Impact of the design of U.S. history textbooks on content acquisition and academic engagement of special education students: an experimental investigation.
We used randomized controlled trials to compare the impact of the designs of 2 United States history textbooks on the content acquisition and behavior of 8th-grade students identified for special education services or identified as low achieving. We also investigated whether teachers differed in their use of instructional activities and questioning strategies based on the type of text used. Our findings suggest that students learned more history content, were more actively engaged, and answered more questions correctly when using the experimental textbook. Teachers used different activities depending on which textbook they used, but did not differ in types of questions asked.
Harniss
Mark K
MK
University of Washington, Seattle 98195, USA.
Caros
Jennifer
J
Gersten
Russell
R
D000124:Achievement; D000293:Adolescent; D003479:Curriculum; D004519:Education, Special; D006664:History; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D009444:Neuritis, Autoimmune, Experimental; D013334:Students; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods*; D013782:Textbooks as Topic / Q000592:standards*; D014481:United States