Remedial and Special Education

For textbooks and other instructional materials to enhance learning by all students, adoption policies must promote thoughtful consideration of the learning characteristics of students with disabilities and other diverse learners. To determine opportunities to foster such consideration during the review and selection of materials, we studied previous research on instructional materials and diverse learners, and, through document reviews and fieldwork, we directly investigated state and local adoption processes across the nation. From our reviews and fieldwork we developed guidelines for improving practice, including an organizational model based on best practices and an action plan to aid policymakers and practitioners.

Current methods of textbook evaluation have not led to changes necessary for enhancing the comprehension of diverse learners. These methods have failed to highlight three important comprehensibility features of textbook writing: familiarity, interestingness, and structural coherence. In this article present an evaluation technique that uses graphic organziers to represent textbook material so that it can be evaluated according to these three features. I review relevant research, show how to represent two sixth-grade social studies textbooks graphically, and discuss how publishers, state adopters, district selectors, and classroom teachers could use the technique to improve textbook materials for all students.

In today's diverse classrooms, teachers need and students deserve educational tools that serve a wide range of learners. Fortunately, making instructional materials more accommodating does not have to mean sacrificing the needs of one group of students for those of another. Many features that are good for diverse learners are good for all learners. Text characteristics that have been shown to enhance learning are proposed to improve the audience appropriateness, text organization, and use of organizational aids in instructional materials. Reform of the design, selection, and use of materials will require a concerted effort by publishers, policymakers, and practitioners.

This study examined the level of agreement between two methods of administering group reading inventories, computer and pencil and paper, leading to placing 72 secondary students, 38 males and 34 females, into three instructional groups—teacher directed, dyadic, and independent. The students, 13 with learning disabilities, 16 remedial, and 43 normally achieving, were enrolled in science and social studies classes in middle school and high school. In one condition, students read textbook passages presented on computer, completed study guides, and took 15-item tests on computer. In the other condition, the same students read passages from their textbooks, completed study guides, and took 15-item tests with pencil and paper. An equivalent time samples design was arranged, with four computer assessments and four pencil-and-pape r assessments randomly assigned. The dependent measures consisted of two types of test items, factual and interpretive. The results of group analysis significantly favored the computer overall on factual questions, with individual analyses indicating few significant differences resulting from the two types of group reading inventories. On interpretive test items, the results of group analysis revealed no significant difference between the two assessment methods, a finding generally corroborated by the individual analyses. Correlation coefficients substantiated significant positive relationships between the dependent measures and the group reading inventories. Overall, the placement of students in three instructional groups was identical for each type of group reading inventory in 72% of individual comparisons. Several recommendations for teachers are presented and discussed.