Abstract

This report summarizes the results of research studies on instructional practices that significantly affect the cognitive, language, or mental abilities of students with disabilities. The investigation reviewed current research on instruction of students with moderate disabilities and sought to identify effective instructional practices. The steps were to define the term instructional practice, develop a rubric for evaluation of the research, identify the instructional practices used with students with moderate disabilities from the research literature, analyze and summarize the research articles, and validate findings using a task force of individuals with expertise in either instructional practices or working with students with disabilities. Based upon the research analysis rubric, 73 research articles were summarized. The following 17 of the 22 instructional practices were rated effective by category: (1) response prompting: auditory prompts, constant time delay, progressive time delay, simultaneous prompting, least prompts; (2) stimulus modification: behavior chaining, stimulus shaping, and stimulus fading; (3) naturalistic teaching: incidental teaching, observational learning, Mand model; (4) organization of instruction: peer-mediated instruction, group instruction, and direct instruction; and (5) learning processes: cognitive process strategy, multiple exemplars, and discrimination learning theory. An appendix explains the various instructional strategies. (CR)

Citation

Houston, D. & Thomas, J. (2003). Translating Research into Practice for Instruction of Students with Moderate Disabilities. Presented at American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting 2003. Retrieved August 13, 2024 from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/97152/.

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Keywords

• Behavior Modification
• Community Based Instruction (Disabilities)
• Computer Assisted Instruction
• Contingency Management
• Discrimination Learning
• Elementary Secondary Education
• Group Instruction
• Instructional Effectiveness
• Moderate Mental Retardation
• Naturalistic Observation
• Observational Learning
• Peer Teaching
• Program Evaluation
• Prompting
• Self Determination
• Self Management
• teaching methods
• Theory Practice Relationship
• Time Factors (Learning)