comparison of the writing products of students with learning disabilities in inclusive and resource room settings using different writing instruction approaches

The teaching of writing has become a major research focus in the field of education. In general education classrooms, the teaching of writing is increasingly being taught as a process, in which students write for authentic purposes and develop a community of writers. This study was designed to investigate the effects of teaching students with learning disabilities (LD) writing using four different instructional approaches. These approaches included a process-writing approach called Writers' Workshop, writing strategies, Writers' Workshop/strategies, and a skills-based model. This study also focused on the educational setting in which the student with LD was taught. A pull-out resource room (PO) or a self-contained classroom and an In-Class Direct (ICD) model called inclusion that provides educational services for students with disabilities in a general education classroom with their peers without disabilities. A total of 99 fourth grade students with LD from 15 different elementary schools in the Beach County, Florida School District participated in this study. Forty-three students were in the PO service delivery model and 56 were in the ICD delivery model. Twenty-seven students received strategies instruction, 24 received Writers' Workshop instruction, 21 received skills-based instruction and 27 received Writers' Workshop/strategies instruction. All subjects wrote a response to a narrative prompt from the Florida Writes! assessment for a pretest and posttest measure. The results of this study were analyzed using an ANCOVA design; the pretest score was the covariate. The instructional program was significant at the selected alpha level of.05; F\ (3)=5.022,\ p.05 and the interaction of educational setting with instructional program was non-significant, F\ (3)=2.109,\ p>.05. A Scheffe analysis was conducted and pairwise differences indicated that Writers' Workshop/strategies instructional program made a significant difference in the writing products of the students in this study. There was a significant difference in the results of the subjects who participated in the strategies model and the subjects who participated in the skills-based model.