Date of Graduation

1989

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

Abstract

In recent years many mildly handicapped students are returning to the regular classroom for much of their academic services. Subsequently many regular education teachers are becoming more responsible for the curricular and instructional needs of the mildly handicapped learner. As a result a great deal of attention is placed on modifying teacher behavior within the integrated classroom setting. Meanwhile many characteristics of effective teacher behavior have been identified. Coincidently, little data exists verifying the relationship of effective teacher behaviors to the actual classroom performance of the mildly handicapped learner while in the regular classroom. This study examines the effect of advance organizers used by the regular education teacher on the classroom performance of the mainstreamed mildly handicapped learner in secondary content classes. Two regular education teachers and eleven mainstreamed mildly handicapped students participated in the study. Nine students were identified as learning disabled by their attending county and two students were identified as educable mentally impaired. The full scale IQ scores ranged from 69-123 with a mean of 87.1 and a standard deviation of 13.4. Each of the students participating in the study was enrolled in one of the two regular education teacher's content class. A multiple baseline design across an English class and a World Cultures class was used to determine the effect of advance organizers on the performance of the mildly handicapped learner in a regular content classroom. Prior to the implementation of the independent variable, (teacher use of advance organizers) baseline data was collected on bi-weekly quizzes which were given at the conclusion of a content lesson. After baseline data has stabilized in each class, the two regular education teachers received training in the use and delivery of advance organizers before and during content presentations. Next, the intervention was applied to class one and then class two. The criterion of a mean increase of 20 points from the baseline phase to the intervention phase was used to determine the advance organizer on student performance. The data collected from both classes represented a marked increase in the performance of the mildly handicapped learners in content area subjects. For example, Class one's baseline mean performance on content quizzes was 24.75, and the mean performance increased to a mean performance of 84.18 in the intervention phase. Class two's mean performance had increased from a baseline mean performance of 44.85 to 74.11 in the intervention phase. The data of this study suggest that teacher use of advance organizers is an effective instructional tool for increasing student performance in content regular classrooms.

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