Conceptualizing RTI in 21st-Century Secondary Science Classrooms: Video Games' Potential to Provide Tiered Support and Progress Monitoring for Students with Learning Disabilities

Abstract

Secondary schools across the United States are adopting response to intervention (RTI) as a means to identify students with learning disabilities (LD) and provide tiered instructional interventions that benefit all students. The majority of current RTI research focuses on students with reading difficulties in elementary school classrooms. Recommendations for practice that stem from this empirical work are not generalizable to high school classrooms, where adolescents with LD experience unique learning challenges. This is especially true in secondary science classes, where an emphasis on complex vocabulary and sophisticated phenomenological investigations places added cognitive requirements on these students. This article presents a foundation for conceptualizing the role of technology in RTI implementation at the secondary level. We examine how video games can enhance RTI instructional practices by providing multiple tiers of academic supports and realtime progress monitoring in secondary science classrooms. The article illustrates how evidence-based practices can be included in the games in a manner that increases intervention fidelity and assessment reliability. While this article focuses on science video games, we contend that there is considerable conceptual overlap among high school science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses that will allow for further expansion of this discussion. The article concludes with recommendations for future research.