Adolescents with High Incidence Disabilities

                This week’s article review is entitled Teaching Adolescent Students with Learning Disabilities to Self-Advocate for Accommodations.  Although there were many articles from which to choose, and after reading several, this one captured my attention.  I will briefly summarize and critique the article, make connections to our classroom reading, and provide personal connections. 

                The article begins by stating that students with learning disabilities (LD) are spending more time within the general education classroom then they have in previous decades.  The general education teachers have been left to be accountable for making accommodations and remediation within the classroom to help these students succeed with the general education standards, without changing the actual content or difficulty level of the class.  Students with disabilities have been left to the mercy of the general education teacher.  The article sets out to support the theory that if students were taught to advocate for their own accommodations, they would meet with more academic success within the general education classroom.

                In order to accomplish self-advocacy, the high school students were directly taught how to identify their strengths and weaknesses, which accommodations were available to them, and how to ask for them in an appropriate way.  These areas were taught independently in four lessons, with lots of role-playing practice, before they were used in the actual general education classrooms.  Lesson one included direct instruction on self-advocacy and accommodations, lesson two identified strengths and weaknesses, lesson three taught the steps in how to ask for an accommodation, and lesson four allowed for practice in putting it all together.  Charts and checklists were used to help the students identify their strengths and areas of need, to identify eight different accommodations available to them and which they might need when, a skill inventory survey, and a role-play checklist. 

                This study followed four of the high school students into the general education classroom to evaluate how this method was applied.  The results were conclusive; teaching students with disabilities to self-advocate for accommodations increased their academic performance across the board.  The students and the general education teachers were surveyed to evaluate the strategy.  Every teacher agreed that the students with LD who advocated for their own accommodations met with greater success.  They also thought that all students could benefit from self-advocacy.  They believed that this was due to greater amounts of accountability and initiative shown and felt by the students.  The students also agreed with these findings.  One stated “that he thought he could do better in his general education classes if his teachers had a better understanding of how and when to help students.” (Prater, Redman, Anderson & Gibb, 2014) 

                Although only four students were actually followed into the general education classroom for evaluation, others were excluded for various reasons, and the teachers did comment on students who were self-advocating but not followed.  The article recognized several previous studies on self-advocacy and noted that their research came to the same conclusions.  I thought that they really gave a good description of the strategy and how to go about implementing it.  If you wanted to start it within your own school, this article gives you all of the tools, charts, and graphs you’d need.  It also provided a nice section at the end with “suggestions for teachers”.  It should probably be noted that the special education teacher made sure to inform all of the general education teachers who were going to be asked about accommodations by the students, what was being taught and applied to the students with LD.  Therefore, I’m not sure that all teachers would react the same to accommodation requests, had they no prior knowledge of this strategy. 

                I can’t help but think about my own children.  I don’t know that their request for accommodations would be met with “open arms”.  They are often met with a bit of push-back.  I don’t think that all general education teachers are equipped to make accommodations for students with LD or other disabilities.  This is not to say that all teachers are this way, but I do think that many lack the knowledge and understanding of what LD is and how they can modify the learning environment for these students.  The second situation that I thought of was when I was recently teaching in middle school.  The students expressed that they were not comfortable talking with teachers about how they felt, especially how they felt about something going on in the classroom.  They overwhelmingly expressed how they feared that a teacher would react negatively to their feelings and that they may even punish them for having a different opinion or feeling about something in the classroom. 

                After reading in our textbook this week about the high social needs of acceptance and the autonomy that students feel at this age, these comments really struck me.  We, as adults/teachers, do make most of the decisions regarding our students.  We make their lesson plans, accommodation, seating charts, behavior expectations, and schedules.  In doing these things, we take away a lot of accountability and interest in the school experience away from the individual student.  While I don’t know that we can, or should, change all of these things; giving them the ability to understand their own learning style, strengths, and needs is beneficial to them.  Teaching students with LD, and all students, to become self-advocates will help them become involved in their own education and in their adult lives.  They will be active participants within their classroom, which in turn promotes performance and participation.  Instead of just coasting through school, the students have a new purpose and reason to do well.  And, I can’t argue with that.

Reference:

Prater, M. A., Redman, A. S., Anderson, D., and Gibb, G. S. (2014).  Teaching adolescent students with learning disabilities to self-advocate for accommodations. Intervention in School and Clinic, 49(5), 298-305.