Accelerated Learning Is Possible for Special Education Students: Literacy Lessons Intervention Challenges the Deficit Mindset Within Special Education Instruction

Introduction

Special education, including its student population and instructional practices, has historically been perceived through deficit mindsets. Unfortunately, learners identified as eligible for special education services most often receive instruction that focuses on the identified disability—what the learner is seemingly capable of—rather than the learner themselves (Cornett & Knackstedt, 2020; Frey, 2019; Shume, 2020; Trent et al., 1998). Steeped in the medical model, special education settings perpetuate the inaccurate assumptions that the learner’s identified disability is finite, viewing the learner in need of fixing, and as both passive and needy (Shume, 2020). Additionally, the notion of special education students’ rate of progress being accelerative (progress being made at a rate that is quicker than average of their peers), rather than remedial, is vastly understudied and underprioritized. Wolter (2016) alerts us to an ‘opportunity gap’ in literacy in the field of special education, asserting, “It’s not the circumstances students bring to school that limit student’s growth but rather the opportunity at school” (p. 31). However, one literacy intervention, Literacy Lessons^™, provides revealing data to support a shift in thinking regarding instructional practices and professional development training for special education students and teachers.

Literacy processing theory, developed by educational psychologist and researcher Marie Clay, is a complex view of literacy learning that focuses on understanding the perceptual and cognitive systems involved in the reading and writing process. These integrated neural networks are constructed in the head of the learner as a result of reading and writing continuous texts (see e.g., Clay, 1991, 2014, 2015, 2016; Doyle, 2013). This view of literacy learning is credited for the creation and long-standing implementations of Reading Recovery^®, the successful intervention for first-grade students. Additionally, Clay challenged teachers to expand their understanding of literacy processing theory to include other populations of learners, i.e. special education and English language learners (Clay, 2016). From there, Literacy Lessons, a powerful intervention supporting special education students and English language learners in Grades 1–4, and sometimes beyond, who are finding reading and writing difficult emerged (Reading Recovery Council of North America [RRCNA], 2013). Text level gains from a national sample of 1,033 special education students in Grades 1–5 demonstrate accelerative gains, forcing one to question how special education populations are typically viewed and instructed. Noticeably, acceleration is rarely discussed relative to the special education community. The goal within this chapter is to explore the large-scale sample of multiyear text level data by linking the accelerative outcomes to specific instructional beliefs, ideologies, and practices among special education interventionists providing Literacy Lessons instruction to students who are being viewed—finally—as fully capable, active learners. Following that exploration, we will address the potential implications of the data presented as well as future research possibilities that may provide additional information to impact special education instruction and special education teacher training opportunities.