Special Education Research

The following list represents a sample of the research projects currently being conducted by Special Education faculty members:

Case Method of Instruction (CMI) Outreach Project
This project aims to increase awareness of the case method of instruction as an alternative or supplement to more traditional methods of early intervention personnel preparation and to increase the number of instructors who are skilled in using the method. The project conducts workshops for preservice and inservice instructors in early childhood special education, early childhood education, social work, psychology, nursing, and the allied health professions (occupational therapy, physical therapy, and speech-language pathology).

For further information contact Professor P. J. McWilliam or visit the project Web site.

Effects of Intensity of Early Communication Interventions
This longitudinal randomized group design study compares early prelinguistic and linguistic treatment of varying intensity levels. Children between 18 and 27 months of age, with IQs between 40 and 70, use fewer than 10 different words, have no sensory impairments, and sufficient motor skills to perform basic gestures with limited or no trunk support will participate.

For further information contact Professor Paul Yoder.

Evaluating a Multicomponent Reading Program Designed to Address the Diverse Needs of Struggling Readers in Late Elementary School
Effective reading instruction designed to improve the comprehension skills of struggling readers in late elementary school must provide integrated work across a wide variety of skills, including decoding and word recognition, reading fluency, vocabulary and declarative knowledge development, and reading comprehension strategy use. The goal of this project is to develop a multicomponent reading program to address the diverse needs of late elementary school students who are struggling readers.

For further information contact Professor Donald Compton.

Family Language Intervention Project (FLIP)
FLIP serves families with children between the ages of two and a half- and four and a half-years-old who have significant delays in expressive language (spoken language) and receptive language (understanding words). Children in the study must also be able to verbally imitate and use 10 or more productive words. Children in the study have included those with Down syndrome, Williams syndrome, pervasive developmental disorder, autism, and generalized developmental delays.

For further information contact Professor Ann Kaiser or Terry Hancock.

Hanen More than Words Parent Training for Young Children at Risk for Autism

The first clinical randomized trial examining the benefits of this parent training intervention for improving social and communication skills in young children at risk for autism spectrum disorders (ASD).  Parents and their children between 15 months and 24 months of age who are at risk for ASD will participate. 
For more information contact Professor Paul Yoder.

Math Outcomes
In this randomized controlled study, the effects of response-to-intervention as a model of preventing and identifying learning disabilities in math problem solving at the third-grade level are investigated.

For further information contact Professors Doug Fuchs or Lynn Fuchs.

Math Problem Solving
This randomized controlled study examines methods for enhancing mathematics problem solving even as the course of development of math problem solving competencies and its disability are investigated.

For further information contact Professors Doug Fuchs or Lynn Fuchs.

Measuring Learning Opportunities with Young Children
The purpose of this project is to develop an observational system for measuring and describing the types and amounts of learning opportunities young children with disabilities experience. Once the observational system is developed, it will be used as a dependent measure in studies evaluating various types of instructional arrangements for young children with disabilities. It also will be used to understand manipulations of early childhood classrooms to increase learning opportunities.

For further information contact Professors Mark Wolery or Ann Kaiser.

National Research Center on Learning Disabilities
This five-year research project funded by the U.S. Dept. of Education's Office of Special Education Programs, assisted by the University of Kansas through a subcontract, is designed to 1) Identify gaps in knowledge and conduct research on LD identification; 2) Conduct research on state LD assessment and identification policies and practices; 3) Analyze LD prevalence variations across and within states; and 4) Design, implement, and evaluate a dissemination and technical assistance approach that links research with practice. See www.nrcld.org.

For further information contact Professor Doug Fuchs.

Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS)
PALS was developed at Vanderbilt University to supplement classroom instruction. This multi-site randomized controlled study examines the level of teacher assistance needed to support research-validated reading intervention for promoting development in children from kindergarten through fourth grade.

For further information contact Professors Doug Fuchs or Lynn Fuchs.

Project Access
Access focuses its research on peer support strategies for inclusive schools including research on the use of peer support programs to facilitate the inclusion of secondary age students with severe disabilities and autism into regular education classrooms.

For further information contact Professor Craig Kennedy.

Project Self-Direct
This project investigates the effects of self-directed learning instruction on at-risk students and students with disabilities attending high poverty high schools in order to improve their academic performance within the general education curriculum. General education students who are enrolled in "peer buddy" service-learning classes in Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools assist their classmates to apply self-directed learning strategies, such as goal setting, to improve their academic performance and promote school completion and enrollment in post-secondary education. Multiple measures are collected to assess the effects of self-directed learning instruction on students' performance.

For further information contact Carolyn Hughes.

Cooperative Learning and Social Skills (CLASS)
Project CLASS investigates the impact of combined intervention of cooperative learning and social skills training on increasing accessibility for children with Emotional-Behavioral Disorders (EBDs) to general education settings. The academic, behavioral, and social deficits of students with EBDs contribute to their placements in restrictive environments that segregate them from their non-disabled peers.

For further information contact Professor Joe Wehby.

Positive Behavior Supports (PBS)
Project PBS addresses social and emotional development and intervention and the implementation of school-wide positive behavior supports in high school. This project examines the challenges of implementing a three-tier model of PBS at the high school level in rural communities; identifies the types and patterns of behavioral problems manifested at the secondary level; designs and implements the model systematically with primary, secondary, and tertiary interventions using data-based decision making; and evaluates how students with varying types of behavior problems respond to various levels of support.

For further information contact Professor Kathleen Lane.

Project Prevent
Project Prevent screens students in both high-performing and at-risk schools to identify the extent to which these youth respond to primary interventions. This project examines the effectiveness of secondary academic, behavioral, and combined interventions for preventing the development of emotional disturbance.

For further information contact Professor Kathleen Lane.

Project TELL: Teacher Enhanced Language and Literacy 
This project examines the differential effects of three approaches to improving language and literacy skills in high risk children enrolled in the JCCEO Head Start Program, Birmingham, AL. Data collection will occur at four time points to determine the immediate and longer term effects of the intervention: pre intervention, post Intervention, kindergarten follow-up and first grade follow-up.

For further information contact Professors Ann P. Kaiser or David Dickinson.

Tennessee Sibling Project
The purpose project is to explore issues impacting the relationship between adolescents and young adult siblings and their brothers or sisters with disabilities and to identify resources needed by families to support siblings and individuals with disabilities, to pinpoint where resources are limited or lacking, and, to make recommendations for family support programs and policies in Tennessee.

For further information contact Professors Ann Kaiser or Robert Hodapp.

Tennessee Academic Civic Engagement Program (TACEP)
TACEP is a federally-funded program with the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies (VIPPS) that addresses the high rate of dropout and academic failure characteristic of high poverty high schools. Vanderbilt students mentor youth from Metro Nashville high schools that experience high poverty. Mentors assist students in the college application process, help students improve their academic performance, and provide friendship and support.

For further information contact Professor Carolyn Hughes.

Tennessee Technical Assistance & Resources for Enhancing Deaf-blind Supports (TREDS)
TREDS is a federally-funded program that provides technical assistance for individuals from birth through age 21, who have both vision and hearing impairments. The mission of TREDS is to improve the capacity of state, regional, and local educational service agencies, families, and individuals with deaf-blindness to provide support that optimizes the potential of individuals with deaf-blindness in the state of Tennessee.

For further information contact Professor Robin McWilliam.

Relating Decoding and Fluency Development in RD Children
Recent intervention studies designed to improve word-level recognition processes in children with serious reading disabilities (RD) have demonstrated that systematic instruction in phonemic awareness (PA) and decoding skills results in significant and lasting improvements in nonword decoding, and to a somewhat lesser extent, real word identification. Intent of this research is to collect data designed to explore various explanations to account for the disassociation between decoding skill acquisition and the development of rapid sight word recognition and fluent text reading in children with phonologically based RD.

For further information contact Professor Donald Compton.

Specific Language Impairment (SLI)
The SLI project seeks to clarify the extent to which preschoolers with SLIs have speech processing deficits. Also, it aims to determine whether the relative superiority of two language interventions in children with SLI depends on pretreatment speech processing ability and its behavioral correlates.

For further information contact Professor Paul Yoder.

ERP and Behavioral Predictors of Response to Language Interventions
This longitudinal randomized group design study compares two different language interventions for children with specific language impairment. It tests whether speech processing, as measured by event-related potentials (ERPs), predicts children's differential response to treatments on grammatical outcomes. Children between 28 and 60 months, who have nonverbal IQs over 83, with standard scores on an expressive language test under the 10th%, with no sensory or motor impairments are appropriate for this study.

For further information contact Professor Paul Yoder.

Responsiveness to Intervention: Alternative Methods of Disability Identification
This research combines a responsiveness-to-intervention paradigm with dynamic assessment and event response potential (ERP) to explore alternative, effective, and practical methods of identifying "high-incidence" disability children in the primary grades.

For more information contact Lynn Fuchs, Donald Compton, or Doug Fuchs.

Teacher Quality for Students with Disabilities and At Risk Characteristics, OESE and OSEP
Provides technical assistance to regional comprehensive centers and states.  Current and future projects focus on innovation configurations to improve teacher preparation and professional development in scientifically-based reading, classroom organization/behavior management, inclusive practices and learning strategies.

For more information contact Professor Dan Reschly.

The Effects of Strategy and Self-Regulation Instruction on Students' Writing Performance and Behavior: A Preventative Approach (Project WRITE)
This is a research grant funded by the Institute of Educational Sciences to study the effects of writing interventions for second grade students with difficulties in writing and behavioral performance.

For further information contact Professor Kathleen Lane.