Validation of Learning Strategy Interventions for Students with Learning Disabilities: Results of a Programmatic Research Effort

Abstract

As students with learning disabilities (LD) move into adolescence, they are confronted with rigorous demands inherent in the secondary school curriculum. Intervention procedures traditionally used with special education populations (e.g., remedial instruction to overcome deficiencies in basic skills) have often fallen short in enabling these students to cope with mainstream curriculum requirements. Educators are faced with a significant challenge in selecting and delivering interventions that are sufficiently powerful to impact these students’ performance in currently encountered academic arenas, as well as in postsecondary learning and working situations. One of the major research goals adopted by the staff of the University of Kansas Institute for Research in Learning Disabilities (KU-IRLD) has been the design and validation of interventions for adolescents with LD that enable these individuals to succeed in secondary and postsecondary learning situations. In 1980, the KU-IRLD staff adopted a learning strategies instructional approach as the core element of a larger intervention model called the “Strategies Intervention Model” (Deshler & Schumaker, 1988). Thus the learning strategy interventions comprising this element of the model have been developed and validated over several years.