Improving Special Education: Best Practices and Research
This paper examines the challenges and opportunities facing special education in the United States, with a focus on how research-based best practices can improve outcomes for students with learning disabilities and related conditions. Drawing on peer-reviewed literature, the paper traces the historical evolution of instructional approaches, analyzes the effects of placement decisions and group size, and evaluates how "folk beliefs" among teachers can undermine effective instruction. It also addresses the tension between sociopolitical influences — including legislation and public opinion — and evidence-based educational practice, using AD/HD policy in Australia as a case study. The paper argues that special educators must prioritize individualized, goal-directed instruction grounded in documented best practices.
- Introduction: The State of Special Education: Growth of special education and need for improvement
- Historical Evolution of Instructional Approaches: From brain retraining to psychometric and multisensory methods
- Effective Instructional Practices for Students with Learning Disabilities: Research-identified characteristics of effective instruction
- Placement, Group Size, and Inclusion: How setting and class size affect student learning
- Folk Beliefs, Best Practices, and Teacher Behavior: Teacher beliefs that undermine evidence-based instruction
- Sociopolitical Influences and the Case of AD/HD: Policy, law, and AD/HD classification in Australia
- Conclusion: Call for evidence-based practice within legal frameworks
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper synthesizes multiple peer-reviewed sources to build a cumulative argument, rather than summarizing each source in isolation.
- It uses a concrete historical arc — tracing special education from theoretical beginnings through research-informed reform — to ground its claims about the need for evidence-based practice.
- The AD/HD policy discussion in Australia serves as a well-chosen illustrative case that connects abstract principles to real-world legislative and medical debates.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective use of source integration: it weaves together findings from Vaughn & Linan-Thompson, Heward, Zigmond, Bongers, and Atkinson into a unified analytical argument rather than treating each source as a standalone summary. This technique — often called synthesis — is a hallmark of graduate-level academic writing and signals that the author understands the scholarly conversation rather than merely reporting individual studies.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a framing observation about public criticism of special education before narrowing to its central concern: how research can guide improvement. It then moves historically (early theoretical models → psychometric approaches → research-identified best practices), shifts to structural concerns (placement and group size), addresses internal barriers (teacher folk beliefs), and finally broadens outward to sociopolitical forces. The conclusion ties these threads together with a call for evidence-based practice within legal constraints. This funnel-and-return structure gives the argument both depth and coherence.
Introduction: The State of Special Education
People find it easy to criticize special education. No matter what special education departments or their staff do, there will always be someone ready to say that what they are doing is wrong. While not all students who have received special education services have fared well, many others have benefited significantly. Given the importance of teaching children who have significant educational problems, it is crucial that special educators examine what they do, why they do it, and where those practices could be improved.
The question of how best to teach students with special needs is an important one. In the United States, although the overall student population has increased by only 2% over the last 25 years, the number of students receiving some form of special education services has increased by 47%. Examining the research on special education effectiveness can be enormously helpful, because a large number of studies exist examining what constitutes effective teaching across the entire spectrum of special education services, from preschool through young adulthood (Cook & Schirmer, 2003). Unfortunately, the research does not tell us how consistently the findings demonstrating "best practices" — things known to improve learning — are actually applied in special education settings.
Historical Evolution of Instructional Approaches
When school districts first began providing special education, psychologists and other specialists had only theoretical approaches to guide instruction for students with learning disabilities. When the term "learning disabilities" was first coined, the emphasis was on "the concept of intraindividual differences" (Vaughn & Linan-Thompson, 2003) — that is, the strengths and weaknesses within the individual child. While that framework has gained validity over the years, the process of providing individualized education has changed considerably over time.
In the 1960s and much of the 1970s, the emphasis was on attempts to retrain the child's brain — teaching improved visual perception, for instance (Vaughn & Linan-Thompson, 2003). Over time, research could not demonstrate measurable improvements in student learning using this approach, and it gradually fell out of favor (Vaughn & Linan-Thompson, 2003).
Another approach to individualized instruction has been to use psychometric information to guide instructional methods. In this model, a child's evaluation identifies which sensory modality appears to be the strongest learning channel. Some children might therefore receive a visually oriented curriculum, while others might receive instruction emphasizing auditory or kinesthetic input. In some programs, however, a multisensory approach is used, applying teaching techniques that address multiple modalities simultaneously (Vaughn & Linan-Thompson, 2003). This approach reflects the pedagogical understanding that while a child may show certain strengths during testing, psychometric assessment is not precise enough to define how a child learns most effectively, and that engaging several cognitive processes at once may be superior to isolating a single channel such as vision or hearing for instructional purposes. Research combining specialized techniques for specific academic tasks has produced positive results when the tasks are clearly defined, planned for effective learning, and directly related to the child's academic needs (Vaughn & Linan-Thompson, 2003).
Effective Instructional Practices for Students with Learning Disabilities
In a review of the literature, Vaughn and Linan-Thompson (2003) identified specific characteristics of instruction associated with academic gains for students with learning disabilities. These characteristics included:
Instruction that controlled the difficulty of assigned work; tasks matched to the student's true instructional level; ensuring that core skills — such as phonemic awareness in reading — were solidly mastered before advancing; teaching in small groups using approaches that encouraged student interaction; use of modeling and explicit thinking strategies, including guidance on when to apply them; an emphasis on direct instruction; teaching students how to integrate information for use in more advanced work; consistent monitoring of student progress; and providing students with regular, constructive feedback on their performance.
Placement, Group Size, and Inclusion
An important intervention in special education is placement — the question of where students will receive services carries social, ethical, and pedagogical implications. However, as Zigmond (2003) points out, the setting may be less important than the quality of the program itself. Researchers examining how well students learned in large-group, small-group, and one-on-one instruction found that teachers individualized instruction more frequently in smaller groups, but that large-group instruction dominated the special education programs included in the study (Bongers, 2001).
In many cases, the amount of time students attended to assigned tasks and appeared engaged in lessons decreased as group size increased (Bongers, 2001), though some research identifies exceptions to this pattern. Among students diagnosed with mild intellectual disability, pupils tended to pay more attention in larger classrooms; however, they responded less frequently, and their behavior was generally better in smaller settings (Bongers, 2001). Special educators widely recognize that smaller groups produce better educational outcomes, and also acknowledge the value of one-on-one work. Nevertheless, 87% of the teachers interviewed for Bongers' research reported that they did not have enough time to work individually with their students.
When a school adopts an inclusion model, the issue of individualization becomes even more pressing, since the general education classroom is not designed to provide intensive educational, social, or behavioral remediation. The success of inclusion depends on the program being well-designed and supported with adequate resources and training for staff (Bongers, 2001).
Conclusion
Special education is an emotional topic, and one on which most people hold strong opinions. Social and political influences — particularly as expressed through legislation — will always be a factor when designing and implementing special education policy. That said, it remains the responsibility of special educators to find the most effective ways to help students with special needs within those legal constraints. Positive results demonstrating well-designed and carefully implemented programs have the power to shift public opinion, which may in time be reflected in more enlightened special education law.
References
Atkinson, Ivan. 2002. "Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: Special education policy and practice in Australia." Australian Journal of Education, June.
Bongers, Joyce. 2001. "Caseload in special education: An integration of research findings." Exceptional Children, January.
Cook, Bryan, and Schirmer, Barbara R. 2003. "What is special about special education? Overview and analysis." Journal of Special Education, October.
Heward, William L. 2003. "Ten faulty notions about teaching and learning that hinder the effectiveness of special education." Journal of Special Education, January.
Vaughn, Sharon, and Linan-Thompson, Sylvia. 2003. "What is special about special education for students with learning disabilities?" Journal of Special Education, October.
Zigmond, Naomi. 2003. "Where should students with disabilities receive special education services? Is one place better than another?" Journal of Special Education, October.
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