Additional information
| Cover | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Dimensions (W) | 8 1/2" |
| Dimensions (H) | 11" |
| Publisher | Edge Enterprises, Inc. |
| Year Printed | 2007 |
| Includes | Manual and Flash Drive |
Self-Advocacy Strategy: Student Program (Manual & Digital Program) Flash Drive
Paula E. LancasterSean Lancaster
Original research and manual by: Anthony K. Van Reusen, Candace S. Bos, Jean B. Schumaker, & Donald D. Deshler
This program contains the majority of instruction for the Self-Advocacy Strategy for students. Instructors must introduce the instructional program to students. Then students can work through this digital program independently. They will hear and see other students talking about and using parts of the strategy. Students can create their own inventories of their strengths and weaknesses on the computer, save them for later editing, and print them. After working through the digital program, students will need some final instruction from the instructor and final practice activities. Thus, the instructor’s manual must be purchased with the digital program, and the instructor must be involved in the delivery of some parts of the instruction. The manual and digital program come as a set. Additional programs can be purchased separately. To view a clip from the program, click on the “Play” button in the video box.
$50.00
Description
Research on Self-Advocacy Strategy CD Instruction
Overview
This study investigated the comparative effects of two methods of teaching high school students with disabilities the Self-Advocacy Strategy: a live-instruction method and an Interactive Hypermedia (IH) Software Program. Sixteen students with disabilities were randomly selected into the live-instruction group or the IH group. The eight live-instruction students were taught the Self-Advocacy Strategy individually by a researcher. The eight IH students were taught the strategy via their computers. Six additional students did not volunteer to receive the instruction; they served as a comparison group. A multiple-baseline across-students design was used with the students who received the live or IH instruction. For each test, students were asked to answer orally a series of ten probe questions to simulate a conference situation, and their answers constituted the repeated measure in the multiple-baseline design. At the end of the study, each student participated in an actual IEP conference with teachers, parents, and administrators where the same probe questions were asked. Additionally, the number of goals in the students’ IEPs that students contributed at the conference were tallied.
Results
The students who received live or IH instruction made substantially more contributions in simulated conference situations after the instruction than before the instruction. When the three groups were compared, no differences were found between the groups at baseline. During their IEP conferences, students in the live-instruction group made a mean of 62 appropriate contributions, and IH students made a mean of 61 appropriate contributions. No significant differences were found between these two groups’ performances during the practice activities and during the IEP conferences. Nevertheless, a KWANOVA indicated a significant difference between the three groups [F(2, 22) = 12.537, p < .002]. Post-hoc analysis revealed a significant difference between the students’ performances at their conferences between the live-instruction students and the comparison students as well as a significant difference between the IH group and the comparison students.
With regard to basic social skills used during the IEP conferences, no differences were found among the three groups. With respect to student use of the Self-Advocacy Strategy steps, all students in the live-instruction group and the IH group used all four steps of the strategy.
A review of the students’ IEPs revealed that for the IH students, 66% of the goals written for the 8 students were contributed by the students during their conferences. Similarly, 79% of the goals were contributed by the live-instruction group. In contrast, only 20% of the goals written for the comparison students were contributed by those students at their IEP conferences. Significant differences were found between the live-instruction group and the comparison group as well as between the IH group and the comparison group on this measure. No differences were found between the two instructed groups.
Live-instruction students, IH students, and comparison students rated their satisfaction with the outcomes of the IEP conference similarly (4.7 versus 4.8 versus 4.3, respectively).
Conclusions
This study showed that instruction in the Self-Advocacy Strategy resulted in increased numbers of contributions by students with disabilities in simulated conferences and resulted in large numbers of contributions in their IEP conferences when they were compared to a group of students who did not receive the instruction. This larger number of appropriate contributions yielded a higher number of goals contributed by the students in their final IEPs. Additionally, this study shows that students who receive instruction in the strategy via the IH program perform about the same as students who receive live instruction. Thus, the IH program is a viable way of saving teacher time while producing positive results.
Reference
Lancaster, P. E., Schumaker, J. B., and Deshler, D. D. (2002). Development and validation of an interactive hypermedia program for teaching a self-advocacy strategy to students with disabilities. Learning Disability Quarterly, 25, 277 – 302.
About the Author
Paula E. Lancaster, Ph.D.
Affliations
- Principal Investigator
- Edge Enterprises, Inc.
- Lawrence, KS
- Associate Professor, College of Education
- Grand Valley State University
- Allendale, Michigan
- Research Affiliate and Certified SIM Professional Development Specialist
- Department of Special Education
- University of Kansas
- Lawrence, KS
My Background and Interests
For as long as I can remember, I was involved in the disability field in some capacity. First, as a family member, then as a young person volunteering, I was involved with Very Special Arts, Easter Seals, and the Special Olympics. Later, when I decided to major in special education, I continued my volunteer work and became interested in learning disabilities. Today, I teach graduate courses on learning disabilities at Grand Valley State University, continue with research and development activities through Edge Enterprises, and feel blessed to have found a career path where I can honestly say that if we hit the lottery tomorrow, I would continue to do this work as a volunteer. I’m still most interested in adolescent and young-adult issues and continue to work with local organizations in an effort to improve after-school programs for secondary students. My son, JD, learned his first strategy this year, and my daughter, Ellie, has two under her belt. They are currently a huge interest of mine!
The Story Behind the Self-Advocacy Strategy CD Program
Since I began my career in education roughly 20 years ago, I have had a keen interest in adolescents and young adults who struggle to learn. All of my teaching experience has been with high-school or junior-high students, and every year around April, I would start to panic about all the things my students still didn’t know or weren’t able to do. Their lack of content knowledge didn’t worry me nearly as much as their lack of skills. Additionally, I worried about their sometimes passive approach to life. I wanted my students to leave me with strong skills but also a strong sense of self. Discovering the Self-Advocacy Strategy and other learning strategies offered a solution to some of the concerns I had faced in the classroom.
As a doctoral student, I had an opportunity to work with Dr. Jim Knight on a project called Strategic Advantage. Our plan was to work with the wonderful teachers at Lawrence High School (LHS) to implement an array of Content Enhancement Routines, Learning Strategies, and Social Skills Strategies, including The Self-Advocacy Strategy. We spent considerable time with the teachers at LHS discussing how to make this project work, the classrooms in which they would implement the various routines and teach the strategies, and how Jim and I could support their great efforts. Through many conversations, we learned that given the high academic standards at LHS and the amount of time students needed to attain these standards, there would not be adequate time and opportunity throughout the day to teach the Self-Advocacy Strategy. This finding was troubling since the teachers repeatedly identified the lack of self-advocacy skills and other social skills as a significant problem for their students. Still, if we relied on teachers to provide this instruction, it wasn’t going to happen. With all of their other responsibilities, they simply did not have time in the day.
Shortly before the Strategic Advantage project had begun, Dr. Joe Fisher had completed his dissertation within which he had created a piece of software that provided staff development in the Concept Mastery Routine to teachers. The program was quite successful, and I started wondering whether we could figure out a way to provide strategy instruction to students in the same way. Doing so would help solve the time and opportunity issue we were having. Plus, I needed to complete a dissertation! Fortunately, I was able to assemble a great team of people who knew more about technology and strategy instruction than I did. Sean Lancaster, my husband, offered tremendous help with the technology, and Vicki Cotsworth and her students at Blue Valley High School along with the original authors of the Self-Advocacy Strategy manual advised me on issues related to strategy instruction. Out of these efforts grew the Self-Advocacy Strategy CD.
I would like to add that while creating and testing these software programs has been a bit more difficult than I imagined when we started, I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity. All of the people who were involved in developing the original strategies instructional programs have been a dream to work with. As I’m sure most of you know, they are the ultimate professionals and have created materials that made our job almost fool proof. Additionally, the staff at Edge Enterprises, Inc. is fabulous. Working with us hundreds of miles away could not have been easy, but they are always quick to respond to our needs with humor and grace. Thank you to everyone who has been involved!
My Thoughts About the Self-Advocacy Strategy
Over the past ten years, I have had the opportunity to teach this strategy, via both live instruction and the CD, to over 100 students. I’ve noticed that each student seems to react a little differently to it in that adolescent students seem to be at various stages of “advocacy-readiness.” Regardless of where students are on that advocacy-readiness continuum, they move forward after instruction. In other words, this strategy has been so carefully designed and the content is so complete, that there is something for nearly everyone in it. I’m so excited about the opportunities that the strategy presents and hope that the CD allows teachers more opportunities to provide instruction in the Self-Advocacy Strategy for their students.
Teacher and Student Feedback on this Product
I’ve heard very positive feedback from teachers and students. From teachers, I’ve mostly heard that they had wanted their students to take a more active role in their IEP conferences, but couldn’t really conceive of how to do it or how to get their students started. For them, having the inventory and the video clips on the CD made all the difference. Others have said that they had wanted to teach the Self-Advocacy Strategy but were having a hard time fitting the instruction in. The CD relieved enough of their time crunch to make instruction happen. Students seem to be surprised that they can learn these types of skills via software. As one student was turning in her permission slip to participate in a study she said, “My dad said that you can’t learn social skills on a computer.” On the fourth day of our time together, as she was taking off her headphones, she said, “That was really cool! I’m telling my dad he was wrong!”
My Contact Information
Email: lancastp@gvsu.edu
Work Phone: 616-485-4935
