Responsiveness to General Education Instruction as the First Gate to Learning Disabilities Identification

Most definitions of learning disabilities (LD) include a qualification that adequate general education instruction was received and the child with LD did not benefit. Rarely is this tenet assessed in either practice or research before a diagnosis is made. We review three studies that investigated children's responsiveness to general education reading instruction as an indicator of need for more intensive interventions. Adequacy of instruction was quantified by children's level and rate of progress, compared to classmates, as measured by curriculum‐based measures of oral reading fluency. We found that the response‐to‐instruction model tested was valid in that (1) children who differ from their peers on level and slope of performance (dual discrepancy) have more severe academic and behavioral problems than children who have IQ‐achievement discrepancies or low achievement; (2) children who demonstrate persistent nonresponsiveness over three years differ from other at‐risk children on reading, reading‐related, and behavioral measures; and (3) at‐risk children who participated in specially designed general education interventions had better outcomes than at‐risk children who did not participate. We conducted additional analyses to assess low achievement definitional variations and found that they lack sensitivity and coverage compared to a dual discrepancy definition.     

Metacognitive Development: A View beyond Cognition

A series of studies were conducted to investigate students' metacognitive development in a second year chemical engineering course. The first of these was an exploratory study involving observation together with some limited interviewing. This was followed by a major study with two phases, the first of which involved a series of individual interviews with eleven students over the duration of the course, and the second of which involved a follow-up interview with each student two years later. In the first phase of the major study a theoretical framework characterising metacognitive development as a shift in approach to learning was utilised. The present paper draws on the findings of the second phase of the major study to both confirm the validity of this framework and also point to some of its shortcomings, specifically regarding the necessity of a certain emotional state in order for metacognitive development to take place, and the importance of the formation of a professional identity. It is suggested that metacognitive development needs to be characterised in broader terms than the usual cognitive focus in order to more fully account for students' experiences of learning.     

IDENTIFICATION OF READING PROBLEMS IN FIRST GRADE WITHIN A RESPONSE-TO-INTERVENTION FRAMEWORK

Models of Response to Intervention (RTI) include parameters of assessment and instruction. This study focuses on assessment with the purpose of developing a screening battery that validly and efficiently identifies first-grade children at risk for reading problems. In an RTI model, these children would be candidates for early intervention. We examined accuracy, fluency, growth, and teacher rating measures as predictors of child status (at risk, not at risk) at the end of the school year based on an unselected sample of 243 children. The prediction model that best fit our selection criteria included 2-word fluency measures and a teacher rating of reading problems. Word-fluency growth was an equally plausible choice statistically, but, because the measure would require an additional data point, it was not the most efficient choice. The receiver-operator characteristic curve analysis yielded an area-under-the-curve index of .96, which indicates the selected 3-variable model is highly accurate.     

Enthusiasts, deregulators, guardians, and skeptics: Contrasting policy viewpoints on the National Information Infrastructure

Passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and events leading up to it, brought to public attention a proposed National Information Infrastructure (NII) that would connect homes, businesses, universities, schools, and government offices. The policy discourse surrounding the Act reveals a variety of perspectives among stakeholders, including the Clinton administration, federal agencies, Congress, telephone companies, the computer industry, broadcast and cable TV companies, educators, and other interest groups.While there are many reports and commentaries on the NII, few authors have tried to characterize the political viewpoints behind the public discourse. This article reviews more than 80 NII-related documents, published from 1988 through 1997, and classifies their views and authors according to a two-dimensional typology by policy analyst William Dutton. Comparisons are made between those advocating Public versus Market leadership in NII development, and between Promotional and Restrictive statements regarding NII policy.     

Recruiting and counseling people of color at Western universities

This article focuses on the recruitment and retention of students of color in Western universities. It highlights concepts and strategies which have been effective in recruiting and counseling students who are racial minorities. The content is based on the author's experience in practice over the past six years and is supported by literature, empirical data, and interviews. Vignettes related to work done with students of color are incorporated within the body of the paper.Although the article is derived from work the author has performed at an American university, the implications and conclusions of that work should be of interest to all Western institutions of higher learning that recruit and want to retain students of color in their respective academic environments.