More than two-thirds of middle school students do not read proficiently. Research has shown that targeted interventions using explicit instruction methods can improve reading outcomes for struggling readers. A central feature of explicit instruction is the systematic implementation of instructional interactions, but it is not clear what specific…

The adoption and sustainability of evidence-based Tier 1 literacy practices in secondary content-area classes is important to improve reading success for students with learning disabilities. We conducted an exploratory multiple-case study investigating teachers' adoption and sustained use of evidence-based Tier 1 literacy practices that benefit…

We examined the efficacy of a content acquisition and reading comprehension intervention implemented in eighth-grade social studies classrooms. Using a within-teacher randomized control design, 18 eighth-grade teachers' social studies classes were randomly assigned to a treatment or comparison condition. Teachers taught all their classes…

Two studies investigated the effects of a live, collaborative Professional Development (PD) program versus individualized PD with a multimedia software program. For both studies, teachers were randomly assigned to either a Virtual Workshop (VW) group that used the software program or to an Actual Workshop (AW) group that participated in a…

Training in phonological awareness has brought about well-documented positive effects on learning to read in lower-primary grades. Less is known about long-term gains extending to upper-primary and junior high school. The few longitudinal studies covering at least 5 years suggest that gains in decoding are sustained, whereas effects on reading…

In this multi-year study, we taught English/Language Arts teachers of students with learning disabilities in middle school to incorporate 15 min of daily vocabulary activities with students in their intact special education English/Language Arts classes. During Year 1, teachers taught 48 words to their sixth grade students, who learned and…

A majority of reading-related intervention studies aiming to remediate struggling readers' reading outcomes assess student performance immediately following the conclusion of an intervention to determine intervention effects. Few studies collect follow-up data to measure the long-term sustainability of treatment effects. Hence, the aim of the…

This study examined (a) the identification of various reading groups across languages in Chinese (L1) adolescents learning English as a second language (ESL), in terms of their word-reading and reading comprehension skills, (b) overlap in reading group membership across languages, and (c) the performance of the various reading groups on…

The note- and test-taking skills of typically functioning undergraduates are significantly and positively related to handwriting speed, listening comprehension, background knowledge and sustained attention. This study attempted to replicate these findings with two groups of high school students--those with and without the diagnosis of a learning…

This article reports results from a study investigating the efficacy of a proportional problem-solving intervention, schema-based instruction (SBI), in seventh grade. Participants included 806 students with mathematical difficulties in problem solving (MD-PS) from an initial pool of 1,999 seventh grade students in a larger study. Teachers and…

Reading achievement scores for adolescents with disabilities are markedly lower than the scores of adolescents without disabilities. For example, 62% of students with disabilities read "below" the basic level on the NAEP Reading assessment, compared to 19% of their nondisabled peers. This achievement gap has been a continuing challenge…

This article reports on a qualitative study of the school experiences of adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in the context of quantitative research on teacher attitudes and practices, adolescent self-appraisals, and social and family relationships. Twelve adolescents with ADHD participated in in-depth, semistructured…

This study examined the effect of schema-based instruction (SBI) on the proportional problem-solving performance of students with mathematics difficulties only (MD) and students with mathematics and reading difficulties (MDRD). Specifically, we examined the responsiveness of 260 seventh grade students identified as MD or MDRD to a 6-week treatment…

The purpose of this experimental study is to investigate the effects of using content acquisition podcasts (CAPs), an example of instructional technology, to provide vocabulary instruction to adolescents with and without learning disabilities (LD). A total of 279 urban high school students, including 30 with LD in an area related to reading, were…

There exists a substantial number of studies that have identified a subset of low-achieving mathematics students who do not develop a reliance on retrieval for simple addition but who continue to use a counting strategy to solve these problems. There are few studies, however, that have focused on how retrieval of simple addition facts may be…