Important Publications in the Field of LD in Light of Imminent topics

Abstract

SYNTHESIS OF ARTICLES DISCUSSED AS APART OF THE RESEARCH SYMPOSIUM AT THE 24th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON LEARNING DISABILITIES SPONSORED BY THE COUNCIL FOR LEARNING DISABILITIES, OCTOBER 11, 2002. Newly nominated must reads can be found on the Web at: www.cldinternational.org/shortly after the October 9-11 conference. Click on scholarly initiatives. Readers of professional literature know how difficult it is to keep up with the volumes of information published annually. Many confess to having stacks of materials waiting to be read that instead get shelved when a stack finally topples over. A total of 1,005 scholarly-academic education journals are published annually in the United States (a number that jumps to 4,708 when including trade magazines, newsletters and papers). Seventy-five of these are devoted to special education topics (311 when including trade publications) (Ulrich's Periodicals Directory, January 29, 2003). Despite the fact that busy readers can barely sample all that is published, professional publications are a primary means for communicating research, theory, and policy within the profession. Keeping up is a daunting challenge. To help special educators keep abreast of recently published research, the Council for Learning Disabilities (CLD) Research Committee organizes a panel at CLD's annual conference to nominate important research publications on learning disabilities (LD) from the previous year. The audience, primarily teachers, learns about published research that is important to understanding the field of LD today. Invited panelists each year are leading researchers and practitioners from a variety of traditions and interests within the learning disabilities profession. Methods for the 2002 Panel Panelists for the October 2002 session held in Denver, Colorado, responded to the invitation to nominate three to five research publications on LD from the past year that they considered must reads. Selection criteria were not specified beyond that charge so that each panelist would be free to form her or his own standards for what is most important to read from among the stacks of research on LD that had accumulated over the previous year. Interestingly, the 2002 panelists demonstrated considerable overlap in their selection criteria and, in several instances, in the publications they nominated. In this article, the panelists present their nominations in relation to topics that dominate the special education field today. So often, researchers, teachers, and administrators fleetingly acknowledge evolving movements as they go about their business of doing what they know works. However, at times initiatives so fundamentally impact how practice can be done that they cannot be ignored. We are in such an era. Three major movements currently shaping the field of LD include the rapidly emerging debate on identification and eligibility criteria for services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the now familiar practice of inclusion, and concomitant concerns for access to the general education curriculum for students with LD. None of the three movements has just burst onto the scene but their presence demands attention more than ever. The practice of inclusion has steadily emerged since at least Assistant Secretary of Education Madeline Will's 1986 regular education initiative (REI), and has received a substantial boost by the 1997 Amendments to the IDEA, which require efforts to provide all special education in general education environments. The impending congressional reauthorization vote on the IDEA has already resulted in debate on the identification and eligibility criteria for LD that would force reconsideration of current practices (e.g., LD Summit, 2001). The push for meaningful access to the curriculum is both a product of and a catalyst for the other two movements, and is strongly tied to standards and high-stakes accountability efforts as well. …