Support for Students with Learning Difficulties Through a Universal Intervention Framework

Abstract

<p>Academically engaging secondary students with learning difficulties continues to be a challenge for teachers and education authorities around the world. This thesis reports on my study to address the impasse between research and practice in meeting the needs of students with learning difficulties. To date, intervention studies recommend more intensive supports, in smaller groups, over longer periods for secondary students with learning disabilities. However, my experience, like that of many secondary educators, found that timetable constraints, lack of resourcing and an increasingly complex curriculum acted to counter the call from these studies. I propose a new way forward through a <i>Universal Intervention Framework</i> (UIF), harnessing the power of sound pedagogy and the potential for Positive Psychology to mobilise student motivation.</p> <p>This study was situated within the Australian educational political context of providing supports for students with disability. In 2011, the seminal <i>Review of Funding for Schooling</i> (i.e. the Gonski Report) endorsed a <i>Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability</i> (NCCD). In 2017, the Australian Liberal Government agreed to fund all students with disability through the NCCD. The inception of the NCCD has been revolutionary in its approach of identifying students based on educational need, as opposed to psycho-medical diagnosis of disability. The implications of these changes, and the currency of this study, lie in the fact that all schools in Australia now require systematic processes to identify and document the adjustments they are providing for students with learning difficulties.</p> <p>The present research has sought to validate the UIF as a systematic approach to supporting the academic performance and wellbeing of a small group of secondary students with learning difficulties. Specifically, my objective was to elicit clear theoretical synergies between the four major paradigms: <i>Response to Intervention</i> (RTI) (Fuchs, Fuchs & Vaughn, 2014),<i> Universal Design for Learning</i> (UDL) (CAST, 2011), <i>Explicit Instruction</i> (Hughes, Morris, Therrien & Benson, 2017) and Positive Psychology and Education (Seligman, 2011). Within this research, I have placed emphasis on the extent to which each paradigm could serve as a function of a learning support <i>system</i> within schools. In this analysis, as a central focus of enquiry I demonstrate that the UIF could meet the administration, curriculum, pedagogical and wellbeing supports necessary to effectively support students with learning difficulties. While the aim of the UIF is to improve the academic performance of students with learning difficulties, I make salient the importance of <i>Positive Psychology and Education</i> in serving students’ self-belief systems.</p> <p>Given the complexity of the schooling system, I chose to adopt a <i>Design-Based Research</i> (DBR) theoretical perspective within the pragmatic research paradigm to investigate the potency of the UIF. DBR is characterised by a series of approaches which combine empirical research with educational practice to facilitate understanding of how a novel model or theory might improve practice within a context. I have examined both quantitative and qualitative data in a concurrent mixed methods approach.</p> <p>A small Year 8 mathematics class (<i>N</i>= 12 students) and a Year 8 English class (<i>N</i> = 11 students) were provided with the intervention treatment over one academic year. Response to the treatment was compared to two control groups of similar academic ability from the same Year group. </p> <p>My approach heavily rested on the premise that UDL and <i>Explicit Instruction</i> would reduce the cognitive load on students and systematically provide both instruction and skill remediation. A precipitate of this would be the students experiencing academic success. To capitalise on this academic success, I appropriated the Positive Psychology <i>Framework of Achievement</i> Bests (Phan & Ngu, 2017). This recalibrated student perceptions regarding academic success, encouraging personal optimisation as opposed to peer comparison. My research has found that the intervention group students made statistically significant gains in both their academic achievement and their levels of academic self-concept and self-efficacy. The research also highlightsthat students with learning difficulties enter secondary school with significant deficits to their academic abilities when compared to their typically developing peers. This study is promising for future research, which could play an important role in assisting secondary students with learning difficulties to flourish.</p>