As a result of their cognitive, social/emotional and behavioral impairments, children with disabilities often exhibit learning and behavioral problems that undermine their learning performance in the classroom. These deficits interfere with their inability to attend to the teachers and complete their tasks. Furthermore, their low tolerance threshold for frustration and rigidities often prevent them from acquiring new knowledge and skills (Rock, Fessler, & Church, 1997). To address these issues confronted by educators of children with disabilities, researchers have identified variables that affect the learning performance of these children in the classroom. Essentially, by attending to these variables, educators will be able to improve the learning performance of these children.
One of the most important variables that need to be acknowledged by educators is that children with disabilities, even when they share the same diagnoses, are highly heterogeneous in their behaviors, interests, preferences and learning styles. Educators of children with disabilities must thus be able to respond to these students' unique characteristics and learning styles in order to provide the appropriate individualized supports and services. Only by providing the appropriate modifications and adaptations to the curriculum, which cohere with the learning profiles of the students, will the educators be successful in optimizing the students' learning performance (Hurth, Shaw, Izeman, Whaley, & Rogers, 1999).
Closely connected to the understanding of the heterogeneity of the students is the teaching styles utilized by educators of children with disabilities. In order to be able to enhance the performance of children with disabilities, educators must be able and willing to utilize a wide range of instructional approaches to help their students learn, in spite of their deficits. These approaches include pivotal response training (PRT) in which te...