Background
Self-Determined Learners
Wehmeyer defines self-determination as "acting as the primary causal agent in one's life and making choices and decisions regarding one's quality of life free from undue external influence or interference." 8 Ward and Koehler compiled and evaluated activities taken from projects developed by teachers that focus on strategies that foster self-determination. Using this data they developed a set of traits or goals that teachers and students can use to work towards becoming self-determined learners. These traits are as follows: 1. Evaluate their skills, 2. Recognize their limits, 3. Set Goals, 4. Identify options 5. Accept responsibility, 6. Communicate their preferences and needs, and 7. Monitor and evaluate their process. 9
Self-determination goes beyond its application in education and can be likened to a political movement that strives to attain fundamental principles of life-quality. People with disabilities are a part of a group that has been historically denied certain rights and self-determination helps people who are at times overlooked to stand up for their rights and ask for equal treatment despite their disability. 1 0 This is important for the lives of my students; when they finish whatever education they choose to pursue, they will eventually face life out of school and these tools will be invaluable. Michael Ward writes a call to action for people with disabilities to stand up for their independence and fight against things like learned helplessness and to learn from other minority groups "to take pride in their own history and culture." 1 1 As a special education teacher statements like these give me goose bumps and fill me with excitement for the opportunity to teach and coach my students through the process of becoming more self-aware.
Special Education
The ED Section 504 regulation defines a person with a disability as "any person who: (i) has a physical or mental impairment which substantially limits one or more major life activities, (ii) has a record of such an impairment, or (iii) is regarded as having such an impairment." 1 2 Students that are enrolled in special education classrooms have a wide range of educational disabilities. In this unit, however, I plan to focus on students with specific learning disabilities, students on the autistic spectrum, and students with emotional and behavioral disabilities. These are three of the 13 eligible disabilities as recognized under IDEA 1 3
Pervasive Developmental Disorders or Autism Spectrum Disorders
Both autism and Asperger syndrome, which are listed separately in the DSM-IV-TR, fall under the overarching category of pervasive developmental disorders. 1 4 These disorders are "characterized by severe and pervasive impairment in several areas of development: reciprocal social interaction skills, communication skills, or the presence of stereotyped behavior, interests, and activities." 1 5 The only difference between these disorders is that students with Asperger's Disorder have no "significant delays or deviance in language acquisition." 1 6
Researches are still unclear as to the cause of these pervasive developmental disorders, and theories have changed dramatically since the identification of the condition by Leo Kanner in 1943. 1 7 The original theory that it was caused by environmental factors and parental personality folded in the early 1970s and since the mid 1990s it is generally believed among experts that the disorder is "a highly heritable neurological disorder with a genetic basis." 1 8
To qualify for special education in California, where I teach, students on the autistic spectrum must satisfy a combination of "autistic-like behaviors". These behaviors are:
(1) An inability to use oral language for appropriate communication;
(2) A history of extreme withdrawal or relating to people inappropriately and continued impairment in social interaction from infancy through early childhood;
(3) An obsession to maintain sameness;
(4) Extreme preoccupation with objects or inappropriate use of objects or both;
(5) Extreme resistance to controls;
(6) Displays peculiar motoric mannerisms and motility; and
(7) Self-stimulating, ritualistic behavior. 1 9
Though my students meet the eligibility criteria, and exhibit some of the characteristics listed by the DSM they are considered "low" on the autistic spectrum, that is, most have "high functioning" autism or Asperger's Disorder.
These students have difficulty making friends, and struggle with group work. I often mediate situations in which these students have offended or angered other students with unintentionally inappropriate or hurtful language. Pragmatics and control over the volume and tone of voice have also been struggles for these students. When my students with autism experience an extreme emotion such as being very excited, they often exhibit stereotypy such as rocking in their chair or arm flapping, a self-stimulating behavior sometimes referred to as "stimming". These difficulties among others illustrate some very unique learning challenges, both in high school as well as in their adult life that can only be overcome by working towards coping strategies and learning more about the specifics of their disability.
These difficulties uncover the possibility of future struggles both in college as well as in the workplace. The majority of people in the world have to interact with and often times collaborate with peers and coworkers. The students with autism that I teach do not often recognize the differences in the ways they interact with their peers and unless this is brought to their attention it will be difficult to discuss and make adjustments. Many of the students I teach are a part of social skills groups in school and are encouraged to join clubs and participate in team sports; however, they are not often told why.
Social skill groups teach the acquisition of social skills or build upon existing skills. They also encourage students to promote and model these skills to each other. 2 0 Apart from their group work many students at my school create "Social Stories"; these are short stories, about a line or two in the case of my students, that begin with the problem the student is facing. An example of a social story would be: "Sometimes when Mark gets a bad grade on an assignment or test he gets frustrated. When he gets frustrated Mark can…" The social skills teacher and Mark then work together to think of a list of self -imposed interventions that he thinks would be beneficial in helping himself come back to baseline. This again is an intervention that would be more effective if Mark was aware of his autism and held some stake in seeking out the intervention.
There are still many debates having to do with autism spectrum disorders, specifically those on the higher functioning end of the spectrum. 2 1 If one of my students is able to obtain enough strategies and skills to no longer need any special education classes or support are they still disabled? Still autistic? I want my students to have enough knowledge of autism and the spectrum to decide that for themselves. There are more and more groups popping up who advocate that people with high functioning spectrum disorders are not suffering and are not at a deficit. The Autism Network International was a group that formed with these thoughts in mind. 2 2 All my students on the spectrum should have the self-knowledge and opportunity to join and advocate for who they are in a group like this.
Specific Learning Disabilities
The majority of my students contend with specific learning disabilities. Students with this disability have difficulty using or understanding spoken or written language; this includes students' ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell or do mathematical calculations. Some of the struggles that most people think of when they talk about learning disabilities, such as dyslexia and processing issues, fall under the umbrella of Specific Learning Disability (SLD). In the 1998-1999 school year, just under half of the 6 million students in the united States who received special education services received services for a SLD. 2 3
It is widely accepted that the most common cause of SLDs is genetics. Since the beginning of the 1900s, SLDs have been thought to be passed down genetically. Another report claims that 23%-65% parents with dyslexia produced offspring with the disability. 2 4 I have personally worked with parents who talk about having had very similar, if not exact learning struggles as their child. Dyslexia is the most prevalent and well known SLD which is housed under the umbrella of the specific reading disabilities category, making up around 80% of students with a SLD. 2 5 The majority of the students I teach with a SLD fall under this reading disability umbrella.
There is also evidence that Specific Learning Disabilities stay with students into adulthood and remain with them for life. 2 6 In light of this information it is paramount for the students to understand their disability and what is means to them as a learner, as well as strategies they can use when faced with a situation in which their disability surfaces. If they learn these coping skills and strategies now, they will be able to use them throughout their lives, improving and adapting them to whatever obstacles come their way.
Eligibility for special education services is a little different for students with SLDs. When school psychologists and special education teacher test a student who may have an SLD they test both intellectual ability as well as achievement in certain academic areas. Intellectual ability gives information about student intelligence, similar to an IQ test. These tests do not assess academic content, but things like memory, processing and reasoning often using pictures and shapes. In contrast the standardized academic tests that are administered test students' academic knowledge in areas like spelling, reading comprehension and math, though they also touch on processing and memory. After both tests are administered the school psychologist and special education teacher compare data and look for discrepancies in specific areas that correlate based on the name brand of tests being used.
California state criteria requires there to be a severe discrepancy between intellectual and academic achievement. It is also required that this discrepancy have an impact on student achievement, because if students are accessing the curriculum they generally do not qualify for special education, nor do students qualify if they are lower than average intellectually and have a similarly low achievement level. 2 7 This is unfortunate, as these learners often need extra assistance as well. This being said the damaging stereotype of students with learning disabilities being unintelligent is completely false.
Many of my students struggle with the stigma of having a SLD, and many look down upon their ability to learn by referring to themselves as "dumb" or "stupid" when the fact of the matter is that in the vast majority of cases these students are of average intelligence and often in the above average or superior range in many categories. They have to be intelligent to qualify! It is unfortunate that my students, their general education peers, and many of their teachers do not realize that this is the case. This unit will hopefully bring that information to light.
Because the specific disabilities housed under this label are so varied, the struggles that each of them contend with are equally vast. The qualifying areas include: oral expression, listening comprehension, written expression, basic reading skill, reading fluency skills, reading comprehension, mathematics calculation, and mathematics problem solving. 2 8 As you can imagine within each of these criterion there are an array of struggles which are very specific to each learner.
Many of my students struggle with processing issues whether auditory or visual; these processing deficits make a normal lecture or assignment seem so difficult that it seems easier to not do it and be labeled as lazy. Students who write notes while a lecture is happening but because of an auditory processing issue have no idea what the connection of the words on their paper is to what was said in the lecture can be seen as slackers by some teachers if their test scores or work output are low. Some students have the opposite difficulty and are told they have an assignment due at the end of the period and are given a sheet of paper on which the directions are written. If the student has a visual processing disorder and all of their questions are answered by the teacher telling them to refer to the directions that are already written I cannot blame these students for feeling unintelligent. I can however see the importance for the self-advocacy piece of self-determination and I desperately want it to come across to my students.
Fortunately there are many strategies for each struggle a student with a SLD may have. There are many books and even entire programs for things like dyslexia. Carbon copies of notes for a student with a processing disorder; books on tape for a student who struggles with visual processing and reading comprehension; use of a laptop for students with dysgraphia and so on. The use of a laptop or word processor is a great example of an assistive technology device that helps students with SLD cope with their disability.
The amount of technology aimed at students with disabilities is quickly growing and becoming incredibly advanced. Many college campuses, which usually have more money budgeted for technology of this type, have some of the most cutting edge devices. A local community college that many of the students at my school end up attending give special education students a pen that has a recorder on the end of it which records lectures. This, however, is no ordinary pen recorder; students simply press record on the pen and take notes throughout the lecture, then when they are at home reviewing the information they have written and have questions about a specific part of the lecture, they simply touch their pen to the part of their notes in question and the pen-recorder plays the corresponding part of lecture given at the time that particular note was taken. This is only one example in a sea of incredibly accommodating technology that is growing every day. Although this technology is incredibly exciting, students with learning disabilities must advocate for these things in order for them to be available.
Emotional Behavior Disorders
Like the other disabilities covered in this unit Emotional and Behavioral Disorders are hard to pin down. The problem, as with the others, is that boundaries written for eligibility are not as sharp as some professionals in the field would prefer. 2 9 The parameters that are given for someone with a disorder of this kind are vague and it is often up to the judgment of the person assessing the student whether or not they qualify.
In order to be eligible for special education under the category of Emotional or Behavioral Disorder (ED) the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) stipulates that the students must exhibit characteristics one or more of the following five categories over a long period of time and it must have an adverse effect on their educational performance:
1. An inability to learn which cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, and health factors.
2. An inability to build or maintain satisfactory relationships with peers and teachers.
3. Inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances.
4. A general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression.
5. A tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems. 3 0
Notice that many of these criterion overlap with concerns or eligibility criteria of students with Specific Learning Disabilities or those on the autistic spectrum.
The issue of the unit however is not the validity of a student's disability but their knowledge of what that disability is and how it affects them as a learner and as a regular old kid. Unlike the other two disabilities in this unit most of the behaviors under the umbrella of ED are caused not by biological factors but environmental. Psychiatrists and psychologist divide ED behaviors into two categories: externalizing and internalizing behaviors. Though the DSM lists some behaviors such as Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, whose effects are thought to be caused by biological factors, under this ED umbrella, students with ADD and ADHD do not qualify a student for special education services as ED.
Some of the behaviors students who qualify special education under the ED category demonstrate are: separation anxiety, selective mutism, anxiety, depression, and anorexia among others. Many of my students qualify for services as being ED through in multiple eligibility categories and with multiple struggles
These students run up against a variety of obstacles based on their sub-categorical disability and combat these obstacles with a wide variety of strategies. Anger management techniques, counseling, improved study habits and organization among many others help these students to cope with their disabilities. In my experience coping strategies are much more effective when a student recognizes her struggle and sees the connection of that difficulty with the proposed strategy. This knowledge and empowerment comes from working towards becoming a self-determined learner
Learning Styles
Learning disabilities have an effect on the way special education student prefer to learn. Students in my class, when given the option of presenting something orally or giving it to me written often end up having a preference that correlates with their learning difficulties. This makes sense as they are using strategies and coping with their learning struggles. The same happens when students who struggle with socialization choose to work alone on a project rather than with a group, even if it means they will have to do more work. This can be both good and bad. I am glad that students are taking control of their learning and using learning styles that come more easily to them, but I am leery that this stifles the possibility for improvement in areas that are challenging, specifically in the case of learners with social struggles.
Learning styles deal with a student's preference in learning visually, aurally, kinesthetically, and a variety of other subcategories and combinations. To find out a students learning preference learning style inventories are often given by teachers. Teachers use these inventories to help students discover with which modality they learn best. Some inventories like the Learning Style Analysis go so far as to quiz students on their preferred time of day to learn as well as the lighting and sound in their study area. 3 1
Many learning style systems, the foremost being the Dunn and Dunn Learning Style Model, urge teachers to use the data they gather from learning style inventories to inform the way they receive and complete assignments. Dunn and Dunn contend that when students are taught, and asked to complete material in their preferred learning style, it becomes more accessible and students become more productive learners. 3 2
With the rise in popularity in these strategies contentious research such as that conducted by Kavale and Forness dismiss claims of using learning strategies as an effective teaching model by studying the results of this modality style teaching. Their study found that the success of pairing students with preferred learning and teaching styles was small and the success of the teaching that followed had "little influence on outcome as evidenced by its non-significant correlation." 3 3
Other research that refutes claims of the effectiveness of learning style inventories such as a 2010 article by Perry D. Klein seeks to invalidate not only the work of Dunn and Dunn but that of Multiple Intelligences theorist Howard Gardner as well as other less known creators of inventories and teaching models of this kind. Klein argues that it is less effective to teach students using a single process; be it visual, auditory or otherwise, than it is to teach students in a way that includes them all. 3 4 He gives an example:
Another reason that curricular activities cannot be categorized by modality is that many and perhaps most kinds of knowledge appear to involve representations of more than one modality. I recently heard an LS advocate claim that verbal students 'understand' the Pythagorean theorem as the sentence 'The square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the square on the other two sides', whereas visual students 'understand' it as a diagram of a triangle, with three, four or five hatchmarks on each side. Neither of these claims adequately represents the theorem. The verbal representation alone is meaningless. What is a 'hypotenuse?' And what is the 'square on' a side? Conversely, the diagram by itself is equally meaningless. Does it represent all triangles, all right triangles or all scalene triangles? And do the hatchmarks stand for any series of consecutive numbers, any set of numbers in a 3:4:5 ratio, or something else? 3 5
Klein clearly disagrees with the use of learning styles to guide teaching, feeling instead that theories dealing with cognitive load and dual-coding that emphasize using multiple modalities in order to not overwhelm cognition are more helpful for learners. He also writes about the need for teachers to create work in which students must use multiple learning styles in which to complete. 3 6 This to me illustrates a supplement of less preferred learning styles or those affected by a learning disability by one or more alternative learning styles or modalities.
In light of all this information I am torn in my thoughts of how effective a learning style inventory would be for my students. My intent was never to use the inventory to inform the way I taught students, but as a gateway to possible conversations about learning styles and strategies that special education students use to bypass things that are difficult. To this end I feel that a learning styles inventory should be used in this unit, however, a discussion about the usefulness and effectiveness of such a document in certain practices should also be employed.
In selecting a learning style inventory for use, I feel that an inventory that encompasses not only learning style preference, but preferred learning environments as well is essential. It is important, specifically in the face of their college experiences looming over the horizon, that students know and understand where and how they are able to learn best. Learning about how much space they need, preferred lighting, sound, possible distractions, and many other factors that effect a student's learning as well as how and where they can seek out or create such a space will be helpful for their academic careers.
Comments: