It is difficult to deny that many U.S. middle and high school students are in need of special literacy supports. Several indicators of declining literacy achievement have shifted national attention toward struggling and striving adolescent readers. More than ever, secondary schools are under enormous pressure to find ways of improving performance…

Our research examined understandings of individual student target setting processes through semi-structured interviews with staff and students from two schools in England: a special school for students with severe learning difficulties and a linked mainstream secondary school. This article details some of the tensions and issues arising from…

This article discusses a documentary film created by students with learning disabilities to share their wisdom. "Speak Out for Understanding" is a new film on learning disabilities created by a group of students at a Vermont high school. Made on a shoestring, the award-winning 32-minute documentary overturns a number of popular…

Errors in written multi-digit computation were investigated in children with math difficulties. Third- and fourth-grade children (n = 291) with coexisting math and reading difficulties, math difficulties, reading difficulties, or no learning difficulties were compared. A second analysis compared those with severe math learning difficulties, low…

Spina bifida (SB) is a neural tube defect diagnosed before or at birth that is associated with a high incidence of math disability often without co-occurring difficulties in reading. SB provides an interesting population within which to examine the development of mathematical abilities and disability across the lifespan and in relation to the…

A two-semester modified Spanish sequence was designed to address the needs of college students with language-based learning disabilities. This course featured reduced scope, an emphasis on tactile activities, metacognitive strategies, and adaptations to the presentation and practice of material. Performances on fall and spring semester-end essays…

This qualitative study investigates the interaction between local and imported knowledges in a specific case of transnational importation; the whole-sale importation of the American medical learning disabilities (LDs) model in Kuwait. A discourse analysis of the narratives of local educators at the only school for LDs in the country reveals a…

Increasingly, children with Down Syndrome are attending mainstream schools, but evidence suggests that these children are more prone to peer rejection and other problems when compared with their non-disabled counterparts. However, relatively little is known about children's attitudes toward their peers with moderate to serious learning…

The present study employed an alternating-treatments design to compare the differential effect of group contingencies on the improvement of homework completion and accuracy of students with disabilities in a self-contained fifth-grade classroom. Generally, past investigations have indicated a positive association between homework performance and…

Anxiety! Stress! Fear! Everyone lives in a time of escalating accountability in terms of state, district, and city-wide examinations that measure student growth in the acquisition of skills and content area knowledge. All students feel increased pressure to constantly demonstrate improved levels of academic performance. For students with cognitive…

The issue of homework is now uppermost in many parents' and teachers' minds. Researchers are questioning homework's effectiveness as an educational tool. Policy makers are thinking twice about what to do about it while kids have their fingers crossed. In two national surveys conducted by the authors, they have discovered a wide range of…

One validated model for teaching strategies to less skilled writers is the self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) approach. This method has been used to successfully improve the writing of children with learning disabilities and has recently been extended to students with emotional and behavioral disorders and attention-deficit/hyperactivity…

This article chronicles the evolution of a programmatic line of research on strategic writing instruction for adolescents with learning disabilities (LD) conducted by staff and affiliates of the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning. The goal associated with this research is that students with LD learn the writing skills that they…

The purpose of this article is to describe the development and 10-year implementation of the effective behavior and instructional support model in a midsized northwestern Oregon school district. The district experienced a sustained reduction in students' discipline referral rates, an increase in the percentage of students on track for early…

This study was designed to examine the effects of tracing and fading prompts to improve the handwriting of two preschoolers both diagnosed as Developmentally Delayed (DD) and one of whom had fine motor goals. The study took place in a self-contained special education public preschool classroom located in the Pacific Northwest. The results showed…