Intervention in School and Clinic

Over the past 15 years, students with disabilities have been included in the general education environment at markedly higher rates; however, their achievement is not increasing at the same pace. One reason for this lack of increased achievement may be that academic standards lay the foundation for instruction in this environment, but standards fail to address the component academic skills needed for academic mastery. This article presents a method for analyzing the academic standards and then unwrapping them to their component skills using a lattice task analysis. After employing this analysis, educators will be able to systematically plan instruction in the component skills to ensure achievement and growth for all students in the classroom environment.

Secondary-level content area teachers face unique challenges in helping their students successfully read, understand, and learn content from complex texts in their discipline. In this article, a set of research-based practices designed to provide effective and feasible instruction to improve students’ reading and comprehension of text and content is provided. Specific examples of each practice within a social studies unit are used to illustrate how to promote text reading and understanding that is integrated with the content.

This article introduces the Main Idea Strategy, a strategy to improve the performance of students with disabilities and students who perform poorly on reading comprehension tasks. The rationale, research background, and detailed implementation information are presented.

Despite the popularity of co-teaching and widespread professional literature describing exemplary co-teaching practices, this instructional approach has yet to realize its potential. One way to increase the effectiveness of co-teaching is for special educators to contribute meaningfully by assuming the role of strategy leader in the co-taught classroom. This article provides examples of how special educators can define their role in co-taught classrooms by contributing purposefully through evidence-based strategy instruction.

The WHAT’S UP? strategy is a type of interactive writing between a student with social, emotional, and/or behavioral challenges and an adult. The written exchange serves as a technique for involving a student in “talking” about what can be better and engaging the student in a problem-solving process. The strategy encompasses components of problem-solving strategy skills, the self-regulated strategy development model, and interactive writing. The authors describe the strategy and how the strategy can be employed in the classroom.

Practicum experiences, a crucial component of preservice teacher preparation, help establish the foundational knowledge and skills necessary for beginning special education teachers (SETs). Preservice SETs need cooperating teachers (CTs) who support preservice SETs in proper emotional development (i.e., feeling like a teacher), who can model and support preservice teachers in the development of effective practices (i.e., acting like a teacher), and who promote the cognitive processes involved in instructional decision making (i.e., thinking like a teacher). When CTs are mindful of the learning needs of beginning special education teachers while also embracing the knowledge and skills they can bring to the partnership, they are more likely to help preservice teachers develop the skills needed to succeed on their own. This article presents strategies from the literature that CTs can use to effectively support their preservice SETs as they begin to feel, act, and think like a teacher.

Involuntary teacher transfer occurs whenever the reassignment of a teacher is initiated by a school or district rather than the teacher. These transitions are more likely to occur among special education teachers than among general education teachers. Although this type of transfer is not a new phenomenon, there has been surprisingly little scientific inquiry into this practice to determine its effect on teachers and students. This article describes the lack of scientific knowledge about the practice, especially for special education, why schools use the strategy, the effects of these transfers, and factors that lead to involuntary transfers. Going forward, more high-quality research is needed on the practice of involuntary transfer within the field of special education and the consequences of the policy. When policy makers ask to see the data that result from this research, the right questions must have been asked, especially as they pertain to special education.