Instructional Design For Students With Learning Disabilities

To remove barriers for students with learning disabilities, instructional design should include both behaviorist and constructivist theories. Past research, including research in both science and mathematics, support the use of both behaviorism and constructivism for students with learning disabilities. Because of the way these students learn, there are positive and negative qualities for both these theories. Students with learning disabilities often have processing, attention, and memory problems. Behaviorist teaching activities provide structure and predictability. In addition, this teaching theory provides students with time for practice and overlearning. Students need strategies, to be able to read text books and memorize facts. Constructivist teaching activities provide students with meaningful activities that allow students to connect concrete ideas to the abstract. This style of learning also motivates students and makes them excited to learn. Without support, students with learning disabilities can become overwhelmed or construct incorrectly. In this environment, teachers need to support

It is important to teach low achieving students strategies to use because they do not typically have good problem solving abilities (Montague, 2003). Constructivist teaching methods can keep students to be engaged, which can increase learning and with coaching, support high-ordered thinking. Similarly, teachers who use constructivist methods with unstructured activities or active reasoning strategies that are too difficult, without strategies to help students master vocabulary and facts, may have students who are frustrated and develop negative attitudes. In addition, constructivism methods may not be paced quickly enough to match the content required by state and local standards (Scruggs & Mastropieri,