Ellis's “Potential” Integrative Strategy Instruction Model: An Appealing Extension of Previous Efforts

Today's teachers face a formidable challenge—how to facilitate the acquisition of basic skills, demanding content knowledge, and personal problem-solving capabilities for all students in increasingly diverse and competitive learning environments. Among the six national educational goals for the year 2000 (U.S. Department of Education, 1991), we seek to achieve (a) a high school graduation rate of at least 90%; (b) the demonstration of students' competency in challenging subject matter, including English, mathematics, science, history, and geography, and their readiness for responsible citizenship and productive employment; (c) the highest global standing for U.S. students in science and mathematics achievement; and (d) literacy and essential skills for every adult American. As educators concentrate on these goals and the accompanying educational reform directed toward their achievement, there is a fervent search for new ideas, along with an unprecedented tolerance for mold-breaking initiatives undertaken in both the public and the private sector (e.g., curriculum reform, site-based management, movement toward inclusion or unified special education/general education programs for students with and without disabilities, for-profit schools, national outcome measures). Across these diverse initiatives, commitment to the development of increased competency in academics, problem solving, personal development, and social responsibility represents a unifying theme. Ellis's article focuses on one critical challenge—the integration of "traditional teacher-directed approaches to content instruction with instructional approaches designed for teaching information processing and problem solving designed . . . [to] maximize students' acquisition of new knowledge and their ability to use effective and efficient information processes and problem-solving skills." Termed Integrative Strategy Instruction (ISI), the "potential" model is especially relevant for general education and special education teachers employed in systems seeking to increase the amount of time students with specific learning disabilities (and other disabilities) spend in the general education program. For those who have followed the development and use of instruction designed to promote strategic learning, Ellis's ISI model is a natural and appealing extension of previous efforts. It incorporates findings from foundation research, including work conducted by the University of Kansas Institute for Research in Learning Disabilities (KU-IRLD) research team, of which Ellis has been an active collaborator for many years. Drawing on a rich foundation of strategy or cognitive instruction research and information-processing theory, Ellis presents a well-articulated model with accompanying illustrative examples depicting how teachers can help adolescents, including those with learning disabilities, acquire an enriched content knowledge base necessary for independent and successful functioning and become "good" or "strategic" information processors and problem solvers. As with previously described models (e.g., Deshler & Lenz, 1989), this approach is based on the premise that efficient and effective learning is enhanced through the creation of strategic learning environments that foster the development of strategic behavior and are sensitive to learner attributes. In such environments, students develop learning strategies or tools that can be used to facilitate the analysis of task demands, determine how to best approach a problem, guide task completion, and monitor the effectiveness of their problem-solving process along the way. Distilling the presentation, the ISI model involves teacher-mediated instruction to facilitate strategic acquisition of declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge and presentation of information-processing strategies within four "interacting" subthemes (i.e., use of prior knowledge and experiences, various cognitive strategies, metacognition, and selfmotivation techniques). Ellis views the model as being particularly useful for teaching content area subjects to stu-