Curriculum Adaptation for Students with Learning Disabilities

The first article selected for this abbreviated literature review is Instructional Adaptations for Students with Learning Disabilities: An Action Research Project by Bentley Parker. This article was published in Intervention in School and Clinic in the September 2006 issue. This journal article reviews the research conducted by Bentley in understanding of the abilities and comprehension of teachers in the distinction between adaptation, curriculum and teaching strategies. Bentley studied six middle school teachers in a suburban setting with 0.5 to 13 years of experience and teaching varied subjects including math, history, English and science. Participants were initially given a questionnaire to access their understanding and use of teaching strategies and their difference from adaptation. The participants were then given an inservice instruction in two teaching strategies, the KWL and the simple web, and asked to implement them into their coursework for a 4-week period. These teachers were then reassessed at the end of the period to determine if their understanding of teaching strategies had changed and if the strategies taught had any impact on the understanding of their students over the period (Bentley 2006).

Bentley demonstrated that, as he expected, the teachers did not have a complete understanding of the difference between an adaptation and a teaching strategy in the beginning of the study. They were only able to name one teaching strategy out of forty responses. All other responses were teaching adaptations for students with learning disabilities (Bentley 2006). The teachers further indicated that their comprehension and comfort of teaching specific strategies with an average rating of 2.6 on a comfort scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being highly knowledgeable (Bentley 2006). KWL is a system created by Ogle in 1986 where the students sum up what they know, what they want to know and what they learned. This was used in all classes and the math teacher actually found it quite useful and a good summation routine on a daily basis. The web diagram had been used previously by a few teachers in unique situations, but they found the use of it as a regular teaching skill was very useful. One teacher reported a four point increase in the class average of the unit covered during the 4-week period (Bentley 2006). The teachers did feel that they needed to find ways to teach the students how to do the techniques independently and the author felt this could be addressed in a full inservice education. The conclusion of the article indicated that inservice instruction in learning strategies could be very useful for instructors of all subjects and is clearly a necessary facilitation to the higher education of students (Bentley 2006).

The second article, Access to the General Education Curriculum for Students with Significant Cognitive Disabilities by Lisa S. Cushing, Nitasha M. Clark, Erik W. Carter and Craig H. Kennedy was published in TEACHING Exceptional Children in the November/December 2005 issue. This journal article discussed the use of paraprofessionals and their work with general educators to adapt the general curriculum and assessments to meet the needs of the learning disabled students.

In this article the author studied the case of Jenny, a 12-year old with microcephaly, and the work that Ms. Ikeda, Jenny's special education teacher, does to ensure that Jenny can meet most benchmarks set for 6^th graders in her state. The article focuses on the use of Individualized Education Programs designed by the special education instructor in conjunction with the general educators in the school. Each teacher completes various matrices that indicate was the average student will complete each week and which activities occur in the classroom setting. The matrices also indicate which guidelines the instruction is meant to cover and what the average student is expected to obtain from the assignment. This information is then used by the special education instructor to design a program fit for the cognitive difficulties of the student to completely or partially meet the standard requirements. Weekly goals are designed to assist the teacher and student in identifying those areas which need improvement. Furthermore, the special educator works with the general educators to find ways to meet these goals in unique and classroom appropriate ways (Cushing, Clark, Carter and Kennedy 2005).

This article details the use of the matrices to quickly and succinctly identify areas of discrepancy between what a child with disabilities will learn as compared to a child without disabilities. Matrices are further used to identify goals to be met in each classroom and what can best be done to achieve these goals. Furthermore, the weekly tasks are refocused so that the specialized student can obtain the same information on the general curriculum in a way that is best suited to their unique focusing or reading issues. In Jenny's case, specialized reading, help from peers and use of her communication device were identified to help meet goals of general education as well as the socialization that she was lacking (Cushing et al. 2005). It is clear that this approach, while very time consuming, can assist the student in the overall comprehension of general curriculum as well as learn the other important skills that were intended with mainstreaming programs.

The third article, The Promise of New Learning Environments for tudents with Disabilities by Barth Pisha and Skip Stahl was published in Intervention in School and Clinic in the November 2006 issue. This article reports on the incredible technological advances in the adaptation of texts for the learning disabled student. As an example, the authors used a sixth grade history classroom taught by Mr. Gunderson and the three special education students in this period. The students range from generalized learning disorder, ADHD and one child whose learning disorder is not identified but clearly has developed behavioral disorders that cover his inability to interact in the classroom in a cohesive fashion (Pisha and Stahl 2006). Mr. Gunderson has reached a point of frustration with his inability to meet the needs of his students and is planning on attending a Universal Design for Learning course that he anticipates will give him the skills needed to adapt his teaching to increase the comprehension of all students, regardless of disability or behavioral issues (Pisha and Stahl 2006).

The article discusses the introduction of digital versions of textbooks that can be used with adaptive programs to allow the user to have the text read to them, to have certain words defined or decoded and even printed in Braille to assist all learners. The uniqueness of this approach is the adaptability to each singular student and their particular issues. In 2002 the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS) was first designed to create appropriate and accessible versions of print textbooks to all school districts and students (Pisha and Stahl 2006). By December of 2004, the NIMAS became a mandate for all states and moved from a voluntary program to a mandatory one (Pisha and Stahl 2006). Meetings were held between all stakeholders in the issue to discuss the difficulties with copyrighting and computer program platforms that would inevitably arise with a project of this magnitude. The National Instruction Materials Access Center (NIMAC) was created as a repository for all the source files that will be provided by publishers. Furthermore the NIMAS Development center was created to continually follow the new research on adaptation and integrate it into the programs. The NIMAS Technical Assistance Center was created to promote the program to states, school boards and publishers in an awareness raising effort (Pisha and Stahl 2006).

At the end of the article, Mr. Gunderson has now integrated CDs and computer programs into his classroom as well as standard Universal Design implementations. He lets the students choose from a list of tasks with the same comprehension goals and distributes fictional accounts of historical perspectives to activate the imagination of the students. Computers are used regularly in the classroom and the actual classroom design has changed to a small group format rather than the standard students facing the whiteboard format. He has noticed that the students are more engaged in the lessons and is receiving positive feedback from the parents. When the authors followed up with the students at home, they showed substantial improvement in the ability of independent study with the home CDs and computers (Pisha and Stahl 2006). The use of technology and the digital version of the textbook clearly made a significant impact on both students and teacher.

Each of these articles presented varying aspects of curriculum adaptation for students with learning disabilities. The first article's focus was on the ability of a teacher to understand the teaching strategies that have been clearly researched and developed. It is clear from this limited research that teachers are aware of learning strategies but do not present them due to their inexperience with the strategy or their lack of confidence. In this case, their confusion between adaptation and strategy shows clearly that inservice training is needed to give educators the tools they need to reach all students. The second article was focused on the educators' cooperation to develop strategies and approaches for the learning disabled student. Constant communication and simplified forms helps the special educator work with the general educator to ensure that all children are able to meet state standards and pass eventual state exams. The final article discussed the technological aspect that is much underused in regards to the curriculum adaptation. Students are significantly technologically savvy and the use of computers for adaptation removes the stigma that they may have with other adaptations. It allows them to work more independently which alleviates the time needed of paraprofessionals and parents in the daily workload.

These articles similarly present aspects of adaptation that are currently being investigated by researchers and all followed the implementation of the new skills or programs. They each took real life examples to demonstrate the use of the adaptation approach and monitored its impact upon the students. Furthermore, the articles presented a unified approach to adaptation of minimal invasiveness and meeting the specific needs of each individual child rather than trying a blanketing approach. Each article did have its own specific identification of problems within the current system, whether it was educator's knowledge, communication issues or technology that isn't being used.

I believe that all the articles presented findings relevant to my teaching experience. I agree that teachers are presented with numerous teaching strategies but rarely feel confident in enough of them to use them on a regular basis. The communication presented in the Cushing et al. article is an idealized picture, but one that should be at least attempted with every special education student. I found the article on digital textbooks the most useful however. I believe that the individuality available with a computer program is one that gives the students a sense of purpose and lowered stigmatization of their disabilities. They can feel independent with the use of these programs, which is really what we wish for them overall.

With full mainstreaming and the introduction of acts such as IDEA and NCLB, it is imperative that students with learning disabilities be able to meet the state standards and pass state exams. The failure to meet their needs will have a profound impact on the future of the children into adulthood. Approaching the adaptation from each possible focus of change is essential to full integration. It is necessary to instruct teachers using inservice education, to provide communication between educators and to make available technological advancements to fully meet the needs of the students. I believe all aspects should be studied and used in varying degrees by teachers in the classroom.

Works Cited

Cushing, Lisa, Nitasha M. Clar, Erik W. Carter and Craig H. Kennedy. "Access to the General Education Curriculum for Students with Significant Cognitive Disabilities." TEACHING Exceptional Children. 38.2 (2005): 6-13.

Pisha, Bart and Skip Stahl. "The Promise of New Learning Environments for Students with Disabilities." Intervention in School and Clinic 41.2 (2006): 67-75

Parker, Bentley. "Instructional Adaptations for Students with Learning Disabilities: An Action Research Project." Intervention in School and Clinic 42.1 (2006): 56-59