An Evaluation of Two Methods for Teaching United States History to Students with Learning Disabilities

We compared two approaches to teaching United States history to students with learning disabilities (LD). We randomly assigned students in seventh through ninth grades (n = 44) to separate treatment groups (strategy-based instruction or traditional instruction). In both approaches, students were taught identical content on two units of the Civil War. Teachers conducted 50-minute lessons each day for 4 weeks. We compared the groups' scores on (a) two unit tests measuring vocabulary and factual recall, (b) two thematic measures, (c) a relevant portion of the "National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)", and (d) a student attitude-satisfaction scale. Results showed students who received the strategy-based instruction had significantly better scores on all dependent measures except for the student attitude measure. (Contains 8 tables.)