Sara Givon & Deborah Court (2009) Coping strategies of high school students with learning disabilities: a longitudinal qualitative study and grounded theory, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 23:3, 283-303, DOI: 10.1080/09518390903352343

This study took place in Israel. Givon and Court interviewed twenty high school students who had  identified learning disabilities. Givon and Court sought to investigate the coping strategies these students possessed. For their research, they used four emotional-cognitive strategies: avoidance, rebellion, reconciliation, and determination. These were used a measure to assess the students’ level of adjustment to their learning disability. This research focused on students with learning disabilities and the resources and coping skills they utilized, or not through their secondary education by collecting data in their tenth grade, eleventh grade, and twelfth grade years. The study asked the following research question: “What emotional and cognitive resources do the students themselves recruit toward trying to meet the academic demands of obtaining a matriculation certificate?” The data used for this research was mostly personal feelings and reports of acts, behaviors, or events. This data was collected through “in-depth, semi-structured interviews” with every student in their sample population. They also conducted interviews with parents and teachers of the students. Additionally, they collected organizational records to access academic records. To analyze their data, they used the ‘grounded theory’ methodology. All the interviews had been transcribed from audio recordings, keeping in line with the grounded theory methodology. The research seemed thorough and I was impressed with the models of coping strategies they developed from their findings. This research was interesting because it was an international study, and I had only been looking at U.S. perspectives, since our educational policies differ nationally. I was also surprised to see a study conducted on minors in special education. I have not found studies of this nature, I believe because of IRB policies protecting children and people with disabilities. While the standards may be different in Israel than they are in the states, it was still helpful to look at a study such as this.

Bos, C., Richardson, V. (1993). Qualitative research and learning disabilities. In Vaughan, S., Bos, C. (Eds.), Research issues in learning disabilities (pp. 178–201). New York: Springer-Verlag.

This article differs from the others I have researched. While most of my research has focused on the content of disproportionality within special education, this article discusses examples of qualitative research on special education. After writing my extended outline, I realized that I would be conducting interviews to gather the data I need. I thought I should know more about the qualitative research within special education. This article, published in Exceptional Children journal, provides an overview of the various studies conducted qualitatively in special education. They also prove the importance and validity of qualitative research in the field of special education. The researchers sought to analyze the data gathering methods for research in special education and, through meta analysis, find the effects on policy of the respective methods. They looked at the following methods: case study, collective case study, ethnography, action research, collaborative action research, grounded theory, phenomenology, symbolic interactionism, narrative research, life (oral) history, quasi-life-history research, interpretive research, content analysis, conversational analysis, discourse analysis, and ideological critique. I found this study really informative to my research and this course. They reinforced some topics we talked about in class and introduced new ones as well. It was really interesting to read about the influential early studies on special education. Anne Sullivan Macy’s work with Hellen Keller (Keller, 1955) and Itard’s case study The Wild Boy of Aveyron (1806/1962) were two particularly interesting early examples that impacted the world of disability studies and special education. I was really interested in this article, mostly for the information and the impact of the highlighted studies.

Hosp, John L., and Daniel J. Reschly. “Referral Rates for Intervention or Assessment.” The Journal of Special Education, vol. 37, no. 2, 2003, pp. 67–80.,doi:10.1177/00224669030370020201.

Hosp and Reschly analyzed literature that looks at the referral rates for special education testing and assessment based on students racial groups. They looked at three groups: Caucasian, African American, and Hispanic. They identify the referral stage as being the most important, and so their study focuses on this part. Their goal, like my own research, is to determine disproportionality in special education based on racial identity.

They sought to answer the research question of whether students of different racial or ethnic groups are disproportionately identified for special education services. This is a meta-analysis which looked at other research studies. They also looked at quantitative demographic information within the United States. Data was collected after 1975 from all kinds of publications. The information was then coded and analyzed.

This research seems thorough and vast. There was a lot of statistical analysis involved in the processing of data that I did not understand most of. My concern for this study was just how vast the research was. I think I would have liked more information about their sample populations, since each research study they used had a different way of choosing their population and had a different population. I also wonder if they were able to know if they repeated any populations, which would have changed the data.

They found that there was no significant difference between the referral rates of Hispanic students and Caucasian students. They also found that there was more disproportionality with students who were African American and Caucasian.

Sullivan, A., & Artiles, A. (2011). Theorizing Racial Inequity in Special Education: Applying Structural Inequity Theory to Disproportionality. Urban Education, 46(6).  http://search.proquest.com/docview/897474864/

This article acknowledges the history of researching racial disproportionality in special education.They discuss the gaps in research and understand that the research on this topic is incomplete. Sullivan and Artiles show that disproportionality is usually observed in “high-incidence categories” such as learning disabilities, emotional disabilities and mental retardation (this research spanned since the 1960s, though the term “mental retardation” would not be used today). These high-incidence categories only account for 59% of the students who receive special education resources, and is therefore leaving out almost half of the population. Additionally, many studies focus solely on the disparities among African American populations, though disparities are present in other racial demographics as well. Many studies have also found their samples in the southern region of the United States. A quarter of research has focused on the category of Learning Disabled. So, while there has been much research on the topic of disproportionality in special education, many parts of the population is absent from research and there are significant gaps. The authors also argue that a structural theoretical framework is needed to understand racial inequality across “analytical scales, racial groups, and disability categories”.

The research questions Sullivan and Artiled sought to answer were: “To what extent are racial minority students disproportionately represented in special education across analytical scales and disability categories?” and “To what extent is disproportionality for the different race-disability groupings (e.g., Latino students identified as MR) predicted by the structural factors of LEAs?” Demographic and organizational data were needed for this research. Enrollment data was found for the 2004-2005 academic year from the public annual reports published by the Arizona Department of Education. Arizona had a diverse population which was important to study trends across the state’s fourteen disability categories. I was interested in how the research pointed to the need for further examination of policy negotiation. Policies should reflect the needs of the population and this research outlined some of the ways that state and district educational policies are not supporting the needs of their students and are contributing to the disproportionality seen in special education. The policies currently in place, specifically at the local level according to the authors, perpetuate racism and power discrepancies among races in education.

Graves, Scott L, and Ye, Fei Fei. “Are Special Education Labels Accurate for Black Children? Racial Differences in Academic Trajectories of Youth Diagnosed With Specific Learning and Intellectual Disabilities.” Journal of Black Psychology 43, no. 2 (March 2017).

This article explored the impacts of special education designation on the academic trajectories of Black students. They assessed variation in the academic achievement of children who were diagnosed with learning disabilities and intellectual disabilities. This article sought to answer the following research questions: “Do the math achievement trajectories of youth differ by classification (Intellectual Disability and Learning Disability) and racial background? Do the reading achievement trajectories of youth differ by classification (Intellectual Disability and Learning Disability) and racial background?” Demographic data was necessary to conduct this research. The research looked at race, gender, socioeconomic status, and education level of the head of the household, which are all demographic data. The research was conducted nationally. They used existing data from the Special Education Elementary Longitudinal Study. While this original study, which spanned 2000-2007, used in-depth interviews, surveys, and direct student assessments, this research article showed the results from taking a random sample of 14,000 children from this longitudinal study. The article explains that the data analysis method used was a “growth curve model” which involves “grouping data from the same individuals across time” (Graves & Ye 2017).

This article talks a lot about the history of discrimination against Black students through special education and also the discrimination of IQ testing and other psychological testing on Black students. The authors, Scott L. Graves and Fei Fei Ye do a thorough job of providing historical context, analyzing existing data, and then conducting their own research to deepen the research on this topic. They noticed the gap in research on longitudinal academic outcomes. This study was able to show significant variety in achievement of children diagnosed with learning disabilities and intellectual disabilities. Graves and Ye found that, across time, the academic achievement growth was typically positive. As students got older, the growth plateaued. Black students displayed lowered rates of growth in two of four achievement tests when compared to their White and Hispanic peers. Another finding showed that Black students did not show as clear distinctions between diagnoses of learning disabilities and mild intellectual disabilities, when compared to their White and Hispanic peers. They demonstrated the need for further research on this topic and also demonstrated the importance of assessing the interaction of factors of race and diagnosis on long term academic growth.

Fairclouth, Susan C., Farkas, George, Hibel, Jacob, “Unpacking the placement of American and Alaska Native Students in Special Education Programs and Services in the Early Grades: School Readiness as a Predictive Variable” Harvard Educational Review: Fall 2008, Vol, 78, No 3, pp 498-528

Susan Fairclouth, George Farkas, and Jacob Hibel investigated the question of whether or not Alaskan Natives and American Indians were placed into special education classrooms at higher rates than other ethnic groups. Fairclouth, Farkas, and Hibel interrogated the prior research which showed Alaskan Natives and American Indians to be placed consistently in special education classrooms and special education schools at higher rates when compared to other ethnic groups. However, they found that Alaskan Natives and American Indians were actually just as likely to be placed in special education classrooms as non-Hispanic white students. The information Fairclouth, Farkas, and Hibel needed to conduct this research is organizational data to find out the ethnic backgrounds of students placed in special education classrooms within schools. They compared national data for students in kindergarten and third grade. The data-gathering method used was public and private records. They found their data in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study which was public data. They used interval/ratio data to analyze results and compare numbers of students ethnic backgrounds in schools. This research seems well done. The researchers dug deep into pre-existing research to discover that Alaskan Natives and American Indians were placed into special education at higher rates than other ethnic groups, and then challenged that by doing their own research. Their findings did not in fact mimic that of the researchers who had previously explored the topic. They also seemed to account for many confounding factors. Some of these factors included socio-economic status and test scores. It was only when these factors were controlled that they found their results. They concluded that “the strongest predictor of special education placement is a student’s academic readiness on entering kindergarten as measured by the student’s pre-reading and pre-mathematics scores”.

Amanda L. Sullivan’s article, “Disproportionality in Special Education Identification and Placement of English Language Learners” found that English Language Learners are disproportionately represented in special education classrooms compared to White peers. Sullivan’s research presented the need for further research. This study asks four research questions: “To what extent is there a disproportionate representation of students identified as ELLs in special education, focusing on high-incidence categories, at the state level over time? To what extent is disproportionality observed at the district level over time? To what extent are students identified as ELLs placed in the least restrictive environment at the state and district levels over time? To what extent can one predict disproportionate representation of ELLs at the district level, considering certain district characteristics?” Sullivan’s research uses both demographic data and reports of acts, behavior, or events, analyzing existing research. Public and Private Records were used as the data collection method. Some records used include state and district enrollment data for students identified as ELL. ELL students were defined in this context as “a child who does not speak English or whose native language is not English”. The study used the “relative risk ratio (RRR) to determine ELLs’ relative likelihood of identification/placement compared to White students”. Sullivan found that students in classrooms with greater language supports in place were served in general classrooms with higher success compared to students who did not have language supports. The latter population were more likely to be placed in special education classrooms. Sullivan looked at an eight-year span of research, both on disability category and placement.

The research Sullivan presents is thorough, though her findings only seemed to suggest that more research would need to be conducted. Sullivan looked at a southwestern state’s findings which serves as a good indicator as to what patterns exist in the nation. That being said, different states have very different educational policies, so this research may only really reflect the educational policies of this single southwestern state, which isn’t to say that the findings won’t overlap with other states.

Sullivan, Amanda L.. “Disproportionality in Special Education Identification and Placement of English Language Learners.” Exceptional Children  77, no. 3 (2011): 317-334.