etadd_47(3) - Division on Autism and Developmental Disabilities

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pable of learning to read, a belief that children needed prerequisite skills in order to learn to read and a belief that other skills were more important to learn. These beliefs originated in the historical treatment of individuals with severe disabilities (Winzer, 1993) and in the subsequent writings of influential researchers. Dolch and Bloomster (1937), for example, concluded that a child must have a mental age of seven or above to benefit from phonics instruction. Kliewer and Biklen (2001) pointed to developmental research as responsible for creating a curriculum founded upon a hierarchy of sub-skills, for example attending skills must be secure before more advanced skills such as reading are taught. These beliefs effectively reduced the opportunities for children with significant cognitive disability to acquire literacy skills. Recent surveys indicate that parents and teachers rate academic skills like reading, below skills such as communication skills, grooming skills and social skills (Agran, Alper, & Wehmeyer 2002; Flowers, Ahlgrim-Delzell, Browder, & Spooner, 2005) for children with significant disabilities. Opportunities for students with significant cognitive disability to develop literacy skills have continued to be replaced with lessons on functional skills, therapy skills, or avoided altogether (Kliewer & Landis, 1999). Historical Exclusion from Research Studies In past studies on reading instruction children with significant cognitive disability were not included. Chall’s (1996) major synthesis of research regarding effective reading instruction concluded that first and second graders, and students with a low IQ who received training in phonics, were ahead of their peers who used basal readers on word recognition and oral reading. In considering this synthesis retrospectively, it is not clear whether this includes students with significant cognitive disability or not. Low IQ could mean lowaverage, below average, or slow learner. Students with significant cognitive disability were not necessarily receiving schooling at the time this synthesis was conducted and probably not included in the studies. Children with significant cognitive disability continue to be excluded from major reviews of the literature. The NRP (2000) did not examine students whose IQs fell outside of average range because the studies involving these groups did not meet other criteria for inclusion in their analysis. Such exclusion makes it difficult to substantiate which methods of reading instruction meet the educational needs of children with significant cognitive disability. Literature Supporting Sight Word Instruction There are more published studies on sight word instruction for children with significant disabilities than phonics instruction. In a meta-analysis of 32 single-subject studies on the instruction of sight words, Browder and Xin (1998) found that there were considerable effects for sight word training. Most of these studies measured the number of words children could read correctly, and did not ascertain whether or not participants could use the words in a generalized way. In comparison, Joseph and Seery (2004) found only seven studies published over a period of twelve years on phonics-based instruction for students with significant cognitive disability. Phonics Instruction for Children with Significant Cognitive Disability Although research on phonics instruction for children with significant cognitive disability has been sparse, studies have shown that it can be effective. Four single-subject design studies examined the effectiveness of direct instruction with children with moderate intellectual disability. Participants in the studies had IQ scores of between 38–76 (Barbetta, Heward, & Bradley, 1993; Bradford, Shippen, Alberto, Houchins, & Flores, 2006; Flores, Shippen, Alberto, & Crowe, 2004; Waugh, Fredrick, & Alberto, 2009). The samples in these studies were small: six participants (Flores et al., 2004), three participants (Bradford et al., 2006), five participants (Barbetta et al., 1993) and three participants (Waugh et al., 2009). Notably, Waugh et al. (2009) conducted a study to determine if letter-sound correspondence was taught systematically would the participants be able to sound out new words using those letter sounds? The researchers found that participants were able to master some sets 270 / Education and Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities-September 2012
of words, and in the short term were able to read previously unseen words, but had difficulty recalling them over time. Students were only able to read a few novel words after twelve weeks of intervention, and it was discussed whether teaching letter-sound correspondence in isolation with no reference to the meaning of the words was a factor in the participants’ limited success. Two other studies demonstrated that phonics instruction could be effective (Bradford et al., 2006; Flores et al., 2004), while the fourth (Barbetta et al., 1993) was inconclusive. In addition, Conners, Atwell, Rosenquist and Sligh (2001) investigated the cognitive processes involved in phonological decoding. The study included children with IQ scores of at least 40 but less than 70, and concluded that the ability to rehearse phonological information in the working memory seemed to offer a better advantage in word decoding than overall IQ. A comprehensive phonics-based direct instruction reading program was found to be effective in improving early reading and language skills for participants with significant cognitive disability (Allor, Mathes, Roberts, Jones, & Champlin, 2010). Twenty-eight students in grades 1–4 (mean age of 9.46 years) with IQ scores ranging from 40–55 were randomly assigned into either a treatment or a control group. The treatment group received the intervention based on Early Interventions in Reading, Level 1 (Mathes & Torgesen, 2005) for two years. Results were significant for blending words and segmenting words on The Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1999), phonemic decoding on the Test of Word Reading Efficiency (Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1999) and word attack skills on The Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery (Woodcock, 1991), demonstrating that teaching phonics using direct instruction was effective in increasing participants’ word attack and other reading skills. Method Participants Fifty two participants, aged 5–12 years of age from five schools in the New York metropolitan area, all eligible for alternate assessment as determined by their Individual Education Plan (IEP) team and thereby considered to have a significant cognitive disability were included. Schools were selected on their willingness to be involved with the study. Sixty-eight students were invited to participate in the study and informed consent was secured from fifty-four participants’ legal guardians. Permission was also given for the school district to release IQ scores where available. Two participants were not included in the data analysis, as the researcher was not available to complete the intervention with them. Demographic information was collected through a survey sent home to participants’ parents. The mean age of the participants was 8.661 years (SD 2.560). IQ scores were collected on 29 participants (M 55.96, SD 12.65). Seven of the participants were considered to be non-verbal. All participants continued to receive reading instruction, which varied widely from their teacher (see Table 1). Participants were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups: synthetic phonics treatment group, analogy phonics treatment group, or a control group. One-way analyses of variances (ANOVAs) showed no significant differences on age or IQ between the three treatment groups. Chi-square tests were conducted to compare the treatment groups on the categorical variables of gender and ethnicity, and showed no significant differences. Demographic information is summarized in Table 2. Design An experimental pretest/posttest one-way ANOVA design with multiple performance measures was used. Independent variable. The independent variable was the treatment variable or instructional intervention. In the synthetic phonics treatment condition participants learned individual letter sounds and how to blend them to make a word (e.g., /b/, /a/, and /t/ make bat). In the analogy phonics treatment condition, participants learned the sounds of common consonants e.g., /b/ and common “rimes” e.g., /at/. By combining a visual “rime” with common letter-sound correspondences participants learned to read words with similar patterns (e.g., bat, mat, cat). The Effects of Systematic Phonics / 271
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TABLE 2 Participants Demographic Da
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opening of the lesson, the teacher
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and quasi-experimental designs for
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& Cobb, 2002). Generalization, the
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academic activities in the classroo
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Procedure Baseline. In this multipl
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condition for each student. With th
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was repeated across all participant
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TABLE 2 Content Standards, Alternat
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Student Achievement Figures 3-6 pro
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