g the particular applications of academic instruction that dovetail with the appropriate activities taught by vocational education teachers.
Ryan and Brewer (1990) found that, rather than using the traditional methods of motivating at-risk 10th-grade students to learn English, which is critical to successful transition to the work arena, other strategies were indicated. The motivation of students to learn not only English, but all academic course content, is based upon the five factors of the characteristics of the learner, the student's interest in a topic, the nature of the materials, the instructional methods used, and the characteristics of the teacher. The subjects consisted of 23 10th-grade at-risk students attending special education English, with all of them being assigned, first, to the old curriculum format and, second, to the new curriculum format. All students were given assignments as per usual in the old curriculum format. The students evidenced increased spelling scores at a range of +1 through +10, and reading scores at a range of +1 through +9. The students were then given the new curriculum format, which entailed the use of Manzo's ReQuest method, Raphael's Question/Answer Relationship method, vocabulary exercises, engagement in story mapping and framing, and scrapbook construction. The students evidenced increased spelling scores at a range of +5 through +20, and reading scores at a range of +2 through +30.
Schalock, Holl, Elliott, and Ross (1992) summarized the current employment status of 298 students who had been verified as either specific learning disabled (SLD) or mentally handicapped (MH), who graduated between 1979 and 1988 from a rural special education program. There were 189 SLD subjects (59 females and 130 males) and 109 MH subjects (34 females and 75 males). For the SLD subjects, the average Full Scale IQ was 92.4; while it was 62.8 for the MH subjects (p. 30). The subjects were taught us...