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Low- and high-IQ learning disabled children in the mainstream
Analysis and Intervention in Developmental Disabilities, Vol. 3. pp. 5 9 - 6 9 . 1983 Printed in the USA, All rights reserved.
0270-4684/83/010059-11503.00/0 Copyright © 1983 Pergamon Press Ltd
Low- and High-IQ Learning Disabled Children in the Mainstream Jay Gottlieb New York University
Barbara W. Gottlieb Herbert H. Lehman College
Liora Pedhazur Schmelkin Hofstra University
Richard Curci New York University
Nine low-lQ (<80) and 12 high-IQ (100 + ) children who had been classified by the schools as learning disabled (LD) and who attended resource room programs were observed during their participation in regular classes. Data were collected on teachers" perceptions of the LD children, teachers' behavior toward the children, and on the children's academic achievement. Results indicated that teachers did not perceive the two groups of LD children differently but that the teachers behaved differently toward the two groups. Finally, the high-lQ children gained significantly more than the low-lQ children in reading achievement.
This research was supported in part by Grant No. G008001868 from the Office of Special Education and Grant No. N I E - G - 8 0 - 0 0 6 9 from the National Institute of Education to the first author. Reprints may be obtained from Jay Gottlieb, Department of Educational Psychology, New York University. 59
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J. Gottlieb, B. Gottlieb, L. Schmelkin, and R. Curci
For a variety of reasons, the incidence of educable mentally retarded (EMR) children in the public schools has been shrinking during the past several years. The fact that minority group children were disproportionately classified as EMR, the changes in definitional criteria that have been made, the stigma that was alleged to be associated with the label "mentally retarded," the demonstrated failure of special classes to improve EMR children's academic achievement beyond what could be produced without special education, and the fear of expensive, time-consuming litigation, have combined to motivate school personnel to be extremely cautious in classifying children as mentally retarded. The decrease in the prevalence of EMR children has been marked by a corresponding increase in the number of children identified as learning disabled (LD). Tucker (1980) illustrated how, since 1973, there has been an increase in the number of children identified as learning disabled and a corresponding decrease in the number of children identified as EMR. Furthermore, the greatest relative decrease in children identified as EMR and the greatest relative increase in those identified as LD occurred for minority children. Overall, it appears that unless school-based classifiers have developed new and more sensitive diagnostic instruments during the past few years, it must be concluded that many minority group children who would have been classified as EMR are now being classified as LD. It should come as no surprise that the rapidity of the conversion from EMR to LD classifications was not based on empirical evidence that these classifications were in the best interests of the children. A major question arises now as to the educational consequences for low-functioning children who have been classified and educated as LD. The present report is the first in a series dealing with the educational experiences of learning disabled children during the time they spend in the regular classroom, the placement that consumes approximately 85% of the time they spend in educational activities. In this report we are focusing on the educational attainments of two groups of children, both of whom were classified by the schools as learning disabled: (1) low-IQ children (<80) who we are assuming would have been classified as EMR a few years ago; and (2) high-IQ children (100+) who undoubtedly would have been given the same label then as they were given now. The specific variables on which we will report are: (1) teachers' perceptions of the academic ability and behavior of the two groups of children; (2) teachers' ongoing instructional behavior toward these children; and (3) the children's relative academic achievement gains as determined by scores on schoolwide standardized testing. A comparison of teachers' perceptions and behavior toward low- and highIQ learning disabled children allows us not only to address the very practical concern of children's educational experiences in the mainstream, on which little data are presently available, it also enables us to examine several theoretically important issues that have traveled the special education circuit for the past decade. One major theoretical issue in this regard is the relative impact of a
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J. Gottlieb, B. Gottlieb, L. Schmelkin, and R. Curci
due to the considerable effort that has been directed at a national level to familiarize teachers with the desirability of educating handicapped children in contact with their nonhandicapped peers. To the extent that teachers perceive those children as "different," the teachers may not be threatened by the inability of these children to progress despite their best efforts at instruction. Thus, the alternative hypothesis is that low-IQ children will receive more instructional attention from the teacher than the high-IQ children. The final purpose of this report was to compare the academic achievement gains of the two groups of LD children, and to relate the gains to teachers' perceptions and behavior. Unlike many previous studies, the present investigators not only did not manipulate teachers' perceptions of children by providing bogus information, but employed data from the standardized testing program (routinely administered by the school system) as the criterion of achievement. We did not administer or score any of the tests. Consequently, distortions in children's achievement scores that could have been attributed to experimenter-induced biases were absent in this research. To summarize, the purposes of this study are: (1) to compare regular class teachers' perceptions of the academic ability and social behavior of low- and high-IQ children classified as learning disabled; (2) to compare regular class teachers' instructional behavior toward the two groups of children; and (3) to compare the academic achievement gains of the two groups of pupils. As a corollary to the third purpose we also wished to relate achievement gains to teachers' perceptions and behavior. Method Subjects I
Twenty-one pupils in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades who had been classified by their schools as learning disabled and placed in resource room programs participated in this study. The 21 pupils were part of a larger sample of 38 who served as subjects for a larger study of mainstreaming effects. Of the 21, 9 in the subsample had IQ scores of under 80 (M = 73.78; SD = 4.71) and were designated as the low-IQ group. The remaining 12 pupils had IQ scores of 100 or higher (M = 103.92, SD = 3.57) and were designated as the high-IQ group. The remaining pupils had IQ scores between 80 and 99 and were excluded from the analyses being reported in this study. The low-IQ group was comprised of 4 males and 5 females. All 9 children were members of minority groups (7 black and 2 Hispanic). Of the nine pupils, 7 participated in the school's free lunch program, the indicator we employed to assess children's socioeconomic status. The high-IQ children were comprised of 7 males and 5 females. Three of the
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"handicapped" label versus the behavior the child exhibits as influencing others' perceptions and behaviors. It has often been stated that labels are deleterious in that they create a self-fulfilling prophecy and contribute to low expectancies by teachers. Lowered expectancies are then translated by the teachers into observable behaviors which reinforce low-ability children's already depressed levels of achievement. An alternative hypothesis regarding the effects of labeling is that the child engages in behavior which is self-labeling. That is, regardless of the label that is applied when children engage in inappropriate behavior--either academic or social--the behavior serves to label the children and leads to low expectations and corresponding behavior by teachers. In the present research, a common label was applied by the schools to the low- and high-IQ children. Thus, any differences in the way that teachers perceived and behaved toward the children could not be explained by the deleterious impact of the label, but would have to be explained by differences in the behavior of the two groups. How do teachers perceive two such groups of learning disabled children? Although we are not aware of any data that have examined this issue, our general hypothesis is that teachers do perceive differences between the low- and highIQ children, with low-ability children accurately being perceived more poorly with respect to their academic capability. However, we anticipate that teachers' perceptions of high-IQ children's misbehavior will be poorer than they are for low-IQ children. Unlike low-IQ children, who are almost uniformly referred because they are unable to accommodate to the academic demands of the classroom, average-IQ children are as apt to be referred for social reasons as for academic ones, as revealed by the teachers' reasons for referral in the present sample. Just as there were two competing hypotheses regarding teachers' perceptions, two competing hypotheses may be advanced to predict the naturalistic classroom behavior of teachers toward low- and high-IQ learning disabled children in the mainstream. One possibility is that teachers tend to shun the lowest ability children. There is considerable evidence that low-achieving children are treated differently from high achievers with respect to number of smiles and the amount of eye contact they receive from their teachers (Chaikin et al., 1974; Page, 1971). Teachers also tend to exhibit a wide variety of nonverbal supportive behaviors to children whom they consider to be brighter (Kester & Letchworth, 1972). Finally, teachers are more willing to initiate instructional contacts with bright children than with low achievers (Given, 1974). There is an alternative hypothesis, however, namely, that the low-IQ children are sufficiently lower in ability than their classmates so that they evoke sympathetic responses from regular classroom teachers. The teachers, in turn, may try to provide these children with a disproportionate amount of direct instructional effort. These efforts may involve attempts to individualize instruction and/or involve the children in the activities of the regular classroom. The dispensation that we are suggesting may be given by regular class teachers could be in part
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children were members of a minority group (black). Five of the children participated in the free lunch program. The 21 pupils who participated in this study attended one of three schools in an urban school system. Within their schools the children attended one of 14 classrooms. Dependent Measures Three sets of dependent measures were employed for this study: (1) teachers' ratings of the LD pupils' academic and social behavior; (2) direct observations of teachers' behavior; and (3) standardized achievement test data. Teacher rating scale. A 15-item scale assessing teachers' perceptions of children's academic and social behavior was administered to all teachers who came in contact with one or more of the LD subjects. The 15-item instrument was reduced from an 88-item version that was developed as part of Project PRIME (Kaufman, Agard, & Semmel, in press). Factor analyses of the larger scale revealed two factors: academic concentration and misbehavior. Ten items were selected from the academic scale, and 5 from the misbehavior scale to comprise the 15-item instrument employed in this study. The reliability coefficients were .96 for both the academic and misbehavior scales. High scores reflected the scale names on both factors, i.e., a high score indicated the child misbehaved and/or was perceived positively for academics. Direct observation of teachers and children. One purpose of the larger study of mainstreaming, of which the present research is part, involved the direct observation of regular classroom teachers and their mainstreamed learning disabled pupils. Three teacher behavior variables are being reported in this reserach: (1) the extent to which the classroom teacher instructed the LD children in small groups or individually (other than whole-class groups); (2) the frequency with which the teacher initiated an interaction with the children; and (3) the frequency with which teacher provided feedback in the form of criticism to the children. These three variables are viewed by us as indications of the extent to which the teachers attempt to provide special instructional assistance to the LD children in the classroom and/or to involve the children in the academic flow of the class. Reliability for these variables was established as part of the larger set of 37 behaviors which were observed for the major study, Reliability of the larger set of behavioral variables was done over a 6 - w e e k period for approximately 10 hours a week. Employing the reliability formula of agreement of occurrences, divided by the sum of agreements and disagreements or occurrences, the reliability coefficients for the three variables being reported here was .91, .80, and .90 for part-class instruction, teacher initiation, and feedback, respectively.
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Standardized achievement tests. Pre- and posttest achievement scores from the
Stanford Achievement Test were obtained from the testing program administered by the school system during November and May. Scaled scores in reading served as the measure of interest. Procedures
Between February and June of the school year, observations were conducted in 18 regular classes containing mainstreamed LD children. Data from 14 of these classes are being reported here. Ten-second, whole-interval sequential observations were made in which an observer recorded first the behavior of the teacher, then of the student, then of the teacher once again. A 10-second recording period followed each 10-second observation session on an alternating basis. All observations were conducted during the morning, with each class being observed for six 20-minute periods. At the conclusion of the observations, which were made with the voluntary cooperation of the regular education teachers, each teacher who instructed the LD child for any portion of the school day was asked to complete the Teacher Rating Scale for that child. All teachers who volunteered to have their classes observed also willingly completed the questionnaires. Standardized achievement data as well as background data on the child were made available by the school system. All achievement and background data were obtained after the completion of observational data collection. Consequently, the status of the children on any of the relevant characteristics was not a biasing factor during the observation sessions. RESULTS Although multivariate comparisons between the low- and high-IQ children would have been the more desirable analytic plan, the small sample size of this study precluded that approach. Instead, univariate analyses were conducted for each dependent measure. Analysis of the Teacher Rating Scale factors, academic concentration and misbehavior, failed to reveal any significant differences in teachers' perceptions of the low-IQ and high-IQ children. T values o f . 80 for the academic scale and 1.45 for the misbehavior scale emerged from these anlyses. Means and standard deviations for these and other variables appear in Table 1. Analyses of the teacher behavior variables also failed to detect significant differences toward low- and high-IQ learning disabled children. With respect to the number of times that teachers taught the two groups, either in small groups or individual lessons, the mean for the low-lQ group was 5.89 (SD = 10.89) while the corresponding mean for the high-IQ group was .08 (SD --- .28). The resulting t value was 1.60. These data may be illustrated somewhat differently,
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TABLE 1 Means and Standard Deviations for Variables
Variable Academic Concentration Misbehavior Small Group Instruction Teacher Initiation Feedback(criticism) Achievement Pretest (in scaled scores) Achievement Posttest (in scaled scores) Achievement (Standardized Residual Gain)
Low-IQ Group (N = 9) 19.22 25.22 5.89 4.78 .56 131.44 145.83 -.49
High-IQGroup (N --- 12)
(8.03) 22.35 (8,44) (10.93) 31.90 (11.61) (10.98) .08 (0.28) (3.68) 3.92 (3.88) (0.83) 1.42 (1.32) (14.86) 137.44 (12.02) (18.61) 159.00 (16.98) (1.06) .11 (1.06)
however, by indicating that in only a single instance did we observe a high-IQ child being instructed in a small group or individual lesson. For the low-IQ group the picture was somewhat different. We observed a total of 53 instances of small group and/or individual lessons distributed across three of the nine pupils. The remaining six pupils received only whole-class instruction. With respect to teacher initiations to the low- and high-IQ LD children, again no significant differences were found (t = 1.21, df = 19, p = NS). Here, too, however, differences between the means were substantial, as can be seen from Table 1. More fine-grained analysis of these data indicated that 6 of the 12 highIQ children never received an initiation from their teacher. Only 1 low-IQ child failed to receive any initiating behavior from the teacher. Teachers' feedback toward LD children yielded a t value of 1.83 (df = 19, p < .06). Inspection of the means for the high- and low-IQ groups indicated that teachers gave almost three times as much criticism to the high IQ group as to the low IQ group. Analyses of standardized achievement scores of high- and low-IQ students were conducted in two ways. First, in order to assess gains in reading between the low- and high-IQ groups, an analysis of covariance was computed with pretest reading scores covaried from posttest scores. Results of this analysis revealed a significant effect (F = 5.06, df = 1,18, p < .04). This analysis indicated that when the pretest scores were held constant, the high-IQ group gained more than the low-IQ group. Since we were also interested in the relationship between teachers' perceptions of and behavior toward the LD children and reading gains, we conducted an additional analysis of the reading data. This additional analysis was based on the assumption that teachers perceive any child in their class in relation to the class norm and not in relation to a national norm on which standardized achievement scores are based. In this second analysis of the achievement data, we were concerned with the LD children's growth in reading relative to that of their classmates, i.e., classroom-dependent gains. Unlike the more traditional analysis
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J. Gottlieb, B. Gottlieb, L. Schrnelkin, and R. Curci
of reading that we reported in the previous paragraph, the present analysis examined the residual gain (or loss) of each LD child relative to the distribution of residual gain scores for his/her class as a whole. By calculating the" standard deviation of the residuals for the class, we were able to transform each LD child's residual into a normalized score and determine whether there were any significant differences in achievement gains between the two IQ groups relative to the gains posted by the classes as a whole. Inspection of Table 1, where the means and standard deviations are presented, indicates that the mean residual gain score for the low-IQ group (standardized to a mean of 0) was - .49, whereas the high-IQ group had a mean o f . 11. The resulting t value was not statistically significant (t = 1.29, df = 19, p = NS). Stated somewhat differently, the low-IQ group gained, on the average, approximately 1/2 of a standard deviation less than their classmates while the high-IQ children gained about 1/1o of a standard deviation more than their classmates. Seven of the 9 low-IQ pupils had negative gain scores while 7 of the 12 highIQ pupils had positive gain scores. The final set of analyses focused on the nature of correlations among the two residual gain scores in achievement, which we computed (the class-dependent and class-independent gain scores), and the perception and observation variables which were described previously. Teacher perceptions of the LD children's academic concentration and the classroom-dependent residual gains correlated .53 (df = 19, p < .02), whereas the identical teacher perception data correlated .43 (df = 19, p < .05) with the classroom independent gain scores. When the two coefficients were tested for statistically significant differences between them, none emerged (z = .25). Interestingly, teachers' perceptions of LD pupils' misbehavior also correlated significantly with both classroom-dependent and classroom-independent residual scores. The former coefficient being .46 (p < .05) and the latter coefficient being .51 (p < .02). Teacher behavior variables of interest were correlated with the two residual gain scores using biserial correlations. In these anlyses, gain scores were treated as the continuous variable and teacher behavior as the dichotomous variable having an underlying assumed continuum. The dichotomy that was developed indicated whether or not the teacher had ever been observed to exhibit the relevant behavior. This procedure was employed because of the low frequencies of occurrence of the teacher behavior variables. The first pair of correlations focused on the relationship between the extent of small group instruction received by the children and their residual gain scores. The resulting coefficients were .20 and .24 for the classroom-dependent and classroom-independent gains, respectively. Both coefficients were not significant. The second pair of biserial correlations examined the relationship between teacher initiation and the respective residual gain scores. The resulting coefficients of .21 and .25 for the classroom-dependent and classroom-independent gains, respectively, also were not significant. Finally, teacher criticism was
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correlated with both gain scores. Here, a coefficient of - . 6 0 (df = 19, p < •01) was observed between giving criticism and classroom-dependent gain scores, whereas a coefficient of - .48 (df = 19, p < .05) was observed for the classroom independent gain scores• In other words, children who were criticized by their teachers had lower residual gain scores in reading achievement than LD children who were not criticized. DISCUSSION This investigation indicated several important points regarding the mainstreaming of high- and low-functioning learning disabled children. First, teachers did not differentiate between the high- and low-functioning children either with regard to academics or behavior, as measured by the teaching rating scale which was administered. Although high-IQ children were viewed as more academically capable and more behavioral problematic, the results were not statistically significant. Second, although the parametric analyses did not reveal any significant differences in teachers' behavior toward the high- and low-functioning learning disabled children, the overall pattern of teacher behavior on the variables selected did indicate that differences were evident. To illustrate, we observed only a single instance of small group or individualized instruction directed toward highIQ LD children; on the other hand, 53 instances of this teacher behavior were directed at the low-IQ children, although all 53 instances were directed at the same three children. The fact that the bulk of instruction occurs in whole class lessons replicates other data which indicated a similar pattern of teacher instruction in regular classes containing EMR children (Kaufman, Agard, & Semmel, in press)• Similarly, whereas six of the high-IQ children never received any initiation behavior from their teacher, only one low-IQ child ever did. Finally, teachers were less apt to critize low-IQ children than high-IQ children, a finding that was not significant by conventional standards, but certainly close enough to warrant more extensive examination (p < .06). Although the data did not confirm our hypothesis that low- and high-IQ children would be perceived differently and would receive different behavioral treatment by their teachers, the data did indicate that teachers did not ignore the low-functioning members of their classes• That is, it might have been expected that whatever differences in teachers' behavior did occur would have operated to the detriment of the lowest functioning members of the class• This was not the case, however• The data were consistent in their pattern that whatever behavioral differences arose favored the low-functioning children• Less criticism was directed toward low-functioning children, as were more attempts at small group or individualized instruction, and greater amounts of teacher initiations. It is apparent that the direction of teacher behavior consistently favoring lowfunctioning LD children over high-functioning LD children indicates that teachers do perceive differences between them, but our measure of teachers' perceptions,
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J. Gottlieb, B. Gottlieb, L. Schmelkin, and R. Curci
which did not detect these differences, may have been the result of the way we scored the rating scale. Each teacher who came in contact with an LD child was asked to complete the questionnaire. Each teacher's ratings were then weighed equally in the derivation of the final score for a child. We did not, however, conduct equal numbers of observations in each class. Consequently, there was not a direct one-to-one correspondence between the teacher ratings and observations of their behavior. Despite the additional teacher attention that was observed directed toward the low-IQ children, the data also indicated that the low-IQ LD children achieved significantly lower than high-IQ children on standardized achievement test scores when scored in the conventional way, i.e., not residualizing at the class level. There are a number of reasons for this finding. First, despite the fact that lowIQ children received many more instances of small group or individualized instruction, the fact remains that only three of the low-IQ children received instruction in small groups. Further, the correlation between small group instruction and achievement gains was low and not at all useful for predictive purposes. Second, the correlation between pre- and posttest scores explained the bulk of the variance in achievement (64% for the present data base) and our observational measures were not sufficiently sensitive to pick up significant amounts of the remaining variance. We did observe a sizeable correlation between criticism and residual gain scores, indicating that children who were criticized less frequently achieved the highest gains in reading achievement. To the extent that these data are replicable in larger scale studies, they suggest that regular class teachers who accept mainstreamed students should be instructed not to criticize the handicapped pupils. The fact that we observed significant positive correlations between misbehavior and residual achievement gains corroborates that the high-achieving LD pupils are classified as LD for behavioral reasons to a greater extent than the low-IQ LD children. In spite of the fact that both teacher referral records and the observational data confirmed that high-IQ children are more apt to be behavioral problems, we did not observe substantial differences in teachers' behavior relative to behavior management techniques. Overall, the data reported here suggest that for many low-IQ children, the amount of special education assistance they are receiving--one period daily in the resource r o o m - - i s not sufficient to enable them to keep abreast of their classmates. Furthermore, with the exception of criticism, we were unable to detect meaningful relationships between small group instruction, which occurred very infrequently, and residual gain scores. REFERENCES Chaikin, A., Sigler, E., Deflega, V. Nonverbal mediators of teacher expectancy effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1974, 30(1), 144-149.
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Duncan, M., & Biddle, B. The study of teaching. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974. Given, B. Teacher expectancy and pupil performance: Their relation to verbal and non-verbal communications by teachers of learning disabled children (Doctoral dissertation, Catholic University of America, 1974). Dissertation Abstracts International, 1974, 1529-A. Kaufman, M. J., Agard, J. A., & Semmel, M. I. Mainstreaming: Learners and their environments. Baltimore, MD: University Park Press, in press. Kester, S., & Letchworth, G. Communication of teacher expectations and their effects on achievement and attitudes of secondary school students. Journal of Education Reserach, 1972, 66, 5155. Page, S. Social interaction and experimenter effects in the verbal conditioning experiment. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 1971, 25, 463-475. Tucker, J. A. Ethnic proportions in classes for the learning disabled: Issues in non-biased assessment. Journal of Special Education, 1980. 14, 93-105.
0270-4684/83/010059-11503.00/0 Copyright © 1983 Pergamon Press Ltd
Low- and High-IQ Learning Disabled Children in the Mainstream Jay Gottlieb New York University
Barbara W. Gottlieb Herbert H. Lehman College
Liora Pedhazur Schmelkin Hofstra University
Richard Curci New York University
Nine low-lQ (<80) and 12 high-IQ (100 + ) children who had been classified by the schools as learning disabled (LD) and who attended resource room programs were observed during their participation in regular classes. Data were collected on teachers" perceptions of the LD children, teachers' behavior toward the children, and on the children's academic achievement. Results indicated that teachers did not perceive the two groups of LD children differently but that the teachers behaved differently toward the two groups. Finally, the high-lQ children gained significantly more than the low-lQ children in reading achievement.
This research was supported in part by Grant No. G008001868 from the Office of Special Education and Grant No. N I E - G - 8 0 - 0 0 6 9 from the National Institute of Education to the first author. Reprints may be obtained from Jay Gottlieb, Department of Educational Psychology, New York University. 59
60
J. Gottlieb, B. Gottlieb, L. Schmelkin, and R. Curci
For a variety of reasons, the incidence of educable mentally retarded (EMR) children in the public schools has been shrinking during the past several years. The fact that minority group children were disproportionately classified as EMR, the changes in definitional criteria that have been made, the stigma that was alleged to be associated with the label "mentally retarded," the demonstrated failure of special classes to improve EMR children's academic achievement beyond what could be produced without special education, and the fear of expensive, time-consuming litigation, have combined to motivate school personnel to be extremely cautious in classifying children as mentally retarded. The decrease in the prevalence of EMR children has been marked by a corresponding increase in the number of children identified as learning disabled (LD). Tucker (1980) illustrated how, since 1973, there has been an increase in the number of children identified as learning disabled and a corresponding decrease in the number of children identified as EMR. Furthermore, the greatest relative decrease in children identified as EMR and the greatest relative increase in those identified as LD occurred for minority children. Overall, it appears that unless school-based classifiers have developed new and more sensitive diagnostic instruments during the past few years, it must be concluded that many minority group children who would have been classified as EMR are now being classified as LD. It should come as no surprise that the rapidity of the conversion from EMR to LD classifications was not based on empirical evidence that these classifications were in the best interests of the children. A major question arises now as to the educational consequences for low-functioning children who have been classified and educated as LD. The present report is the first in a series dealing with the educational experiences of learning disabled children during the time they spend in the regular classroom, the placement that consumes approximately 85% of the time they spend in educational activities. In this report we are focusing on the educational attainments of two groups of children, both of whom were classified by the schools as learning disabled: (1) low-IQ children (<80) who we are assuming would have been classified as EMR a few years ago; and (2) high-IQ children (100+) who undoubtedly would have been given the same label then as they were given now. The specific variables on which we will report are: (1) teachers' perceptions of the academic ability and behavior of the two groups of children; (2) teachers' ongoing instructional behavior toward these children; and (3) the children's relative academic achievement gains as determined by scores on schoolwide standardized testing. A comparison of teachers' perceptions and behavior toward low- and highIQ learning disabled children allows us not only to address the very practical concern of children's educational experiences in the mainstream, on which little data are presently available, it also enables us to examine several theoretically important issues that have traveled the special education circuit for the past decade. One major theoretical issue in this regard is the relative impact of a
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J. Gottlieb, B. Gottlieb, L. Schmelkin, and R. Curci
due to the considerable effort that has been directed at a national level to familiarize teachers with the desirability of educating handicapped children in contact with their nonhandicapped peers. To the extent that teachers perceive those children as "different," the teachers may not be threatened by the inability of these children to progress despite their best efforts at instruction. Thus, the alternative hypothesis is that low-IQ children will receive more instructional attention from the teacher than the high-IQ children. The final purpose of this report was to compare the academic achievement gains of the two groups of LD children, and to relate the gains to teachers' perceptions and behavior. Unlike many previous studies, the present investigators not only did not manipulate teachers' perceptions of children by providing bogus information, but employed data from the standardized testing program (routinely administered by the school system) as the criterion of achievement. We did not administer or score any of the tests. Consequently, distortions in children's achievement scores that could have been attributed to experimenter-induced biases were absent in this research. To summarize, the purposes of this study are: (1) to compare regular class teachers' perceptions of the academic ability and social behavior of low- and high-IQ children classified as learning disabled; (2) to compare regular class teachers' instructional behavior toward the two groups of children; and (3) to compare the academic achievement gains of the two groups of pupils. As a corollary to the third purpose we also wished to relate achievement gains to teachers' perceptions and behavior. Method Subjects I
Twenty-one pupils in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades who had been classified by their schools as learning disabled and placed in resource room programs participated in this study. The 21 pupils were part of a larger sample of 38 who served as subjects for a larger study of mainstreaming effects. Of the 21, 9 in the subsample had IQ scores of under 80 (M = 73.78; SD = 4.71) and were designated as the low-IQ group. The remaining 12 pupils had IQ scores of 100 or higher (M = 103.92, SD = 3.57) and were designated as the high-IQ group. The remaining pupils had IQ scores between 80 and 99 and were excluded from the analyses being reported in this study. The low-IQ group was comprised of 4 males and 5 females. All 9 children were members of minority groups (7 black and 2 Hispanic). Of the nine pupils, 7 participated in the school's free lunch program, the indicator we employed to assess children's socioeconomic status. The high-IQ children were comprised of 7 males and 5 females. Three of the
Learning Disabled Children in the Mainstream
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"handicapped" label versus the behavior the child exhibits as influencing others' perceptions and behaviors. It has often been stated that labels are deleterious in that they create a self-fulfilling prophecy and contribute to low expectancies by teachers. Lowered expectancies are then translated by the teachers into observable behaviors which reinforce low-ability children's already depressed levels of achievement. An alternative hypothesis regarding the effects of labeling is that the child engages in behavior which is self-labeling. That is, regardless of the label that is applied when children engage in inappropriate behavior--either academic or social--the behavior serves to label the children and leads to low expectations and corresponding behavior by teachers. In the present research, a common label was applied by the schools to the low- and high-IQ children. Thus, any differences in the way that teachers perceived and behaved toward the children could not be explained by the deleterious impact of the label, but would have to be explained by differences in the behavior of the two groups. How do teachers perceive two such groups of learning disabled children? Although we are not aware of any data that have examined this issue, our general hypothesis is that teachers do perceive differences between the low- and highIQ children, with low-ability children accurately being perceived more poorly with respect to their academic capability. However, we anticipate that teachers' perceptions of high-IQ children's misbehavior will be poorer than they are for low-IQ children. Unlike low-IQ children, who are almost uniformly referred because they are unable to accommodate to the academic demands of the classroom, average-IQ children are as apt to be referred for social reasons as for academic ones, as revealed by the teachers' reasons for referral in the present sample. Just as there were two competing hypotheses regarding teachers' perceptions, two competing hypotheses may be advanced to predict the naturalistic classroom behavior of teachers toward low- and high-IQ learning disabled children in the mainstream. One possibility is that teachers tend to shun the lowest ability children. There is considerable evidence that low-achieving children are treated differently from high achievers with respect to number of smiles and the amount of eye contact they receive from their teachers (Chaikin et al., 1974; Page, 1971). Teachers also tend to exhibit a wide variety of nonverbal supportive behaviors to children whom they consider to be brighter (Kester & Letchworth, 1972). Finally, teachers are more willing to initiate instructional contacts with bright children than with low achievers (Given, 1974). There is an alternative hypothesis, however, namely, that the low-IQ children are sufficiently lower in ability than their classmates so that they evoke sympathetic responses from regular classroom teachers. The teachers, in turn, may try to provide these children with a disproportionate amount of direct instructional effort. These efforts may involve attempts to individualize instruction and/or involve the children in the activities of the regular classroom. The dispensation that we are suggesting may be given by regular class teachers could be in part
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children were members of a minority group (black). Five of the children participated in the free lunch program. The 21 pupils who participated in this study attended one of three schools in an urban school system. Within their schools the children attended one of 14 classrooms. Dependent Measures Three sets of dependent measures were employed for this study: (1) teachers' ratings of the LD pupils' academic and social behavior; (2) direct observations of teachers' behavior; and (3) standardized achievement test data. Teacher rating scale. A 15-item scale assessing teachers' perceptions of children's academic and social behavior was administered to all teachers who came in contact with one or more of the LD subjects. The 15-item instrument was reduced from an 88-item version that was developed as part of Project PRIME (Kaufman, Agard, & Semmel, in press). Factor analyses of the larger scale revealed two factors: academic concentration and misbehavior. Ten items were selected from the academic scale, and 5 from the misbehavior scale to comprise the 15-item instrument employed in this study. The reliability coefficients were .96 for both the academic and misbehavior scales. High scores reflected the scale names on both factors, i.e., a high score indicated the child misbehaved and/or was perceived positively for academics. Direct observation of teachers and children. One purpose of the larger study of mainstreaming, of which the present research is part, involved the direct observation of regular classroom teachers and their mainstreamed learning disabled pupils. Three teacher behavior variables are being reported in this reserach: (1) the extent to which the classroom teacher instructed the LD children in small groups or individually (other than whole-class groups); (2) the frequency with which the teacher initiated an interaction with the children; and (3) the frequency with which teacher provided feedback in the form of criticism to the children. These three variables are viewed by us as indications of the extent to which the teachers attempt to provide special instructional assistance to the LD children in the classroom and/or to involve the children in the academic flow of the class. Reliability for these variables was established as part of the larger set of 37 behaviors which were observed for the major study, Reliability of the larger set of behavioral variables was done over a 6 - w e e k period for approximately 10 hours a week. Employing the reliability formula of agreement of occurrences, divided by the sum of agreements and disagreements or occurrences, the reliability coefficients for the three variables being reported here was .91, .80, and .90 for part-class instruction, teacher initiation, and feedback, respectively.
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Standardized achievement tests. Pre- and posttest achievement scores from the
Stanford Achievement Test were obtained from the testing program administered by the school system during November and May. Scaled scores in reading served as the measure of interest. Procedures
Between February and June of the school year, observations were conducted in 18 regular classes containing mainstreamed LD children. Data from 14 of these classes are being reported here. Ten-second, whole-interval sequential observations were made in which an observer recorded first the behavior of the teacher, then of the student, then of the teacher once again. A 10-second recording period followed each 10-second observation session on an alternating basis. All observations were conducted during the morning, with each class being observed for six 20-minute periods. At the conclusion of the observations, which were made with the voluntary cooperation of the regular education teachers, each teacher who instructed the LD child for any portion of the school day was asked to complete the Teacher Rating Scale for that child. All teachers who volunteered to have their classes observed also willingly completed the questionnaires. Standardized achievement data as well as background data on the child were made available by the school system. All achievement and background data were obtained after the completion of observational data collection. Consequently, the status of the children on any of the relevant characteristics was not a biasing factor during the observation sessions. RESULTS Although multivariate comparisons between the low- and high-IQ children would have been the more desirable analytic plan, the small sample size of this study precluded that approach. Instead, univariate analyses were conducted for each dependent measure. Analysis of the Teacher Rating Scale factors, academic concentration and misbehavior, failed to reveal any significant differences in teachers' perceptions of the low-IQ and high-IQ children. T values o f . 80 for the academic scale and 1.45 for the misbehavior scale emerged from these anlyses. Means and standard deviations for these and other variables appear in Table 1. Analyses of the teacher behavior variables also failed to detect significant differences toward low- and high-IQ learning disabled children. With respect to the number of times that teachers taught the two groups, either in small groups or individual lessons, the mean for the low-lQ group was 5.89 (SD = 10.89) while the corresponding mean for the high-IQ group was .08 (SD --- .28). The resulting t value was 1.60. These data may be illustrated somewhat differently,
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TABLE 1 Means and Standard Deviations for Variables
Variable Academic Concentration Misbehavior Small Group Instruction Teacher Initiation Feedback(criticism) Achievement Pretest (in scaled scores) Achievement Posttest (in scaled scores) Achievement (Standardized Residual Gain)
Low-IQ Group (N = 9) 19.22 25.22 5.89 4.78 .56 131.44 145.83 -.49
High-IQGroup (N --- 12)
(8.03) 22.35 (8,44) (10.93) 31.90 (11.61) (10.98) .08 (0.28) (3.68) 3.92 (3.88) (0.83) 1.42 (1.32) (14.86) 137.44 (12.02) (18.61) 159.00 (16.98) (1.06) .11 (1.06)
however, by indicating that in only a single instance did we observe a high-IQ child being instructed in a small group or individual lesson. For the low-IQ group the picture was somewhat different. We observed a total of 53 instances of small group and/or individual lessons distributed across three of the nine pupils. The remaining six pupils received only whole-class instruction. With respect to teacher initiations to the low- and high-IQ LD children, again no significant differences were found (t = 1.21, df = 19, p = NS). Here, too, however, differences between the means were substantial, as can be seen from Table 1. More fine-grained analysis of these data indicated that 6 of the 12 highIQ children never received an initiation from their teacher. Only 1 low-IQ child failed to receive any initiating behavior from the teacher. Teachers' feedback toward LD children yielded a t value of 1.83 (df = 19, p < .06). Inspection of the means for the high- and low-IQ groups indicated that teachers gave almost three times as much criticism to the high IQ group as to the low IQ group. Analyses of standardized achievement scores of high- and low-IQ students were conducted in two ways. First, in order to assess gains in reading between the low- and high-IQ groups, an analysis of covariance was computed with pretest reading scores covaried from posttest scores. Results of this analysis revealed a significant effect (F = 5.06, df = 1,18, p < .04). This analysis indicated that when the pretest scores were held constant, the high-IQ group gained more than the low-IQ group. Since we were also interested in the relationship between teachers' perceptions of and behavior toward the LD children and reading gains, we conducted an additional analysis of the reading data. This additional analysis was based on the assumption that teachers perceive any child in their class in relation to the class norm and not in relation to a national norm on which standardized achievement scores are based. In this second analysis of the achievement data, we were concerned with the LD children's growth in reading relative to that of their classmates, i.e., classroom-dependent gains. Unlike the more traditional analysis
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of reading that we reported in the previous paragraph, the present analysis examined the residual gain (or loss) of each LD child relative to the distribution of residual gain scores for his/her class as a whole. By calculating the" standard deviation of the residuals for the class, we were able to transform each LD child's residual into a normalized score and determine whether there were any significant differences in achievement gains between the two IQ groups relative to the gains posted by the classes as a whole. Inspection of Table 1, where the means and standard deviations are presented, indicates that the mean residual gain score for the low-IQ group (standardized to a mean of 0) was - .49, whereas the high-IQ group had a mean o f . 11. The resulting t value was not statistically significant (t = 1.29, df = 19, p = NS). Stated somewhat differently, the low-IQ group gained, on the average, approximately 1/2 of a standard deviation less than their classmates while the high-IQ children gained about 1/1o of a standard deviation more than their classmates. Seven of the 9 low-IQ pupils had negative gain scores while 7 of the 12 highIQ pupils had positive gain scores. The final set of analyses focused on the nature of correlations among the two residual gain scores in achievement, which we computed (the class-dependent and class-independent gain scores), and the perception and observation variables which were described previously. Teacher perceptions of the LD children's academic concentration and the classroom-dependent residual gains correlated .53 (df = 19, p < .02), whereas the identical teacher perception data correlated .43 (df = 19, p < .05) with the classroom independent gain scores. When the two coefficients were tested for statistically significant differences between them, none emerged (z = .25). Interestingly, teachers' perceptions of LD pupils' misbehavior also correlated significantly with both classroom-dependent and classroom-independent residual scores. The former coefficient being .46 (p < .05) and the latter coefficient being .51 (p < .02). Teacher behavior variables of interest were correlated with the two residual gain scores using biserial correlations. In these anlyses, gain scores were treated as the continuous variable and teacher behavior as the dichotomous variable having an underlying assumed continuum. The dichotomy that was developed indicated whether or not the teacher had ever been observed to exhibit the relevant behavior. This procedure was employed because of the low frequencies of occurrence of the teacher behavior variables. The first pair of correlations focused on the relationship between the extent of small group instruction received by the children and their residual gain scores. The resulting coefficients were .20 and .24 for the classroom-dependent and classroom-independent gains, respectively. Both coefficients were not significant. The second pair of biserial correlations examined the relationship between teacher initiation and the respective residual gain scores. The resulting coefficients of .21 and .25 for the classroom-dependent and classroom-independent gains, respectively, also were not significant. Finally, teacher criticism was
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correlated with both gain scores. Here, a coefficient of - . 6 0 (df = 19, p < •01) was observed between giving criticism and classroom-dependent gain scores, whereas a coefficient of - .48 (df = 19, p < .05) was observed for the classroom independent gain scores• In other words, children who were criticized by their teachers had lower residual gain scores in reading achievement than LD children who were not criticized. DISCUSSION This investigation indicated several important points regarding the mainstreaming of high- and low-functioning learning disabled children. First, teachers did not differentiate between the high- and low-functioning children either with regard to academics or behavior, as measured by the teaching rating scale which was administered. Although high-IQ children were viewed as more academically capable and more behavioral problematic, the results were not statistically significant. Second, although the parametric analyses did not reveal any significant differences in teachers' behavior toward the high- and low-functioning learning disabled children, the overall pattern of teacher behavior on the variables selected did indicate that differences were evident. To illustrate, we observed only a single instance of small group or individualized instruction directed toward highIQ LD children; on the other hand, 53 instances of this teacher behavior were directed at the low-IQ children, although all 53 instances were directed at the same three children. The fact that the bulk of instruction occurs in whole class lessons replicates other data which indicated a similar pattern of teacher instruction in regular classes containing EMR children (Kaufman, Agard, & Semmel, in press)• Similarly, whereas six of the high-IQ children never received any initiation behavior from their teacher, only one low-IQ child ever did. Finally, teachers were less apt to critize low-IQ children than high-IQ children, a finding that was not significant by conventional standards, but certainly close enough to warrant more extensive examination (p < .06). Although the data did not confirm our hypothesis that low- and high-IQ children would be perceived differently and would receive different behavioral treatment by their teachers, the data did indicate that teachers did not ignore the low-functioning members of their classes• That is, it might have been expected that whatever differences in teachers' behavior did occur would have operated to the detriment of the lowest functioning members of the class• This was not the case, however• The data were consistent in their pattern that whatever behavioral differences arose favored the low-functioning children• Less criticism was directed toward low-functioning children, as were more attempts at small group or individualized instruction, and greater amounts of teacher initiations. It is apparent that the direction of teacher behavior consistently favoring lowfunctioning LD children over high-functioning LD children indicates that teachers do perceive differences between them, but our measure of teachers' perceptions,
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which did not detect these differences, may have been the result of the way we scored the rating scale. Each teacher who came in contact with an LD child was asked to complete the questionnaire. Each teacher's ratings were then weighed equally in the derivation of the final score for a child. We did not, however, conduct equal numbers of observations in each class. Consequently, there was not a direct one-to-one correspondence between the teacher ratings and observations of their behavior. Despite the additional teacher attention that was observed directed toward the low-IQ children, the data also indicated that the low-IQ LD children achieved significantly lower than high-IQ children on standardized achievement test scores when scored in the conventional way, i.e., not residualizing at the class level. There are a number of reasons for this finding. First, despite the fact that lowIQ children received many more instances of small group or individualized instruction, the fact remains that only three of the low-IQ children received instruction in small groups. Further, the correlation between small group instruction and achievement gains was low and not at all useful for predictive purposes. Second, the correlation between pre- and posttest scores explained the bulk of the variance in achievement (64% for the present data base) and our observational measures were not sufficiently sensitive to pick up significant amounts of the remaining variance. We did observe a sizeable correlation between criticism and residual gain scores, indicating that children who were criticized less frequently achieved the highest gains in reading achievement. To the extent that these data are replicable in larger scale studies, they suggest that regular class teachers who accept mainstreamed students should be instructed not to criticize the handicapped pupils. The fact that we observed significant positive correlations between misbehavior and residual achievement gains corroborates that the high-achieving LD pupils are classified as LD for behavioral reasons to a greater extent than the low-IQ LD children. In spite of the fact that both teacher referral records and the observational data confirmed that high-IQ children are more apt to be behavioral problems, we did not observe substantial differences in teachers' behavior relative to behavior management techniques. Overall, the data reported here suggest that for many low-IQ children, the amount of special education assistance they are receiving--one period daily in the resource r o o m - - i s not sufficient to enable them to keep abreast of their classmates. Furthermore, with the exception of criticism, we were unable to detect meaningful relationships between small group instruction, which occurred very infrequently, and residual gain scores. REFERENCES Chaikin, A., Sigler, E., Deflega, V. Nonverbal mediators of teacher expectancy effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1974, 30(1), 144-149.
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Duncan, M., & Biddle, B. The study of teaching. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974. Given, B. Teacher expectancy and pupil performance: Their relation to verbal and non-verbal communications by teachers of learning disabled children (Doctoral dissertation, Catholic University of America, 1974). Dissertation Abstracts International, 1974, 1529-A. Kaufman, M. J., Agard, J. A., & Semmel, M. I. Mainstreaming: Learners and their environments. Baltimore, MD: University Park Press, in press. Kester, S., & Letchworth, G. Communication of teacher expectations and their effects on achievement and attitudes of secondary school students. Journal of Education Reserach, 1972, 66, 5155. Page, S. Social interaction and experimenter effects in the verbal conditioning experiment. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 1971, 25, 463-475. Tucker, J. A. Ethnic proportions in classes for the learning disabled: Issues in non-biased assessment. Journal of Special Education, 1980. 14, 93-105.