Wexler Lands $1.5M IES Grant for Research on Co-Teachers' Professional Development for Student Literacy

COLLEGE PARK, MD (June, 2015) – Assistant Professor Jade Wexler of the Department of Counseling, Higher Education and Special Education has received a $1.5 million grant from the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education for her research on a co-teaching framework to support students who struggle with reading and comprehending expository text in content-area classes. The project, entitled “Improving Content-Area Literacy Instruction in Middle Schools” or Project CALI, aims to improve collaboration between special education teachers and content-area teachers paired in the classroom and to emphasize the integration of data-based literacy support.

Due to chronic shortages of special education teachers, as well as efforts to place children in less restrictive environments, 58% of students with disabilities spend 80% or more of their time at school in general education settings, according to a 2011 finding by the U.S. Department of Education. An implicit assumption has been that students with disabilities will prosper when held to the same standards and given the same curriculum as their peers without disabilities; concomitantly, no more than 15% of students with learning disabilities receive a substantially modified curriculum. While there are clear social benefits to these efforts at inclusion, findings from the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 (conducted from 2000 to 2009) reveal that they have not positively affected the literacy skills of students with disabilities, as expected.

A plethora of background research argues that literacy instruction is crucial to students’ long-term outcomes.

Dr. Wexler posits that behind the dearth of positive outcomes is an unusual burden placed on content-area teachers. Prior research has shown that these teachers may feel unprepared to help their struggling readers, they do not have the time, training, or support they need, and indeed many do not think that teaching reading skills is their responsibility. To impart literacy skills to students with learning disabilities, content-area teachers rely on special education co-teachers to help plan lessons and assignments and to give these students needed support. But quality professional development, which is crucial to making this co-teaching collaboration effective and fruitful, is frequently lacking. This is the focus of Project CALI.

Joining Dr. Wexler on the project are co-PIs Dr. Devin Kearns of the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut and Dr. Chris Lemons of the College of Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University. At the University of Maryland, doctoral students Marisa Mitchell and Erin Clancy will work on Project CALI.

For this three-year study, the researchers are partnering with urban and suburban schools in the DC Public Schools and throughout the Northeast to develop a flexible reading model – “a bundle of evidence-based strategies,” according to Dr. Wexler – to improve content-area literacy. Twenty-two co-teaching pairs and 264 of their 8th grade students, including students at-risk for a reading disability and students with average to above-average reading ability, will participate. Project CALI will deliver an instructional framework for the model and develop processes to help co-teaching pairs plan their instruction from week to week.

The research will be both quantitative and qualitative. Intermediate teacher outcomes will be assessed using teacher evaluations, teacher and helper logs, narratives from feedback sessions, and surveys. Fidelity of implementation will be evaluated through observations of instruction and planning meetings, helping the researchers determine how much and what kind of support teachers need for sound implementation. Reading assessments, a content-area assessment, a measure of student engagement, and student focus groups and surveys will be used to evaluate students’ academic outcomes.

Project CALI envisions fostering effective co-teaching by reinvigorating its collaborative spirit. One large-scale goal is to help co-teaching pairs realize greater equity in their teaching roles, ensuring the clear incorporation of accommodations for students with disabilities in instruction by both teachers. Another goal is to promote ongoing, data-based monitoring of students’ progress that produces more active, individualized instruction in which processes of learning – for example, literacy strategies – are emphasized as much as the content itself.

Dr. Jade Wexler investigates methods to improve reading instruction across content areas and in the supplemental intervention setting for adolescents with reading disabilities and behavior disorders, as well as design of effective professional development for these students’ teachers. She is the co-author of RTI for Reading at the Secondary Level: Recommended Literacy Practices and Remaining Questions (Guilford, 2012) and Effective Instruction for Middle School Students with Reading Disabilities: The Reading Teacher’s Sourcebook (Brookes, 2012). Prior to coming to the College of Education, Dr. Wexler co-directed the Dropout Institute at the University of Texas at Austin’s Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk.

Click here to read more about Project CALI.

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