Equity and Opportunity in Intervention Research—Intervention in Context: Introduction to the Special Series

Abstract

Despite decades of intervention research on what works to improve the outcomes of students with learning disabilities or learning difficulties (e.g., Gersten et al., 2009; Swanson et al., 1999), opportunity gaps and achievement gaps remain most pronounced for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students with learning disabilities or learning difficulties (U.S. Department of Education & National Center for Education Statistics, 2019). Furthermore, CLD students are disproportionately present and underrepresented in intervention research (Artiles et al., 1997; Lindo, 2006; Pierce et al., 2014; Reed et al., 2012) and therefore experience inequities in both access and achievement outcomes. Inequities in education access and outcomes for CLD students with learning disabilities or learning difficulties have been an area of concern for decades. In their seminal work that looked at empirical studies involving students with learning disabilities over a 22-year period (1972– 1994), Artiles et al. (1997) found alarmingly low rates of publications on identifiable diverse groups. Artiles et al. also found that the majority of these studies focused less on intervention but more on assessment, testing, and placement, and the studies lacked methodological rigor. Vasquez and colleagues (2011) replicated the work of Artiles et al. and found that although there were increases in the proportion of articles reporting ethnic minority information, gaps existed in the knowledge of evidence-based practices for CLD students with learning disabilities. Recently, Reed et al. (2012) argued that because of the scarcity of studies that included and/or reported participant characteristics or disaggregated findings by race and ethnicity, it was not possible to know whether evidence-based interventions were generalizable and valid for middle school–level CLD students with reading disabilities. The glaring paucities of CLD students with learning disabilities or difficulties in intervention research prompted the authors to call for more empirical studies that included CLD students, and to more intentionally attend to students’ sociocultural characteristics and backgrounds in the development, implementation, and validation of evidence-based practices. In this special series, we underscore the calls for improving the quality and quantity of intervention research that includes CLD students with learning difficulties and learning disabilities. We have a specific focus in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and STEMrelated intervention access and achievement for CLD students with learning disabilities or learning difficulties. The turn of the 21st century brought with it the expectations for a differently trained workforce in STEM-related careers and the recognition of a severe shortage of talented and diverse persons to fill positions in those careers. The need for a diverse workforce that is skilled in scienceand mathematics-related fields is ever rising, and the underachievement in these subjects among CLD students remains problematic for educators, researchers, and policy makers (Davis, 2014; Jackson & Wilson, 2012; Ladson-Billings, 1997; Sorrells et al., 2014; Walker, 2007; Zilanawala et al., 2018). Too many CLD students with learning disabilities or learning difficulties have yet to show significant and equitable achievement gains in mathematics and science, which is problematic considering that these students too represent an untapped, yet needed, talent pool that can contribute to the STEM workforce. It is imperative, therefore, to understand better how CLD students perform in mathematics and science and the extent to which they experience equitable opportunities and access to evidence-based interventions to improve academic achievement in these subjects. Two papers included in this special series concern outcomes of CLD students with learning disabilities or learning difficulties in the STEM-related area, namely, mathematics and science. The first paper by Powell, Urrutia, Berry, and Barnes explored the association between word problem solving performance and quality of verbal explanation of problem solution (e.g., accuracy in identifying the operation, accuracy in identifying the correct numbers within the problems, and types of vocabulary and terms) and how this association differed between English speakers (non-ELs) and English learners (ELs). Powell et al. pointed to an important issue related to math language acquisition and how fluency in math language can attribute to a deeper 937448 LDQXXX10.1177/0731948720937448Learning Disability QuarterlySorrells and Dennis research-article2020