In Search of the Foundation of Special Education

ions from ongoing analyses of individual performance generally have been conducted independently of the specific performance context or learning content. For example, individual differences have been analyzed in terms of stages within the learning process (e.g., acquisition, fluency improvement, maintenance, generalization, and adaptation). Haring, Liberty, and White (1980) found that teachers trained in precision teaching to analyze daily performance made decisions that improved student's performance 33% of the time. However, when teachers were provided with specific rules for analyzing the daily performance patterns and changing the program, they achieved improved student performance in 65% of their program changes. This would suggest two things. First, simply changing an educational treatment on the basis of daily monitoring of individual students' data does not necessarily lead to improved learning. Second, a strategy for making educational decisions based on specific patterns of performance within specific stages of learning does improve the outcomes of educational decisions. This second point received further empirical support from the meta-analysis of formative evaluations conducted by Fuchs and Fuchs (1986). Unfortunately, these findings are decontextualized in terms of either qualitative or quantitative analysis of individuals' performance strategies with various instructional content. Deno's recommendations offer an alternative dynamic process that has clear advantages to the static process of the ATI approach. The information and decision making occur at the level at which the treatment is implemented. The teacher is in the best position to generate alternative treatment strategies based on his or her knowledge of the student and of the past treatment (Brinker, 1985). Unfortunately, from the perspective of a scientific understanding of differences among children and the implications of such differences, the formative evaluation process offers very little. Only by combining the formative evaluation with some other inductive or deductive model will the separate understanding of individuals' performances lead to an understanding of performances in context. Nagle (1953) has indicated that the task of the historian is to seek explanation of specific events; however, such explanation is not done solely in terms applicable to that specific event. Two major philosophers of history, Hegel and Marx, both argued that general laws are instantiated (i.e., empirically supported) by individual historical events. There are not separate idiographic and nomothetic sciences. Rather, it should be the interplay between the idiographic and the nomothetic upon which scientific understanding is based (Franck, 1986). To the extent that a general (i.e., nomothetically robust) theory cannot accommodate individual cases or groups of individual cases, that theory needs modification. Abstraction is possible from the understanding of a single case. However, multiple cases, understood idiographically, enable one to ask how the children, their contexts, and their outcomes are 178 THE JOURNAL OF SPECIAL EDUCATION VOL 24/NO. 2/1990 both similar and different. If one is the teacher and part of the idiographic context, it may be difficult to perceive how one behaved differently with one child versus another, given the intention to deliver the same treatment. Thus, the social and public context of scientific induction and deduction may greatly facilitate the abstraction from individual performances to individual differences. Piaget's (1970) theory was certainly nomothetic in that it posited general laws about the stages of development. Nevertheless, critical aspects of the theory were developed, tested, and replicated through a dynamic idiographic method (the methode clinique) applied successively to his own three children (Piaget, 1952). Because Deno proposed no dimensions along which differences in curricular performance would be analyzed, he has not really offered an alternative to ATI. Perhaps that is his point. However, Skinner (1938) made a similar point 50 years ago, and we are left with the rather uninteresting conclusion that individuals are different because their histories of reinforcement are different. We can search for reinforcers, but because theoretical abstraction was eschewed, the search begins anew with each individual. I would prefer problem solving that became more effective as an individual teacher or a scientific community of teachers progressed through many individual solutions and questioned why they were solutions. THE SOCIAL AND MATERIAL CONTEXT OF TEACHING AND LEARNING Whereas Deno leaves difference out of the discussion, Hofmeister appears to omit both individual and difference. Professor Hofmeister's position is that effective teaching is independent of both student characteristics and instructional content. Hofmeister shifts our attention from individual differences considered as traits and individualized treatments considered as content or strategy. His critique focuses on two common organizational approaches to achieving individualization within special education. The first is a consideration of the social context of learning, specifically the size of the student group relative to the number of teachers. Generally, special education involves fewer students than regular class settings and relatively more teacher contact. The second approach to individualization discussed by Hofmeister is the use of programmed instruction with videodisc presentation of materials. The student's ongoing performance determines the pace of instruction such that further practice in weak areas is provided automatically by the algorithms for branching to various material. Hofmeister argues that effective teachers organize instruction in ways that produce individual progress, which is more dramatic and sustained than that produced by either of these other formats for achieving individualization. Regardless of content of instruction or characteristics of the learner, effective teaching is organized such that: 1. New content is introduced only after necessary prerequisite skills are present. 2. Guided practice immediately follows presentation of new content such that the principles of problem solution are understood prior to independent practice. 3. The content learned is reviewed on a weekly and monthly basis. THE JOURNAL OF SPECIAL EDUCATION VOL. 24/NO. 2/1990 179 Hofmeister argues that effective teaching practice can be achieved more efficiently through careful organization of classroom instruction without reducing the student-teacher ratio. He found little advantage, given the costs, for individual computer-videodisc work stations in which the learner's own performance guided the type of practice that was provided. It is not clear within the figure depicting Hofmeister's effective teaching model how a teacher decides to provide reteaching, nor is it clear what reteaching involves. Does it involve (a) individual tailoring of instruction based on a pattern of student performance? (b) repetition of the same material? or (c) elaboration of previously presented material? Regardless of learner characteristics, effective teaching is effective teaching. Thus, for Hofmeister, elimination of the special education enterprise would not be a major concern. Nevertheless, the process by which the teacher knows that a specific student needs additional work on a prerequisite skill or that a student is ready for independent practice requires articulation. Similarly, the nature of the reteaching should be specified. Perhaps even more relevant is how the teacher retrieves such knowledge on so many individuals. Given Professor Hofmeister's expertise regarding computer technology, it would be illuminating to know the extent to which computer technology could assist the effective teacher to implement the instructional model described. Without clarification of the basis for making teaching decisions or the nature of those decisions, it seems that Professor Hofmeister is asking us to trust in an unknown educational process instead of a process about which we know the inadequacies. ECOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTAL APPROACH TO INDIVIDUALIZATION In a sense, all three papers present a child who is seriously decontextualized. The child is a bundle of traits, a performer in a curriculum, a student in an effective teacher's class. Fifteen years ago leading scholars reached a consensus that few if any of the systems for classifying children were based on individual behavioral differences common to children within a classification (Hobbs, 1975a, 1975b). Rather, classifications were based on available administrative options for providing service. Within the administrative options, considerable variation of treatment approaches was noted such that classifying a child in the United States tells us very little about the services that child will receive. Hobb's critique of classification systems and the alternative he proposed is comparable to the dynamic formative model proposed by Deno. One major difference between the two proposals was that Hobbs envisaged the dynamic assessment process to extend beyond curriculum-based assessment and decision making. In a much earlier paper Hobbs articulated the role of the educateur who would act to communicate, integrate, and coordinate across ecologies in which the child was embedded (Hobbs, 1966). Although teachers could assume such roles, and probably are best placed in terms of gathering information about children, the educateur role goes considerably beyond the current practices of regular and special educators. Why do we have such similar insights as Hobbs' (1966, 1975a) and Deno's 180 THE JOURNAL OF SPECIAL EDUCATION VOL 24/NO. 2/1990 (this issue) along with similar promises regarding ATI (Ackerman, Sternberg, & Glaser, 1989; Gagne, 1967) with so little systemic change on the one hand or empirical substance on the other? Can we