Enhancing thinking and recall in African-American high school students with learning disabilities
Abstract
This study investigated whether high school (9th and 10th grade) African American students with learning disabilities would use Coached Elaboration to facilitate immediate and delayed recall of facts and related elaborative information and whether the Coached Elaboration condition would be more effective than the Provided Elaboration and Non-Elaboration conditions. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions. Thirty-seven African American students with learning disabilities were taught 19 facts about the differences between Blacks and Whites. Following individual instruction participants were given an immediate and delayed (one week later) test of recall of facts and elaborations. Overall, participants in the Coached Elaboration condition outperformed students in the Provided Elaboration and Non-Elaboration conditions on the recall of facts. On the recall of elaborations, participants in the Coached Elaboration condition (a) outperformed participants in immediate recall in the Non-Elaboration condition, but did not differ from the Provided Elaboration condition. On the delayed test of recall of elaborations, participants in the Coached Elaboration condition outperformed participants in the Provided Elaboration, who outperformed participants in the Non-Elaboration condition. Supplemental analyses showed that students in the Coached Elaboration condition required 3 prompts (68% of the time) before eliciting the target elaboration. Results of this study indicate that African American students with learning disabilities are able to retain more information when the Coached Elaboration strategy was in use. Furthermore, the results revealed that over time (a week later) the Coached Elaboration strategy remains superior to the Provided Elaboration and Non-Elaboration conditions.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Zentall, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Special education|Secondary education|Black studies|African American Studies
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