A Time for Modern-day Pioneers
Keynote address delivered at the LDA International Conference
March
2003 - Chicago, Illinois
Donald D. Deshler
University of Kansas
I am very honored to have been asked to be a keynote speaker on
the Fortieth Anniversary of LDA. Forty years ago, many of you hearing
or reading this today were not even born. On the other hand, some
of you were probably present at the time those initial meetings
of great significance were held. Regardless of where you are on
the timeline, I salute each of you who devote a portion of your
life to trying to enhance the quality of life of individuals who
have learning disabilities.
Just as forty years ago, we were faced with large and seemingly
insurmountable problems, so too today, we face our own set of extremely
complex and challenging problems. Difficult issues such as: Who
are we going to serve? Do students with learning disabilities, indeed,
evidence characteristics that are unique from those of other low-achieving
students? Under what conditions should services be provided? Or,
are there, indeed, a unique set of skills that learning disability
teachers must possess? Or, given that our time for instruction is
limited, what instructional practices make the biggest difference?
The Right Path
As a field we have shifted a great deal of our time from providing
direct services to students to spending an increased amount of time
on collaboration and co-teaching. This has raised another set of
questions, including “Has this been a wise trade off?”
What standards should we use to determine whether we are using an
effective, inclusive teaching practice? Do we have good answers
in response to the growing number of critics who look at our field
and ask questions about the outcomes we achieve or fail to achieve
and who raise difficult questions about the costs of what we do?
Each of these questions is very difficult to answer and each requires
very careful thought, serious study and critical debate and analysis.
If there is anything that our field cannot bear at this time, it
is surface-level, politically correct responses. Our overall outcomes
in terms of success on major indicators, be they dropouts, number
of graduates or achievement results on state exams, is less than
I think any of us would want. Given that and to help us move forward,
I would like to invite you to stand back from the work that we are
doing and ask some questions about where we are today. What are
our priorities? What is our overall direction? There is no doubt
that we are all busy, but are we busy doing the right things? More
specifically, are we teaching the right things to the right students
under the right conditions? In short, are we on the right path?
What paths are we following? Are we eager to just go along and
join what happens to be the popular call for the day? How much are
we heeding what we have learned makes the biggest differences in
the students that we serve?
Letters
To put my remarks into perspective, I would like to share three
brief excerpts from some letters that I received over a decade ago
from a young high school student, Jennifer. I have shared these
on more than one occasion but the underlying feelings and statements
helps to put into perspective the consequences of choices we make
as teachers and parents as we strive to find the right answer for
individuals who have learning disabilities. I received the first
letter when Jennifer was a freshman.
Dear Dr. Deshler:
My name is Jennifer and I attend Hammond High where presently
I am a freshman. For as long as I can remember, I had learning
disabilities since I was born. I had so many feelings of being
different from everyone else because it is hard for me to learn.
It takes a while for me to figure out what is going on around
me. I get so confused with all the different things that people
expect me to learn and remember. I read a lot to improve my study
skills but all I do is read and don’t remember what I read.
I always feel stupid about not knowing more than my younger sister.
What can I do to improve my study skills and maintain my I.Q.?
Please write and tell me.
I got another letter from Jennifer when she was a sophomore and
would like to share the following excerpt as well:
I think having a learning disability has taught me how much a
person like myself needs to fight what is hurting them physically
and mentally. Things are just terrible in school. At the beginning
of each year, I pray that I will get a teacher who will teach
me how not to be stupid. I need to learn how to remember all the
stuff. But rather than teaching me those things my teacher just
gives me things that don’t really help. I honestly think
that she has given up on me. My teacher treats me like I can’t
learn. I feel like a little baby. It just convinces me that I
really am stupid.
There are times when I feel so different, so left out, so lonely
and so sad. I have a very dead heart about life. I think that
if I didn’t have a learning disability I could think more
clearly and more as an adult than as a little girl. I wish I could
do things in the way that people would think I was great instead
of just looking at me. I hope you will write back soon and tell
me what am I doing wrong.
Finally, here is a letter Jennifer wrote to me as a young adult:
My mother called me about two weeks after I was fired and told
me that if could not go through my life with something good, then
maybe I should quit on myself. Most mornings now, I wake up thinking
about how unsuccessful I have been, how stupid I will always be.
I look at my little daughter when she is asleep and hope that
she does not turn out like me. When I hear the words “intelligent”,
“bright”, and “hardworking”, I know that
they do not apply to me.
Many people don’t understand how difficult, how hard, how
frustrating it is go through life with poor knowledge of everything
life has to teach. Why can’t I hold a job that I know I
can do? Why can’t I do something that is right and not the
opposite? Maybe I should stop trying so hard. I really wish I
could start my life all over again. Please write in a hurry.
I am sure all of us here have a “Jennifer” in our lives.
I think, perhaps, the real challenge or tragedy is that there are
Jennifers in our lives and we don’t know the stories behind
the faces in our classrooms. I believe that learning is first and
foremost a visceral, emotional, affective experience before it is
a cognitive one. Knowing that there are children who feel that they
have a “dead heart” or they are “hurting physically
and mentally inside,” gives me all the more reason to come
up with solutions to the enormous challenges that the Jennifers
of the world face as they try to unlock words, to express themselves
in writing, or solve problems in mathematics.
Access to Learning
Very briefly, I would like to remind us where we are in the evolution
of laws that have been put in place relative to students with disabilities
in the last few decades. When P.L. 94-142 was passed in 1975, it
accomplished a lot of things. Among the most significant, it put
in place processes and procedures to ensure that we would come together
as a single educational system – that students were no longer
separated by place. We still find that in IDEA in the 1990’s,
but a key component was added in the 1997 Amendments. IDEA 1997
not only called for access to “place” but it called
for access to the general education curriculum. In other words,
access to learning….not just access to the place where learning
should occur. Additionally, this legislation insisted that attention
be given to student outcomes.
The “No Child Left Behind” Act was recently passed.
I predict that some of the changes that we are going to see in the
reauthorization of IDEA are going to be patterned after that legislation.
Not only is accountability on student outcomes very prominent, but
the bar has been raised so that if you’re not getting appropriate
outcomes for students, you will need to account for that fact by
demonstrating whether or not you have used “scientifically
based practices” in your instruction. The phrase “scientifically-based
instruction” is mentioned one hundred eleven times in the
legislation.
I have given you a brief overview, the Cliff Notes version,
so to speak, of where we have come over the past twenty-five plus
years to remind us that the bar has gone up and the context within
which we need to carve out solutions that make a difference for
students with disabilities is markedly different from what it used
to be.
In light of the array of vexing questions that I posed earlier
and the contextual realities that we are facing today, I would like
to suggest three factors as being foundational to our success as
a field.
Factors for Success
Regardless of the role that we play -- a mom, a dad, a teacher,
administrator, a researcher, or teacher-trainer -- I would go almost
so far as to say that these factors, at least in my mind, are non-negotiables.
As a result of this discussion, I would like you to determine, what
factors you deem to be most central to bringing about the most dramatic
changes in the performance of students with learning disabilities.
That question is critical for each of us to come to grips with because
the instructional time available to us is so limited – and
the gap between a student’s actual and their expected performance
level is so great that our instruction must be so well designed
and effectively delivered that students make accelerated gains.
That is, they make significantly more than one month of achievement
growth for every month of time in instruction. In other words, we
cannot afford to make only one unit of gain for an equivalent
unit of time spent in instruction….at that rate, they will
never catch up! Creating an instructional dynamic that ensures dramatic
growth is an enormous instructional, organizational challenge.
Let us turn to three factors of success that I deem to be central
to the work that we do.
Factor 1. We must do all that we can to use those practices
that have been shown to make a difference in the outcomes of students
with learning disabilities. We clearly are at a different point
in 2003 than we were forty years ago when Dr. Kirk came up with
the label “learning disabilities.” A significant amount
of work has been done in classrooms. Master teachers and master
clinicians have carved out some very innovative, significant solutions
that make a difference in the lives of students. And researchers
have validated many of the things that masters in the classrooms
and clinics were doing.
In the process, I believe a very significant story has unfolded
almost imperceptibly. This story has been told in the literature
over the past three or four years in several meta-analyses of intervention
work involving students with learning disabilities. These meta-analyses
have been completed by some of the leading scholars in our field
(e.g., Baker, Chard, Elbaum, Fuchs, Gersten, Swanson, Vaughn, Williams).
They are available in the areas of reading comprehension, written
expression, grouping, self-concept, and higher order thinking. In
these meta-analysises, which collectively examined hundreds of intervention
studies, some very significant and common threads emerged that consistently
point to things that make a huge difference in the education of
students with learning disabilities. I am going to quickly high-light
some of these findings. This is one of the big success stories in
our field. We have some solid progress during the past several years,
but then there is “the rest of the story” as Paul Harvey
would say.
First of all the good news. In one of the meta-analyses, Lee Swanson
(1999) and his colleagues found two major intervention practices
that produced large outcomes. One is direct instruction. The other
is learning strategy instruction. Of particular interest was the
work of the teachers who were applying those kinds of interventions.
These teachers (a) broke learning into small steps; (b) administered
probes; (c) supplied regular quality feedback; (d) used diagrams,
graphics and pictures to augment what they were saying in words;
(e) provided ample independent, well-designed, intensive practice;
(f) modeled instructional practices that they wanted students to
follow; (g) provided prompts of strategies to use; and (h) engaged
students in process type questions like “How is that strategy
working? Where else might you apply it?”
Something else that seems to make a real difference is the practice
of scaffolding. That is, starting out with some heavy teacher-mediated
instruction, explicit instruction, then being sensitive to students
starting to acquire the skill, and then moving down the continuum
to more student mediated instruction. The effect when those kinds
of instructional practices are used is most encouraging. As they
move students into a range where they can hold their own, where
they can compete. Not compete within instructional level materials
but where they can compete at grade level. In other words, we can
teach students how to learn. We can put them into a position to
compete!
But here is some sobering news. In 1995, Naomi Zigmond and her
colleague, Jan Baker, studied inclusive teaching practices and went
into a variety of general education classrooms that had been nominated
as being places where quality teaching was going on with students
with learning disabilities. As a result of their research Zigmond
and Baker concluded that: “Conspicuously absent as we watched
the special education teachers and talked with them about their
roles, were activities that focused on assessing individual students
to monitor their progress through the curriculum, concerns for the
individual were replaced by concerns for the group, the organization
and management of the general education classroom and peer groups.
No one seemed concerned about individual achievement, individual
progress, and individual learning.”
They went on to ask: “What is special education?” Well,
as we know by the law, it is specially designed instruction. Here
is what Zigmond and Baker concluded as a result of their study.
“We saw very little specially designed instruction delivered
uniquely to a student with learning disabilities. We saw almost
no specific, directed, individualized, intensive remedial instruction
of students who were clearly deficient academically and struggling.”
The issue I am raising here is not one of “inclusion”
or “not inclusion;” the issue is what kinds of instructional
conditions must be in place to enable students to make significant
gains.
In addition, let me share with you a snapshot of some data that
researchers at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning
recently collected in several high schools. First, we found that
very few students with learning disabilities are placed in rigorous
courses in high schools. Only around 21% of students with learning
disabilities are placed in rigorous main-line classes. Most of them
are in lower track classes. Second, we did a study in general education
classes in high school to see what teaching practices general education
teachers were using. Specifically, we wanted to know if the kinds
of instructional behaviors that made the biggest difference in the
gains of students were used frequently? We found, that behaviors
such as modeling, elaborated feedback, prompts, and the use of graphics
were used very sparingly.
The most sobering news, however, was the following. When we did
a similar observational study in special education classrooms, we
found that the graphs of what was occurring in general education
and what was occurring in special education was virtually the same.
In other words, the very thing, the very factors that have emerged
in the literature as making the biggest difference for students
with learning disabilities, are not being embracing as a field.
In 1994 Jim Kaufmann warned about our field’s “implementation
sins.” “If special education teachers use methods of
questionable virtue or implement them carelessly or sporadically,
then we have no right to expect that special education will work
by any reasonable criteria. Special education exceeds or fails not
so much by the structure, that is, are we in a resource room or
wherever.” He is saying that that is not really it. “But
by its instructional effectiveness, special educators are so called
because they offer instruction that is particularly intensive and
effective. For too long we have failed as a field to come to grips
with the issue of best practice. For a variety of reasons we have
conveniently sidestepped the issue of insisting that our teachers
use those methods with the strongest support in theory and reliable
research. We have opened our doors to well intentioned but misinformed
people or even quacks, self-promoters and scoundrels who peddle
methods that will not stand up under careful scientific scrutiny.
Too many of our teachers and teacher trainers have bought into the
latest fads while rejecting methods with the best credentials. Unfortunately,
too often, the style that has been rejected, we have rejected the
proven but homely method for something that is a bit flashier.”
So again the issue of effectiveness is not where students are taught
but the instructional conditions under which they are taught. We
need to ensure that the right kind of instructional conditions are
in place so that the instruction we are offering on targeted skill
deficit areas and strategy deficit areas will be sufficiently intensive
so that we can engage in the kind of modeling, feedback and mediated
practice that is needed. In the absence of that, students may survive
where they are placed but chances are they will not succeed -- they
will not soar as they otherwise might. In the absence of these factors,
we must remember that the real gains fall off dramatically as shown
in study after study after study. It is critical that we stop ignoring
those findings.
Factor 2. We must insist that our practices be guided by
good science. While you may think that this is related to the first
factor, I want here to address a slightly different issue. As mentioned,
“No Child Left Behind” calls for scientifically based
instruction. Also, the President’s Commission on Excellence
in Special Education report has made a strong plea to ground what
we do in responsible science.
A couple thoughts surface here. What is “responsible science?”
As with motherhood and apple pie we all embrace these calls that
have come forth, however, just as not all mothers nor apple pies
are equal, so all research is not equal.
I have two big concerns.
- Concern number one: The insistence in some quarters that
the only research of value is that that involves pure experimental
designs with random assignment runs the risk of ignoring some
of the unique realities of conducting research with populations
that evidence the large amount of heterogeneity that students
with disabilities evidence.
- Concern number two: What constitutes research based
is much more than statistical significance. You can take a child
from reading 20% of the words correctly to reading 40% of the
words. That is a one hundred percent increase! If your sample
size is sufficient, you can publish your results in a journal
because you have demonstrated statistical significance. Nevertheless,
the reality is the child still has an F. In other words, that
intervention does not pass the test of social significance. Social
significance is related to such questions as, “Does it
make a difference in how children are perceived by others, how
they feel about themselves, and how well they can perform on age
or grade level tasks?”
Remember Jennifer. Would she have felt any better getting 40% than
20%? No. She would still have a “dead heart.”
Other things that we need to consider when discussing research-based
issues: Is the practice palatable and doable for teachers? Do we
get commensurate gains if we apply the intervention within a general
education classroom? We need to get commensurate gains for high-average
and low achieving students. If not, teachers will drop the practice
the moment high achieving kids start to get bored with it. In addition,
we need to ensure that the practice can be delivered at scale and
sustained over time.
I would like to say a few words related to this on the broad array
of issues surrounding the determination of learning disabilities
or certifying students as being eligible for special education services.
The ultimate solution will have to be both a technical and social
one. The technical aspect relates to the attributes of the procedure(s)
used to make a determination of a learning disability. For years,
we have used I.Q.-achievement discrepancy measures. As we have sought
for ways to refine the outcomes of IQ-achievement discrepancy procedures
we have tried different formulas or cut-scores. All of these attempts
have been efforts to improve the technical part of the identification
process. There is an equally important social dimension to this
dynamic. That is, LD determination decisions are strongly influenced
by our biases, values and the context within which we work; they
impact the decisions we make. Look at the variance in the number
of students from one state to another who are classified as having
a learning disability. In light of the complexity and broad array
of factors surrounding LD determination, I would challenge the leadership
of LDA, the leaders in the Department of Education and the administration,
and all of us here to demand the same level of rigor and evidence
for a new paradigm of learning disability determination that is
now being demanded of evidence in intervention research. While there
are a host of challenges and difficulties with the I.Q.-achievement
discrepancy paradigm, we currently don’t have sufficient evidence
for a replacement model.
For example none of the alternative models have been brought to
scale: this is not an insignificant issue. Not just learning disabilities
but education in general has a very checkered past in terms of bringing
things to scale. There is no guarantee that a practice otherwise
found effective in controlled studies can be brought to scale. It
is important that this issue be very carefully studied so that we
do not falsely raise hopes and expectations of those who are expected
to implement promising practices on the front lines. We need to
proceed with care, we need to resist prematurely embracing solutions
that have the appeal of the grass is greener on the other side of
fence syndrome before we have sufficient evidence. Let us be prudent
in what we adopt and how we proceed. The same standards of science
called for by the current administration and the President’s
Commission and touted in the book recently published by the National
Research Council called Scientific Research and Education
(Shavelson & Towne, 2002), must be applied to the research done
on determining learning disabilities. There is no question that
the current system needs to be fixed. We need to find a way to get
services to children earlier -- before the third and fourth grade.
However, we must be careful and judicious in our search for alternatives.
The Office of Special Education Programs has funded a large research
initiative to study the many issues surrounding LD identification
(this research project, operated jointly by Vanderbilt University
and the University of Kansas is called the National Center for Research
on Learning Disabilities -- NRCLD). New policy directions should
be guided by the findings of research being conducted by the NRCLD
and other researchers. There is too much at stake to make major
policy decision in the absence of solid research evidence. This
is one of the most pressing and challenging issues facing us today.
Factor 3. We must use research-based practices in our work
with students with learning disabilities but that in itself is not
sufficient. In other words, while having an instructional practice
taught with fidelity is necessary, it can’t stop there. What
I share with you now is simply as a reminder of what I said earlier.
Learning is first and foremost a visceral emotional, affective experience.
We have all had the experience of failing at something and felt
how that has torn at us and distracted our attention. We are committed
at the Center for Research on Learning to bridging the gap between
research and practice. We have a large international professional
training network, a professional development network. We prepare
all who come for professional development to use the same set of
instructional materials so you would theoretically suppose that
everyone gets the same kind of results. Well, not so. Some participants
stand out as stars. They get extraordinary results.
This inconsistency caught my attention and I asked the question,
How come?” What was different in these teachers that
had the same kinds of professional development, the same instructional
manuals, etc? You would probably predict, as I did, that they had
better administrators. They had better circumstances. They had easier
students to teach and all those things. But those factors don’t
seem to be what differentiates these teachers. Among the things
that appear to characterize those teachers who get extraordinary
results with students are the following. First of all, they had
a very clear vision of what they were about. They had very lofty
goals but they also had a very clear vision of who they were, what
their role was as a teacher, what they were trying to accomplish,
and what they could accomplish. A clear vision enhances our ability
to see beyond our present reality to create and invent what does
not exist. It gives us the capacity to live out of our imagination
instead of out of our fears. When we have limited vision, on the
other hand, we react to what is urgent. What are other people’s
priorities?
If we have a clear vision about what students with whom we are
working can accomplish and we remain true to that vision, it can
be very powerful. The key question before us is: what is our vision
for the work that we do? Is it clearly defined? Do we have a shared
vision with our colleagues or has our lofty vision of earlier years
in the profession become dulled? Have we lowered our expectations
for what we expect of ourselves and what we expect of others, including
the students that we teach?
Second, we found that these successful teachers had a very strong
sense of self-efficacy. They believed they made a difference. They
believed that putting in the extra time of planning and preparing
makes a difference as well as being a significant force. They saw
themselves as having control.
Third, these teachers recognized that many students, especially
older ones tend to be disconnected and in a process of disconnecting
themselves in a pretty significant way from things around them that
has anything to do with school. In our research, we use a questionnaire
all the time called Being Known. We want to find out how
well known students feel that they are. It is interesting to see
how unknown kids feel that they are. Another instrument that we
use is one that measures their hope or lack thereof. Teachers who
were most successful are ones who recognize the vital role of hope
and the vital role of being known, valued and counted as a person.
Surrounding this, however, was setting a high level of expectation
and communicating the belief that it can be accomplished.
Regardless of our role, we must be at our best before we can help
kids be at their best. We can’t give unendingly to them unless
we attend to filling our well on a regular basis. It is imperative
that we seek to strengthen ourselves physically, mentally, emotionally,
spiritually so that we can be at our very best, because teaching
is so demanding and so draining. Steven Covey’s concept of
sharpening the saw, and pushing the pause button, to replenish is
so vital for us to tend to as parents and professionals.
Finally I would suggest that each of us adopt two mindsets -- a
mindset to be a pioneer and a mindset to be a center of influence.
Why a pioneer? I thought of this being the fortieth anniversary
of LDA. There were pioneers, surely, forty years ago. There was
a call and a need for them. There is a dire need for pioneers today.
For me, pioneers are the ones who find their way when there are
few markers, when there is considerable uncertainty, when there
is great reason for fear and when there is considerable opposition.
But true pioneers revel in the journey and they consider themselves
fortunate to be pioneers in a vitally important cause. That mindset,
I believe, is imperative.
I was privileged to have Sam Kirk as one of my mentors and I sensed
his belief in being a pioneer. He also was a center of influence,
the second mindset I mentioned above. We do not need to hold a formal
leadership position to be a center of influence. Instead, we need
to see ourselves as players, rather than pawns in the work that
we do. Such a mindset is largely a matter of conscious choice rather
than circumstance. We believe in the power of seed planting and
have faith that the seed we plant will eventually bear fruit. We
need to believe in the magic of the fact that we can count the number
of seeds in an apple but it is impossible to count the number of
apples in a seed. If we do the work that we do in the right way,
with the right belief and the right intensity, we will be pleased
with the outcome.
Dr. Donald D. Deshler is a professor
in the Department of Special Education and a director
of the Center for Research on Learning at the University of
Kansas
References
Baker, J., & Zigmond, N. (1995). The meaning and practice of
inclusion for students with learning disabilities: Themes and implications
form the five cases. Journal of Special Education, 29(2),
163-180.
Kauffman, J.M. (1994). Places of change: Special education’s
power and identity in an era of educational reform. Journal of
Learning Disabilities, 27(10), 610-618.
Shavelson, R.J., & Towne, L., (2002). Scientific research
in education. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Swanson, H.L. (1999). Instructional components that predict treatment
outcomes for students with learning disabilities: Support for a
combined strategy and direct instruction model. Learning Disabilities
Research and Practice, 14. 129-140. |
