Decreasing the well-documented research-to-practice gap in special education is thought to partially depend on practitioner access to quality evidence-based interventions. Practitioner journals are one such resource for obtaining this information. The current study is a systematic review of articles published over the last 25 years (1990-2014) in…

Children with mild disabilities experience sufficient failure to produce negative future expectations (goals), which may compound early academic and social deficits. This research compared the teacher- and student-rated goals of 57 children at two age levels, who were average learners, had a reading problem/disability (RP), and were hyperactive or…

A national survey of the methodological content of 87 large teacher-education programs in learning disabilities/mild handicaps indicated that the dominant methodologies are largely the same as those commonly included in general teacher education. Within given courses, methodologies proven both effective and ineffective are stressed. (Author/VW)

A study involving 50 educationally handicapped (EH), 37 learning disabled (LD), and 40 nonhandicapped (NH) children revealed that when measures were administered weekly over three consecutive weeks, NH subjects' variability was greater than either LD or EH subjects. When subjects were tested on three passages in one sitting, no reliable difference…

Questionnaires completed by 223 elementary and secondary learning disability teachers were analyzed for information about teachers' perceptions of the incidence and characteristics of severely learning disabled (SLD) and mild to moderately learning disabled (MLD) students. Findings showed that SLD and MLD groups differed significantly on 40 of 44…

The article examines whether the material-appropriate processing approach can anticipate and explain the mnemonic effects of elaborative encoding tasks and study adjuncts for less able learners. Evidence suggests that less able learners are not capable of spontaneously exploiting the affordances of the to-be-learned material without appropriate…

Teacher interactions with disabled and nondisabled students in 38 mainstreamed elementary classrooms were observed using an interval time-sampling procedure and behavioral categories. Results of discriminant analysis indicated that disabled students received fewer questions and were provided with less teacher feedback than their nondisabled peers.…

Surveys of 1,164 special educators revealed that they did not support a combination of the traditional categories of mental retardation and specific learning disabilities. Special education teachers and evaluators of the handicapped were stronger in their endorsement of separate categories than special education administrators. (CL)

The Beginning Sight Reading (BSR) program, an interactive videodisc approach compared the effects of extensive and minimal remediation and of rate of instruction on reading performance of 32 elementary students with academic difficulties. Both BSR programs were effective, but the more extensive remediation was more efficient. (CL)

This article reviews social studies instructional approaches for secondary students with mild disabilities, with an emphasis on methods that provide access to the general education curriculum. It highlights research findings on domain-specific instructional approaches for teaching social studies concepts such as historical understanding and…

Self-concept scores of 138 mildly handicapped preadolescents in resource or self-contained settings were compared to those of 46 regular class students whose teachers endorsed the need for special education. Relatively higher scores were found for special education students, suggesting beneficial social effects of partial instructional…

A study examined the effects of a CD-ROM audio textbook, alone and combined with a complementary strategy (SLiCK), on the academic performance of 95 students with mild disabilities from 8 self-contained special education classes. Students in groups using the audio text performed significantly higher on content-area assessment than other students.…

This study evaluated the Collaborative Instruction Model in four secondary classes that included students with mild disabilities and low achievement. Measures included instructional actions of teachers, student engagement, student use of strategic skills, and student performance on content tests. Mixed results on student measures suggested the…

Fifty mildly handicapped students (learning disabled or emotionally disturbed) mainstreamed in secondary classrooms were Ss of a study to investigate conditions for acquiring textbook content through listening and reading utilizing simulated classroom assignments. (Author/PHR)

Elementary-school learning-disabled, emotionally disabled, educable mentally retarded, and nonhandicapped students (N=122) were observed during written language instruction, to document writing tasks and student responding. Extreme variability was found in the amount of time individual students spent in writing activities or in receiving written…