Session Information
01 SES 03 C, National Perspectives from Latin America and Europe
Paper Session
Contribution
In America, as is the case around the world, students with disabilities are taught in the general education (regular) classroom alongside peers without disabilities. However, content area teachers (e.g., science, history, mathematics) do not always receive ample preparation to support these students' unique behavioral and learning needs (Kahn & Lewis, 2014). As a result, students with disabilities that impact their capacity to learn such as learning disabilities, intellectual disabilities, autism spectrum disorders, and behavioral disorders may not receive the type of instruction needed to support positive academic outcomes (Kennedy et al., 2018). When younger adolescents do not succeed in content area coursework they can become turned off to the discipline, and thus potential career pathways (Blondal & Adalbjardardottir, 2012).
The purpose of this randomized control trial was to explore the impact of a multimedia professional development process on the quality and quantity of vocabulary instruction for inclusive middle school science teachers and corresponding learning of students with and without disabilities. The conceptual framework for the treatment intervention is cognitive apprenticeship (Collins et al., 1991), and the looks and sounds of the intervention components reflect Mayer's cognitive theory of multimedia learning (2020). The PD package reflects cognitive apprenticeship by scaffolding declarative, procedural, and conditional learning for teachers using three main components.
The first is a series of multimedia vignettes called content acquisiton podcasts (CAPs) (Kennedy et al., 2018). CAPs are short vignettes designed using Mayer's CTML and associated design principles and can be watched and rewatched as needed by teachers (or those in training). We produced five CAPs for this project corresponding to key evidence-based vocabulary practices known to be effective for teaching students with disabilities (e.g., using student-friendly language, using examples, conducting a demonstration, and breaking terms into morphological word parts). CAPs help build what Collins and colleagues call declarative and preliminary procedural knowledge, as each video explains the steps of the practice, and shows a model teacher implementing. An example CAP can be seen here https://vimeo.com/444031616.
The second component of the intervention is the team provides teachers with customizable instructional materials in the form of PowerPoint slides to use during vocabulary instruction. Over 100 slideshows were produced and checked for accuracy by experts in special education and science instruction. The slideshows use the instructional practices taught by the CAPs, and also adhere to Mayer's principles. These slides can be used during live instruction or recorded for student use. These slides also help build declarative and procedural knowledge of key instructional practices. Sample slides can be seen at www.vocabsupport.com.
Finally, the team developed a combination observation and feedback took called COACHED (Kennedy & Kunemund, 2020). COACHED contains the Classroom Teaching (CT) Scan observation instrument, which documents in real time instructional moves made by teachers for later reflection and identification of areas to improve. Data generated by the CT Scan is translated within COACHED into a customizable feedback template that does not give a quality score, but instead focuses on the extent to which a teacher used each practice with fidelity. COACHED is a free tool and flexible for use in a variety of formats (https://coachedweb.azurewebsites.net/). The feedback from COACHED helps develop conditional knowledge of teachers in that they receive notes on how, when, with whom practices are used.
Although science teachers are taught and reinforced for using inquiry approaches, many of these colleagues fear too much time is given to vocabulary instruction (Parsons & Bryant, 2016). While we agree the traditions of the paradigm should be honoroed (inquiry), students with disabilities are unlikely to succeed without the type of explicit instruction proposed in this study (VanUitert et al., 2022).
Method
Researchers used a randomized control trial design to evaluate impact of the multimedia PD on teacher and student participants. A total of 980 sixth grade students and thirteen teachers participated. The 13 teachers were all qualified science instructors with an average of 13.3 years in the classroom. Amongst the students were 117 with a disability. Students completed two measures, the Misconceptions-Oriented Standards-Based Assessment Resources for Teachers (MOSART) standardized science learning instrument, and researcher-created curriculum-based measures containing vocabulary terms. Students took the MOSART as a pre- and posttest, and the CBM probes once per month. The MOSART instrument had a reliability alpha of .81 in this study, and the CBM probes had a reliability of .83. Teachers were observed using the CT Scan low-inference observation tool. Researchers recorded which practices were used, for how much time, and with what quality using the CT Scan. The 13 teachers were randomly assigned to either participate in the multimedia PD (n = 7) or teach as normal (n = 6). Each teacher was observed three times in the fall semester of the school year. Observers were blind to which condition participants were in. Thus, after each observation coaching notes were written, and a 3rd party not involved in the study with the master list of who was in which condition forwarded or withheld coaching notes. Included in the coaching notes were references to the CAP vignettes to remind them to re-watch as needed to support implementation, to use the slides, and to do other practices as noticed. Two scorers were sent to over 30% of observations to ensure inter-scorer reliability of the CT Scan data and also coaching notes.
Expected Outcomes
The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which disability status, exposure to instruction by teachers who did or did not participate in the multimedia PD, and students' average performance on vocabulary-knowledge CBMs are associated with the student MOSART posttest performance measuring science content knowledge. Overall, students without disabilities significantly outperformed students with disabilities on the MOSART posttest when they were from the same group (i.e., both had a teacher with access to the PD or both had a teacher with no access). Students with disabilities whose teachers had access to PD outperformed similarly classified peers whose teachers did not have access to the PD on the MOSART posttest. Likewise, students without disabilities whose teachers had access to the PD performed better on the MOSART posttest than students without disabilities whose teachers did not have access to the PD. Similar to Kennedy et al.'s (2018) study, we found that students with disabilities who had a teacher who participated in PD significantly outperformed peers whose teacher did not participate in the PD on the MOSART posttest and science CBMs; however, our analyses also indicated that students with disabilities whose teacher participated in PD scored significantly higher on science vocabulary and content knowledge measures than both students with and without disabilities who had a teacher that did not participate in PD. A large effect size was yielded between students whose teachers participated in PD and those whose teachers did not. Students whose teachers participated in PD had an approximately two-point higher score compared to those whose teachers did not. In consideration of this being a 15-point assessment, two points would be a considerable difference in the students' scores (over a 10% score gain).
References
Blondal, K. S., & Adalbjarnardottir, S. (2012). Student disengagement in relation to expected and unexpected educational pathways. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 56(1), 85–100. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 00313831.2011.568607 Kahn, S., & Lewis, A. R. (2014). Survey on teaching science to K-12 student with disabilities: Teacher prepared- ness attitudes. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 25(8), 885–910. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10972-014- 9406-z Kennedy, M. J., Rodgers, W. J., Romig, J. E., Matthews, H. M., & Peeples, K. N. (2018). Introducing the content acquisition podcast professional development process: Supporting vocabulary instruction for inclusive mid- dle school science teachers. Teacher Education and Special Education, 41(2), 140–157. https://doi.org/10. 1177/0888406417745655 Mayer, R. E. (2020). Multimedia learning. Cambridge University. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316941355 VanUitert, V. J., Kennedy, M. J., Romig, J. E., & Carlisle, L. M. (2020). Enhancing science vocabulary knowledge of students with learning disabilities using explicit instruction and multimedia. Learning Disabilities: A Con- temporary Journal, 18(1), 3–25.
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