A STUDY OF PLANNING AND MATHEMATICS INSTRUCTION FOR STUDENTS WITH LEARNING-DISABILITIES

The purpose of this study was to extend research in training the use o f cognitive strategies or planning to mathematical computation for 4 s tudents with specific learning disabilities. A cognitive education met hod utilized in previous research was duplicated. It was expected that students would find the instruction differentially effective based up on their initial scores on a measure of planning. Using the Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, Successive model as a base, a cognitive instr uction which facilitated planning was provided to two students with lo w scores on planning, obtained using an experimental version of the Da s-Naglieri Cognitive Assessment System, and two students with average planning scores. All students completed three sessions of baseline and seven sessions of cognitive instruction in addition and multiplicatio n. During the cognitive instruction phase, 5-min. sessions of self-ref lection and verbalization of strategies about the mathematics problems were conducted after each initial 10-min. session of mathematics. Sco res on addition problems showed that all students improved. On multipl ication, however, 2 students with low planning scores improved conside rably but not 2 with higher planning scores. Implications are provided .