Math Interventions for Students with Disabilities
In "Mathematics Interventions for Children with Special Educational Needs: A Meta-Analysis" in Remedial and Special Education Volume 24, Number 2, March/April 2003 by Drs. Kroebergen and Van Luit have concluded some major findings that special education teachers and administrators need to start paying attention to especially since No Child Left Behind requires schools to use scientifically based research practices. The researchers looked at 58 studies focusing on three domains: prepartory mathematics, basic skills (ie. the four classic operations), and problem-solving strateiges. In summary, interventions that involved direct instruction and self-instruction had the greatest effect sizes while computer-assisted instruction and peer tutoring were the least effective.
The implications to teachers and adminstrators of special education students should be quite clear. Over the years, peer tutoring continues to be advocated as an acceptable practice for special educaiton students; however, the results of this study would show otherwise. "One important factor is that peers are less capable of perceiving the needs of other students than teachers." (p.111) The researchers also noted that computer-assisted instruction was also not as effective. While the researchers only conclude that humans are better than machine. I feel that a deeper explanation could be hypothesized: Computers cannot sense when a student is not focusing and therefore off-task hence the learning has stopped. Teachers can redirect students with verbal and non-verbal cues.
It would be interesting to know how many special education students have peer tutoring and computer-assisted instruction accommodations. While I feel confident that most teachers of special education students use direct intruction to initialy teach a concept, I wonder how many put students with peers and/or a computer to reinforce concepts. The reinforcement stage is the most critical to be able to correct miscues in understanding that only an experienced teacher can catch.
posted by QueenAnne at 5:52 PM
1 Comments:
I agree that there's no substitute for a caring experienced teacher who can respond to a student in so many different ways to reinforce learning. But that kind of direct instructional time is limited which makes the other tools like peer instruction and computer assisted learning so important. As is so often, the ideal is "both and" not "either or".
One problem with computer assisted is that we don't have the software applications that engage students and offer the rich adaptive pathways that are made possible by the improvements in technology. As those tools become more polished, they'll probably become a more effective part of the mix.
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