the changing demographics of students across the United States where diversity is now the norm. As children enter the educational system with diverse backgrounds, they are exposed to new experiences that facilitate changes in interests, behaviors, and…

This study examined the effects of three types of reading interventions on the science text reading of secondary students with learning disabilities (LD). Twenty 10th-grade students with LD participated in the study. Using a within-subjects design, the relative effects of three different instructional approaches--text reading, vocabulary learning,…

Individuals with disabilities require direct instruction in social skills. The primary purpose of this study was to provide social skills instruction to students with disabilities at the kindergarten through eighth grade level. I worked collaboratively with four other Child Study Team colleagues to develop recruitment, assessment, planning, and…

This study investigated the effect of direct instruction in rhetorical analysis on students' critical thinking abilities, including knowledge, skills, and dispositions. The researcher investigated student perceptions of the effectiveness of argument mapping; Thinker's Guides, based on Paul's model of critical thinking; and Socratic questioning.…

The purpose of the study was to provide a data-based description of West Virginia special education teachers' roles, responsibilities, and practices relevant to their participation in selected components of the Response to Intervention (RTI) process. Special educators' practices related to assessment, tiered instruction, decision making, and…

The Cape York Aboriginal Australian Academy (CYAAA), which began operation as part of the government schooling system in 2010, incorporates activities across three overlapping "domains": Class--the formal schooling component; Culture--Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural knowledge; and Club--sporting, cultural, music and physical…

In this article, the authors focus on issues of instruction in classrooms. Initially, a brief definitional and historic section is presented. This is followed by a discussion of four assumptions about the current state of affairs: (a) evidence-based practices should be identified and used, (b) children's phase of performance should dictate…

The purpose of this quasi-experimental non-equivalent control group study was to test theories of constructivism and motivation, along with research-based teaching practices of differentiating instruction and instructing within a child's Zone of Proximal Development, in measuring the effect of computer-aided instruction on fifth grade students'…