Special Education for the Twenty-First Century

Those familiar with the history of intervention research in learning disabilities are aware of the importance of research in strategy instruction. Begun in earnest in the late 1970s and early 1980s (e.g., Deshler, Alley, Warner, & Schumaker, 1981), strategy instruction seemed a positive alternative to the failures of process training in influencing independent learning ability (Kavale & Forness, 1985). Furthermore, strategy training complemented more basic research models that suggested that the academic problems of students with learning disabilities (LD) are a function of their general lack of reflective knowledge about cognitive processes, rather than deficits in, for example, perceptual processing (e.g., Torgesen, 1979). Research efforts have generally been highly successful in training specific cognitive strategies, although the independent generation of appropriate strategies has predictably been more problematic (e.g., Scruggs & Mastropieri, 1984; Torgesen & Kail, 1980). More intensive models of strategy instruction have emerged to address this generalization problem. In "Integrative Strategy Instruction: A Potential Model for Teaching Content Area Subjects to Adolescents with Learning Disabilities/' Ellis describes the application of a general strategy training model to content area learning. After describing general features of the ISI model, Ellis describes four key processes of the strategy: orienting processes, in which the teacher carefully demonstrates the strategy being used in the classroom to facilitate student learning; framing processes, in which the teacher demonstrates how the strategy can be applied to a specific learning task; applying processes, designed to enable the student to use the strategy independently; and extending processes, in which students are taught to extend their strategic knowledge into other problem-solving domains. After describing strategic analysis activities for promoting awareness of classroom strategy use and the integration of peer-mediated learning, Ellis provides some illustrations of ISI techniques, taken from descriptions of a teacher's social studies class. The overall logic of Ellis's model is sound, and the conceptualization is systematic. He acknowledges that the model has not been validated empirically, although many components of it have been studied over the years. We do not wish to detract from such a model, the implementation of which would doubtless result in generally higher quality instruction, especially for students with LD. However, we would like to comment specifically on one or two aspects of his article. Finally, we would like to summarize some of our own very recent findings in relational thinking skills as applied to content area instruction, the results of which do not appear to fit easily within the model described by Ellis, but are nonetheless very promising avenues of future research and practice.