Co-Developing Professional Learning to Bring the Science of Reading to Students With Extensive Support Needs (Poster 4)

• In Event: Centering Equity in Research-Practice Partnerships

Abstract

This poster will describe how the ReadUP Research-Practice Partnership leveraged diverse expertise and experiences of special education teachers, administrators, university faculty, and doctoral students to co-develop professional learning focused on the science of reading for students with extensive support needs (ESN). Equity was centered in both the process of partnering as well as outcomes, as the students of focus are historically marginalized within ableist educational systems that result in abysmal post-school outcomes. Two shared assumptions drove development of school-wide professional learning goals that aimed to create sustainable conditions and systems for reading success for learners with ESN: (a) all students can learn, and (b) reading is significant to educational attainment, economic prosperity, and equitable opportunity, health and well-being, and overall quality of life for individuals and their communities.

Rather than referring to these students by their diagnoses, which reflects the traditional deficit-view of disability, we use a strengths-based social-ecological conceptualization. For clarification, we are including individuals with autism, intellectual disability, and multiple disabilities who need support across all areas of life. These students represent about 23% of students served under IDEA (USDOE, 2022). Historically this population has had a primary curricular emphasis on life skill instruction and functional academics that narrowly focused on sight word identification as the goal of literacy (Browder et al., 2006). The past decade of research has shown students with ESN can learn meaningful, grade aligned academic skills – including reading comprehension and decoding- when provided with high-quality instruction (Afacan et al., 2018).

Until recently, the Science of Reading has been largely inaccessible to students with ESN, especially those who have complex communication needs and are unable to rely on vocal speech to communicate. National surveys quantify the alarming research-to-practice gap, as special education teachers report feeling unprepared to teach academics to students with ESN (Ruppar, 2016) and only 3% of students with ESN were described by their teachers as being able to “read fluently with critical understanding” (Thurlow et al., 2016). The major obstacle in increasing reading proficiency of students with ESN is not their disability. Rather, it is the special education systems’ continued failure to prepare and support teachers to use research evidence in their instructional decision making.

ReadUP uses an asset-based model to work with teachers and privileges their strengths, needs, and interests as key elements of their decision-making environment (Jimenez & Barron, 2019). By collaborating to identify assets and needs, we center their beliefs and funds of knowledge. This poster will describe the two aims ReadUP’s design-based implementation research cycles. The first aim was to increase the overlap between researchers who design solutions and the teachers who implement them. The second aim was to build capacity and sustainability by ensuring all stakeholders (i.e., teachers, paraeducators, administrators) have access to the same resources and experts for incorporating existing research evidence on teaching reading to students with ESN into their decision-making at three levels: (a) instructional priorities, (b) instructional strategies, and (c) selecting instructional resources.

Authors

• Jenny Root, Florida State University
  Presenting Author

• Alice N. Williams, Florida State University
  Presenting Author

• Zellanye Hutchins, Florida State University
  Presenting Author