David A. Koppenhaver

• Ph.D.
• Professor Emeritus at Appalachian State University

This chapter provides a model for professional development (PD) for writing instruction merging content focus, active learning opportunities, sustained participation, and collective engagement with a practicum model comprised of social constructivist practices of learning communities and coaching in order to maximally strengthen teachers' capacity...

More than 800,000 students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are served in U.S. public schools, a number that has increased annually for almost 20 years since Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) included ASD as an eligibility category. These students often experience widespread and persistent reading comprehension challenges. A sys...

Shared storybook reading offers a potentially rich context for supporting language and communication development in students with severe intellectual disabilities and complex communication needs. Following the framework of community-engaged scholarship, the research team responded to a request for assistance from a special education teacher who sou...

Current special education research involving children labeled with significant intellectual and developmental disabilities (SIDD) has been based on ideologies that frame teaching and learning as the training of children to perform behaviors intended to mediate medical impairments and maximize children’s life skills (Anzul et al. in Exceptional Chil...

Literacy improves lives—and with the right instruction and supports, all students can learn to read and write.That's the core belief behind this teacher-friendly handbook, your practical guide to providing comprehensive, high–quality literacy instruction to students with significant disabilities. Drawing on decades of classroom experience, the auth...

For most children, emergent reading experiences begin in the home where they see print, see and hear others reading and using print, and engage in interactions with print (Teale & Sulzby, 1986). For decades it has been clear that many children with significant disabilities are emergent readers because they had fewer (Marvin & Mirenda, 1993) and dif...

Many students who have experienced complex trauma receive special education services related to emotional and behavioral disorders at residential treatment facilities (RTFs) as they undergo therapy. One academic skill in which students with emotional and behavioral disorders often struggle is writing. The current multi-probe, multiple-baseline, acr...

Qualitative research methods, in many forms, have been used to deepen understandings in the field of severe disabilities for decades. Using methods such as individual case studies, grounded theory, phenomenology, content analysis, life history, and ethnography, qualitative research has served to explain bounded systems, generate theory, study the l...

This article discusses the importance of making available in classrooms a range of children's literature offering authentic and meaningful representations of characters with disabilities. The focus is not only on reading inclusive literature with typically developing students but also on the importance of making inclusive literature available to st...

The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate how the techniques of a comprehensive, conventional reading instructional approach can be modified for children with severe speech and physical impairments who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). In this chapter, we describe the whole-to-part model of silent reading comprehension (Cunn...

This article reports on a study of K-12 teachers' responses to an innovative flipped professional development series focused on literacy instruction. Thirty-six participants voluntarily enrolled in one or more of three professional development courses. Findings address teacher evaluation of the efficacy of both the structure and the content of the...

In this article, the limited progress of four students who participated in a pilot study of a phonics intervention is analyzed. The students, who had a diagnosis of Down syndrome and moderate to severe intellectual disabilities, received research-based instruction over a period of five weeks. After analyzing the scientific basis and fidelity of the...

Community-engaged scholarship places an emphasis on addressing issues of public concern and building capacity in individuals and organizations while testing theory or evaluating practice. In the study reported here, a public school speech and language pathologist contacted a university reading professor to express her concern about the reading diff...

Review of the research. Largely word study examined through behavioral approaches.

This chapter reports on the writing achievement, writing-related metacognition and motivation of students with learning difficulties. The students were in the middle years of schooling (Years 5, 6 and 7 in primary school and Years 8 and 9 in English in high school). The study examined how the students performed at pre-implementation, post-implement...

Writing is a recursive and complex set of cognitive processes that can be taught effectively to students with disabilities. Employing an adapted cognitive theory of writing, a broad view of what constitutes evidence, and the support of a variety of assistive and internet-based technologies, we developed a writing instructional program to meet the n...

Studies addressing the cognitive processes of writing (i.e., planning, translating, reviewing, monitoring) as applied to individuals with complex communication needs were reviewed. Studies meeting inclusion criteria were identified through searching multiple electronic databases and summarized according to participants, cognitive process(es) addres...

Social studies educators are responsible for successfully teaching students the knowledge, skills, and values necessary to be effective citizens. The National Council for the Social Studies urges educators to design technology-enhanced experiences that address social studies content and prepare students for effective citizenship. In this paper, we...

This paper is the text of the Don Johnston, Inc. Distinguished Lecture that was presented by the author at the Biennial ISAAC Conference in Dublin, Ireland in August 1998. In the lecture, the author makes the case that literacy is integral to the augmentative and alternative communication endeavor for people with severe speech and physical impairme...

In the current study, the validity of a task designed to assess the automatic word recognition skills of persons with complex communication needs was investigated. A total of 78 students without communication impairments in kindergarten through second grade completed a standard automatic word recognition task requiring oral reading of words present...

Children with severe and multiple disabilities constitute a heterogeneous population that typically experiences significant and lifelong difficulties in learning to read and write. These difficulties appear to be both intrinsic and environmental in nature. Children with severe and multiple disabilities struggle particularly with vocabulary acquisit...

Using Burbules (1993) model of pedagogical dialogue, the email interactions of two undergraduate elementary education majors and two students with severe communication disorders (one with autism spectrum disorders and one with Down syndrome) were analyzed. The full article is found online in the 2007 American Reading Forum Yearbook at http://tinyur...

This article examines teachers' knowledge and attitudes and their implementation of practices around the teaching of writing to students with developmental disabilities and learning difficulties in inclusive classrooms in the middle years (Years 6 to 9). As part of a larger study undertaken in Queensland, Australia, we used evidence from a range of...

This paper reports on one aspect of a larger study, the WriteIdeas project (van Kraayenoord, Moni, Jobling, Koppenhaver & Elkins, 2004), which is concerned with writing and middle school students (Years 6 and 7 in primary schools and Years 8 and 9 in the English curriculum area) who have developmental disabilities or learning difficulties and who a...

School-age students who use AAC need access to communication, reading, and writing tools that can support them to actively engage in literacy learning. They also require access to core literacy learning opportunities across grade levels that foster development of conventional literacy skills. The importance of the acquisition of conventional litera...

LEVELED BOOKS originally selected by or produced for use in Reading Recovery or its regular classroom initiative are now also widely used in regular and special classrooms having no affiliation with Reading Recovery. The frequent use of these leveled books in settings other than Reading Recovery raises an important question: Do books leveled for us...

We describe evidence and intervention strategies for parents, educators, and researchers who seek to enhance communication and literacy in children with Rett syndrome (RS). Four girls with RS and their mothers videotaped their storybook interactions at home for 4 months. Parent-child storybook interactions were coded for child behaviors (e.g., use...

An abstract is unavailable. This article is available as HTML full text and PDF.

Print materials, experiences, and writing technologies were introduced into a preschool classroom for children with autism spectrum disorders, including three 3-year-olds with severe communication impairments. The goal was to increase natural literacy learning opportunities and to explore the effects on children's emergent literacy behaviors and un...

In this study mother-child storybook reading was explored as a context within which to support early symbolic communication of girls with Rett syndrome. Baseline measures of mother-daughter interaction were gathered as mothers read familiar and unfamiliar storybooks with their daughters. Then three experimental interventions were studied in the hom...

Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) can play a pivotal role in fostering the acquisition of literacy skills in students using augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). SLPs have unique skills in the areas of vocabulary development, phonological processing, selection of graphical symbol systems, and knowledge of strategies for facilitating i...

Storybook reading provides a natural language learning context in which to support early symbolic communication. In this study, we explored the impact of (1) resting hand splints, (2) light tech augmentative communication systems such as voice-output devices and symbols, and (3) very basic parent training on the symbolic communication and labelling...

: Written language is a powerful vehicle that can transport individuals with developmental disabilities to richer participation and independence in social, academic, and employment environments. This article describes a cognitive process model of writing as it pertains to adolescents with developmental disabilities. It then attempts to synthesize w...

This study investigated decoding assessment from an onset-rime perspective, and consistent with an interactive model of cognitive constructs underlying silent reading comprehension. Participants were 128 first and second graders in a public elementary school. Two kinds of decoding items were examined: one-syllable words and nonwords, each comprised...

A case study is presented of an 11-year-old boy with multiple disabilities who uses DynaVox, a voice-output communication device with a touch screen display, in an inclusive classroom. The article discusses how to find the right technology for children with disabilities by evaluating the level of the text, instruction, and classroom. (CR)

This report presents results of a comprehensive review of the research on the improvement of reading comprehension for students with disabilities and is organized into two major sections, the first on learning disabilities and the second on low incidence disabilities. Section 1 is organized into seven chapters which cover: (1) an explanation of the...

This longitudinal case study examined the communication and literacy learning progress of an 11-year-old boy with severe speech and physical impairments related to cerebral palsy. Theoretically driven literacy assessments revealed unforeseen literacy capabilities. Integrated use of voice-output augmentative communication technology led to improved...

Review of the literature on literacy and adults with developmental disabilities commissioned by the National Center on Adult Literacy in 1994. Found large focus on word instruction employing behavioral approaches.

In this article, we have chosen to focus on instruction in conventional literacy (i.e., learning to read and write traditional orthography) for children with severe speech and physical impairments (SSPI). SSPI refers to persons with cerebral palsy, although our early experiences at the Carolina Literacy Center with individuals who have SSPI associa...

Recent research in emergent literacy has led to a conceptualization of literacy learning as a continuous process that begins at birth. Such a view has critical implications for children with developmental disabilities because it implies that the potential for written language learning is present in everyone. In this article, emergent literacy resea...

A retrospective survey was conducted to determine some of the childhood reading and writing experiences and shared personal characteristics of a group of 22 literate adults with congenital severe speech and physical impairments. Professionals in augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) conducted face-to-face interviews using a standard prot...

Resulting from an investigation of reading programs that refuse to tolerate acquiescence to the inevitability of reading failure, this book describes what works and why in adolescent literacy, through case studies and through observations gleaned from extensive literature searches and site visits. Chapters are as follows: (1) "Adolescent Illiteracy...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1991. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 98-119). Microfiche. s