This article was downloaded by: [McGill University Library]On: 22 November 2014, At: 12:17Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T3JH, UK

Reading & Writing Quarterly:Overcoming LearningDifficultiesPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/urwl20

AN INSTRUCTIONALMODEL FOR INTEGRATINGCONTENT‐AREA INSTRUCTIONWITH COGNITIVE STRATEGYINSTRUCTIONEdwin S. Ellis aa University of Alabama , Tuscaloosa, AlabamaPublished online: 16 Dec 2008.

To cite this article: Edwin S. Ellis (1994) AN INSTRUCTIONAL MODEL FORINTEGRATING CONTENT‐AREA INSTRUCTION WITH COGNITIVE STRATEGYINSTRUCTION, Reading & Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties, 10:1,63-90, DOI: 10.1080/1057356940100105

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1057356940100105

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of allthe information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on ourplatform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensorsmake no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy,completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views ofthe authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis.The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should beindependently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and

Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings,demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, inrelation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private studypurposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution,reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any formto anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and usecan be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

AN INSTRUCTIONAL MODEL FORINTEGRATING CONTENT-AREA INSTRUCTION

WITH COGNITIVE STRATEGY INSTRUCTION

Edwin S. EllisUniversity of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama

The limitations of treating learning strategy instruction and content-area sub-ject instruction as separate rather than integrated components of the curricu-lum when teaching students with learning difficulties are addressed. A discus-sion of the challenges related to providing more integrated instructionalformats follows. To address these challenges, a working instructional modelthat integrates two forms of scaffolded instruction is described within a contextof providing students constructivistic learning experiences.

Enabling students to build a substantial base of information so that theybecome knowledgeable, independent, and successfully functioning youngadults is a primary goal of most secondary content-area (health, science, socialstudies, etc.) classrooms. To reach this goal, students must be strategic prob-lem solvers who proactively analyze tasks, reflect on prior experiences andknowledge, set goals, select and use appropriate strategies for solving theproblems, and monitor the effectiveness of their problem-solving behaviors(Meichenbaum, 1983; Pressley et al., 1989; Wong, 1985a, 1985b). Likewise,students must perceive themselves to be capable learners who contribute inmeaningful ways to their own and others' learning experiences and have asignificant influence on their own lives (Glen & Nelson, 1987). Empoweringstudents with the cognitive skills to become more independent has been thefocus of considerable research in the past decade.

Central to the issue of enabling students with learning difficulties (LDstudents) to become more strategic is the manner in which they develop un-derstandings of what good information-processing skills are and how they areused. Moshman (1982) summarized three ways in which students can be leadto construct understandings: (a) the endogenous model, (b) the dialecticalmodel, and (c) the exogenous model. In the endogenous model, the educator'srole is to provide children opportunities to direct their learning experiencesthrough discovery and exploration. For example, students develop sophisti-cated understandings of cognitive strategies for writing and how to adapt themas a result of experimenting with strategies they already know as they writeand explore new ways to use them.

In the dialectical model, students are provided a dialogue that focuses onthe problem-solving process. Experts' and novices' understandings of the pro-cesses are revealed through the dialogue, and new understandings are gener-ated. In this model, social mediation is provided by the manner in which

Address correspondence to Edwin S. Ellis, P.O. Box 870231, University of Alabama,Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0231.

Reading & Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties, 10:63-90, 1994 63Copyright © 1994 Taylor & Francis

1057-3569/94 $10.00 + .00

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

64 E. S. ELLIS

teachers provide a form of scaffolded instruction (e.g., Palincsar & Brown,1984). Instead of explicitly telling students about specific processes, theymodel the use of these processes through their dialogue with students. Advo-cates of the dialectical model believe that a degree of prompting and guidanceis necessary from the teacher, but the teacher should avoid explicitly tellingstudents what to do and how to do it (Wood et al., 1976). Modeling evolves asteachers increase the degree of their collaboration with students and subse-quently decrease their input as students gradually take responsibility for theproblem-solving process. The scaffolding metaphor reflects the adjustable andtemporary nature of the support provided (Bos & Anders, 1990; Harris &Pressley, 1991; Wood et al., 1976).

The exogenous model of instruction provides students with a more directexplanation of information to be learned (e.g., Ellis et al., 1991; Roehler &Duffy, 1984). It also capitalizes on the power of socially mediated learning andprovides a form of scaffolded instruction. This model differs from the dialecti-cal model primarily in the manner in which the information processes arerevealed to students. Here, teachers' understandings of the specific processesand strategies are more explicitly communicated to students. Abstract, non-linear problem-solving processes are presented in a sometimes relatively con-crete and linear fashion (e.g., Nagel et al., 1986; Schumaker et al., 1984). Theconcrete representations serve as beginning points for understanding the stra-tegic processes. Making these processes explicit for many less capable studentsmay also involve communicating these processes both verbally and visually(e.g., providing students with a written version of the most significant steps ina task-specific strategy). Later, when the students' understanding of and abil-ity to self-regulate the strategic process are more sophisticated, the dialogueshifts away from concrete representations of strategic processes. Thus, as stu-dents' understanding of the strategic process changes, so does the nature of thescaffolded dialogue and coached practice. The process of learner imitation ofthe problem-solving behaviors modeled by others requires that students per-sonalize these behaviors. As such, the processes modeled by the expert areinterpreted in relation to learners' awareness of their own existing schema. Asstudents gain experience in performing the strategy, it becomes more person-alized and is performed in a more sophisticated and fluent manner. In short,students use the task-specific strategy provided by an expert as a basis forreconstructing and extending their own problem-solving schema.

Proponents of more holistic, discovery-oriented methods (see Poplin, 1988a;1988b) have criticized the use of more explicit instructional techniques in thebelief that they treat information processing too reductionalistically. They be-lieve that use of teacher-directed techniques prevents students from construct-ing personal understandings of the processes and generalizing and results inpoor motivation. Advocates of dialectal methods, such as reciprocal teaching,argue that explicit instruction underplays the role of social mediation in thelearning process and reduces opportunities for students to construct their ownunderstandings of information processing (Palincsar et al., 1989). Althoughmany constructivists view the Vygotskian dialectal notion (1978) as a new andinnovative way to view instruction, the social mediation notion has, in fact, been

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

INTEGRATED STRATEGY INSTRUCTION 65

around a long time and has been represented in other generic teaching modelsunder such common rubrics as guided or prompted practice (Bandura, 1986;Zimmerman & Schunk, 1989). Practically speaking, the emphasis betweendialectal scaffolded instruction and more exogenous forms of teaching differsmore in philosophical perspective than in what is actually done in a classroom.

Although the criticisms by opponents of exogenous models of teaching maybe appropriate in some cases, three realities exist. First, many students withLD are poor discoverers, and they require a great deal of practice coupled withmeaningful feedback in order to develop competence in using a skill (Harris &Pressley, 1991; Resnick, 1987). Thus holistic instruction designed to createopportunities for students to discover and refine their use of information-processing skills may be very inefficient as well as ineffective. To constructuseful meanings from new experiences, students must have reasonably welldeveloped schemas of related information with which to begin the understand-ing process (Resnick, 1987). Students with LD often have severely underde-veloped information-processing schemas (Wong, 1985b) and therefore are poordiscoverers of new skills. Moreover, incorporating a new skill into a repertoireof problem-solving tactics requires experimentation and practice using it ef-fectively. Students must actively work at honing the skill—a practice thatrequires attention, monitoring, and reflection. Because many students withLD lack these honing skills (Wong, 1985b) and because many lack the short-term memory capability to perform these processes effectively (Swanson,1988), the recursive feedback loop of using a skill, monitoring its effectiveness,refining it, and reusing it is often impaired. Thus, discovery-oriented practiceby many students with LD may not produce refinement in the skill, but ratherentrenchment of ineffective application of it as well as stronger committmentsto ineffective and inefficient strategies.

Second, instruction in information-processing skills is best presentedwithin real learning contexts where these skills are naturally used to facilitatestudents' attainment of learning and performing goals (Pressley et al., 1989).Although dialectal forms of scaffolded instruction offer promising results whenapplied to small groups of students (Palincsar & Brown, 1984), this form ofinstruction has practical limitations when applied to larger groups of students(i.e., mainstream content-area classes). Traditional school settings are simplynot conducive to the amount of scrutiny required by teachers to monitor stu-dents' individual understandings and tailor individual dialogues to students'developmental zones. This is particularly true when the acquisition of content-area knowledge, rather than development of information-processing skills, isthe primary driver of instruction, as is so often the case in secondary content-area classes (Brophy, 1984; D. S. Brown, 1988; Clark & Peterson, 1986; Schu-maker & Deshler, 1988).

Third, ideas that reflect the extremes of a philosophical continuum arerarely consistent with what is most often found in real human experience.Thus I believe that effective instruction in information-processing skills is notpurely discovery or dialogic or direct explanation. Rather, it is an orchestrationof all of these instructional processes, as well as many others, at the righttimes. Strategy instruction should be integrated with content instruction, and

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

66 E. S. ELLIS

this integration should be accomplished in a manner that is efficient andeffective, maximizes opportunities for social mediation and discovery, and isconducive to the practical realities of content-area classes. In this article, Isummarize a number of issues based on my own research, my understandingof the literature, as well as my personal observations of teachers of strategiesand content subjects. An instructional framework that is conducive to teachers'integrating these instructional orientations while teaching both strategies andcontent subjects in an integrative manner is presented.

The format of the instructional framework emerged gradually from mywork with 21 secondary mainstream content-area teachers of practical-levelstudents with various forms of learning difficulties and 8 special educationresource teachers who informally experimented with the various techniquesdescribed in this article. I conducted informal observations in their classroomsand held extensive dialogues with them (both with individual teachers andwith small groups of teachers) and, to a less extent, with their students. Thesedialogues addressed how they perceived strategy instruction and its role incontent-area classes, what they were doing to this end, and their perceptionsof what they were doing. These observations and dialogues occurred over aperiod of 2 years. I also participated in team teaching with one of the content-area teachers and one of the special education teachers in their respectiveclassrooms. In addition, one of the special education teachers participated inteam teaching with one of the mainstream content-area teachers as they ex-perimented with the techniques addressed in this paper. These observationsand dialogues did not occur within a context of a formal research study; rather,they occurred as a function of teachers' being interested in more effectivelymeeting the needs of students with learning problems and in enhancing theirown professional growth.

ISSUES

Strategy-related instructional interventions involving adolescents with LDhave typically used one of two approaches. Strategy instruction has beentreated either (a) as a curriculum or (b) as a means of delivering a curriculumin a manner that will promote retention of the information (Pressley et al.,1987a). When treated as a curriculum, the specific strategies to be taught formthe curriculum. This approach is based on the assumption that empoweringstudents to use these strategies will enable them to meet the demands of schoolsettings; if students master the strategies curriculum, they will more success-fully learn content-area curriculum (social studies, science, etc). In this ap-proach, students with learning problems might be taught a task-specific strat-egy for identifying to-be-learned lists of information from textbooks andcreating first-letter mnemonic devices for these lists (Nagel et al., 1986); theymight be taught a different strategy for increasing comprehension of text. Thestrategy curriculum is typically accompanied by a specific instructional modelfor teaching the strategies (Ellis et al., 1991). In this approach, learning strat-egies might be taught in one setting (e.g., special education class), while the

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

INTEGRATED STRATEGY INSTRUCTION 67

content-area curriculum is taught in a different setting (e.g., social studiesclass).

The focus of the second type of strategy-based intervention is on strategi-cally enhancing the content-area curriculum. Here, the to-be-learned contentinformation is taught in a manner that results in students' more readily un-derstanding and remembering it. For example, three different ways to enhancethe content information would be for the teachers to (a) identify an importantto-be-learned list of information, construct a first-letter mnemonic device forthe list, and then show students the mnemonic device while teaching thecontent; (b) paraphrase for students the important main ideas and concepts ofthe text; and (c) construct graphic organizers depicting the information formatof the to-be-learned information and then present the organization to students.This last approach is predicated on the assumption that students will morereadily master the content curriculum if teachers reformat the information tomake it more learnable (Lenz et al., 1989; Pressley et al., 1987a).

Treating these two approaches as separate interventions, rather than ascomponents of a single instructional approach, inherently limits their effec-tiveness. In the first approach, the strategies are often taught in special set-tings where using the strategy is not a precursor to success, and students arethen expected to apply them independently in other settings (mainstreamclasses) where use of the strategy is requisite. Generalization and transfer ofstrategies have been persistent problems and challenges to educators (Niedel-man, 1991; Salomon & Perkins, 1989).

In the second approach, some students with LD may experience a form ofintellectual bulimia, memorizing bits of information and regurgitating themfor tests in the content-area class. Although many content-area teachers I haveobserved seemed convinced that they were teaching content-area subjects,interviews with their students with LD suggested otherwise. Apparently,many students intend to forget the subject matter as soon as the test is over.Learning the self-discipline necessary to perform school compliance behaviors,rather than learning content-area subjects, appears to be the primary lessonsof some content-area classes for students with LD.

The manner in which each of these nonintegrated approaches is sometimesimplemented, based on my own informal observations, has inherent limita-tions as well. For example, when task-specific learning strategies are the cur-riculum, they are sometimes taught in a nonintegrative manner. That is, ef-fective information processing while performing various academic tasks (essaywriting, test preparation, test taking, reading texts, etc.) involves the use ofmany of the same metacognitive processes (e.g., thinking ahead, during, andback) and cognitive strategies (e.g., activating prior knowledge, generatingquestions, summarizing, and monitoring). Unfortunately, many of the teach-ers I have observed seem to view task-specific strategies as if they were dis-tinctly different from each other and involve distinctly different cognitivestrategies and processes (e.g., first teach a strategy for identifying to-be-learned information from texts and constructing mnemonic devices; later teacha strategy for paraphrasing the main ideas and pertinent details from texts),overlooking the fact that these task-specific strategies are interrelated or in-

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

68 E. S. ELLIS

terconnected. In short, my observations suggest that many secondary teachersmay teach task-specific strategies in a manner that fails to enable students torecognize their commonalities and how they all promote good information pro-cessing in similar ways.

My observations of secondary special education teachers teaching task-spe-cific learning strategies have led me to conclude that many of these teachersgenerally do not structure opportunities for their students to use the knowl-edge base developed earlier while the strategies were explicitly taught. Inother words, they do not focus on using students' prior knowledge of previouslylearned strategies as a basis for extending this knowledge in a manner thatfacilitates students' development of new strategies. For example, while stu-dents may have learned, via explicit instruction, to perform a strategy forinterpreting complex graphics, teachers rarely follow up this instruction withactivities designed to enable students to use this knowledge to create student-designed graphics or to extend what they know about these processes to createstudent-designed strategies for addressing other problem domains (e.g., ana-lyzing textbook chapters). More commonly, educators explicitly teach a strat-egy for analyzing complex graphics and then later, explicitly teach a strategyfor textbook perusal as if the two learning strategies were distinct and involvedcompletely separate processes. These are informal observations I have made;there is a need for research in this area.

Motivating students to learn and use these strategies is also a challenge(Borkowski et al., 1990; Garner, 1990; Pressley et al., 1987b; Shunk, 1989).Because strategic behavior is mostly covert and cannot be easily observedwhen others use it, most students who are taught task-specific strategies lacka contextual experience of the relative benefits of performing the strategy.Learning the strategy requires an act of faith from students that the effort andpersistence required to learn the strategy will eventually pay off. Integratingstrategy with content instruction can provide the contextual experience nec-essary for fostering intrinsic motivation.

In the second approach, in which content information is strategically en-hanced, my informal observations indicate that learning to perform indepen-dently various effective learning strategies tends to be accidental and rarelyhappens with less capable students. My observations suggest that strategyinstruction tends to be even less integrative in content-area mainstreamclasses. In content-area lessons using learning processes mediated by theteacher, opportunities for students to extend these processes into student-mediated task-specific learning strategies were rarely provided by the teachersI observed. For example, the content-area teacher may mediate the process ofanalyzing complex graphics (i.e., by cueing students to activate prior knowl-edge, generate questions, seek and use clues that signal important informa-tion, generate a main-idea statement, relate the content of the graphic to thecontent of the chapter, etc.), but students are not subsequently provided struc-tured opportunities to frame these processes into a task-specific strategy foranalyzing complex graphics that is practiced enough to become independentlyused by them. Many of the teachers I observed seemed to assume that if theymediated these processes enough, students would eventually catch on and

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

INTEGRATED STRATEGY INSTRUCTION 69

internalize them into their own problem-solving schema; however, this doesnot seem to happen with many less capable students. These informal obser-vations are consistent with the empirical findings summarized by A. L. Brown(1978).

For example, a recent study demonstrated that providing students withlearning problems with mnemonic devices on a consistent, on-going basis to aidtheir content information learning had little effect on their ability to constructand use their own mnemonic devices (Bulgren, Deshler, & Schumaker, in prep-aration). Whereas many capable learners develop their own effective and ef-ficient schema of strategies and processes for problem solving, less capablelearners often fail to do so when left to discover these processes on their own.Teachers may provide nondirective opportunities for students to develop theseprocesses (e.g., by providing students with cooperative learning activities).Less capable students, however, typically lack sufficient knowledge of variouseffective processes and of the nature of the task demands to construct strate-gies for solving specific types of problems. Interacting with others as they usethese processes does not necessarily result in students with learning problemsmastering these processes in an effective and efficient manner.

In short, although students may more readily master content subjects whenteachers mediate the learning process, they are not necessarily learning tobecome more strategic learners because the focus is typically on content learn-ing, not on strategy learning (Pressley, 1983). My observations and experi-ences indicate that extensive use of teacher-constructed learning enhancementdevices (e.g., mnemonic devices and graphic organizers) may lead students torely on adult experts to construct these devices for them to help ensure theirsuccess in secondary school. Although I heartily support efforts at decreasingstudents' failure experiences, I am concerned that if students become too de-pendent on this assistance, they may experience considerable difficulty whenthey move on to postsecondary schools, where the support services are eithernonexistent or have an entirely different orientation.

Although teaching adolescents task-specific learning strategies (Deshler &Schumaker, 1986) and using content enhancement instructional procedures(i.e., Lenz et al., 1989) have demonstrated merit, a number of challenges per-sist. A major challenge is to identify ways to integrate content with strategyinstruction in a manner that is both effective and efficient with students withLD and socially valid with regard to implementing the procedures given tra-ditional school climates. A second challenge is to identify ways to integrateinstructional practices so that constructive and instructive experiences arecomplimentary, rather than bipolar. These two challenges are discussed fur-ther below.

Integrating Content and Strategy Curricula

Perhaps the greatest criticism of Western approaches to education is theirtendency to reduce the curriculum into isolated parts and focus on teachingthese parts in isolation (Poplin, 1988a, 1988b). To overcome many of the lim-itations of traditional secondary special education approaches to teaching

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

70 E. S. ELLIS

strategies, educators need to examine ways to provide strategy instructionwithin real learning contexts. This is particularly challenging because effectivestrategy instruction is extensive and intensive (Pressley et al., 1989; Schu-maker & Deshler, 1988) and therefore requires ample practice and feedback toensure mastery. In traditional content-area classes, however, the content, notmastery of the strategy, is the driver of the curriculum (Brophy, 1984; D. S.Brown, 1988; Clark & Peterson, 1986; Schumaker & Deshler, 1988). Thus,instructional procedures for teaching strategies intensively in such settingsmust be feasible and socially valid with teachers.

The challenges of accommodating strategy instruction in content-areaclasses notwithstanding, anything except instruction aimed at both makeslittle sense conceptually. Skilled thinking requires an interaction between pro-cedural knowledge and declarative knowledge (Pressley et al., 1989). In otherwords, skilled thinking requires that students (a) are able to apply knowledgeof skills and cognitive tactics in a dynamic fashion to attain specific goalsrelated to either content learning or use of existing knowledge of content tosolve problems, and (b) have sufficient knowledge of the content information towhich they are applying these skills.

Integrating Instructive and Constructive Learning Experiences

Personal observations of remedial secondary classes suggest that instructionin strategies and content-area subjects tends to be either very teacher con-trolled and directed or, conversely, so vague and implicit that insufficient focusis applied to learning the information-processing skills. For example, in theformer case, I have observed teachers who placed a very heavy emphasis onusing task-specific strategies in the exact manner as dictated by a teacher'smanual. Students' attempts to deviate from the prescribed routine were actu-ally punished with low grades. In the latter case, I have interviewed a numberof students with LD immediately after a content-area class in which teachershad implicitly addressed use of information-processing skills (e.g., activatingprior knowledge when reading, forming hypothesis about new information,reflecting on effective strategies for attacking specific academic tasks, etc.),and not one of them seemed to have recognized that problem solving, thinkingskills, or even specific learning strategies were being addressed by the teacher.These informal observations, which occurred between 1989 and 1991, are con-sistent with empirical findings reported by A. L. Brown (1978).

Arguably, instructional systems are needed that more effectively enablestudents to recognize critical components of information processing as well asincorporate students' understandings of strategic processes initially andthroughout the instructional process. This does not imply that the teacher'srole is to force-feed a static algorithmic routine or that teachers merely provideopportunities for students to create and develop their own strategies. Con-structivist critics of strategy instruction (e.g., DuCharme et al., 1989; Kronick,1988; Poplin, 1988a, 1988b) seem to ignore the fact that many students withlearning problems usually do not construct sophisticated understandingswhen left to their own devices (Harris & Pressley, 1991; Eesnick, 1987). The

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

INTEGRATED STRATEGY INSTRUCTION 71

only real hope that many of these students will construct their own under-standings is for them to receive strategy instruction that permits them to learnhow to learn.

Clearly, many students lack sufficient knowledge of and experience withcognitive strategies and processes to be able to construct and use their ownstrategies readily and independently. Providing nondirective discovery-ori-ented learning experiences too early in the learning process could be ineffectiveif not done by a highly skilled educator in an environment conducive to closescrutiny of student responses. Teacher-directed instructional procedures onexpert models is a validated approach that can provide a foundation for initiallearning of key problem-solving behaviors. Ultimately, however, students needto create their own understandings and approaches to strategic functioningand view them as valid. Too much direction may impair, rather than facilitate,the development of this orientation (L. Anderson et al., 1988). The challenge,therefore, is to reach a balance between providing teacher-directed instructionin specific learning strategies and providing students with the right amount oflearning experiences for constructing their own strategies at the right times.

A WORKING INSTRUCTIONAL MODEL FOR INTEGRATINGSTRATEGY INSTRUCTION AND CONTENT-AREA INSTRUCTION

The challenges outlined in the previous section point to the need for teachingpractices that are integrative. The idea of of integrating content instructionwith strategy instruction is not new—educators have advocated this conceptfor some time in various ways when addressing both the general educationcurriculum (e.g., Meichenbaum, 1977; Pressley, 1983) and the special educa-tion curriculum (e.g., Sheinker et al., 1984). This need led me to develop aworking model that integrates content-area instruction with cognitive strategyinstruction. As noted earlier, this model emerged as a result of my collabora-tive work with content-area and special education teachers. It is designed foruse specifically in mainstream content-area classrooms that contain signifi-cant numbers of students with learning difficulties. The term working is usedbecause, although the model is designed in the spirit of integration, muchremains to be learned about

1. How to balance more explicit, exogenous techniques with sufficient oppor-tunities for dialogic and endogenous learning experiences for less capablestudents and

2. How to integrate strategy instruction into classes traditionally dominatedby content-area instruction.

The integrated strategy instructional (ISI) model is designed to maximizestudents' acquisition of new knowledge and their ability to use effective andefficient information processes and problem-solving skills. The purpose of theISI model is to teach explicitly the use of powerful information-processingskills (use of existing knowledge, metacognition, elaboration strategies, and

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

72 E. S. ELLIS

self-motivation strategies) in the mainstream classroom as students are learn-ing content-area subjects. Through teacher-guided heuristic applications andconstructivistic activities, students learn how to use information-processingand problem-solving skills to mediate their learning and performing. Themodel is based on the principle that students and teachers should frequentlycollaborate on instructional decisions and academic responses (Pressley et al.,1991). Teachers also provide extensive opportunities for students to (a) dia-logue among themselves in order to elaborate and embellish or restructure theto-be-learned information (Paris & Winograd, 1990) and (b) collaborate to solveproblems. These interactions provide opportunities for students to

• Increase motivation,• Send and receive feedback,• Learn how to use a specific strategy,• Learn about other strategies, and• Learn how others use metacognition (e.g., Newman, 1990).

The ISI working model specifies four types of instructional procedures thatdenote different emphases of teaching: orienting processes, framing processes,applying processes, and extending processes. The procedures associated witheach of the four instructional categories are used over various time periods.The four instructional categories are described in terms of the major focus ofinstruction and expected outcomes. Because learning occurs in phases ratherthan being linear (Jones et al., 1987), these processes overlap considerably andare recursive. The four categories differ more in the emphasis of the scaffoldingtechniques used in each. Techniques within each set of processes are illus-trated below in the context of teaching students information-processing skillsrelated to analyzing complex graphics.

Orienting Processes

The instructional goals of the orienting process are twofold. The first is toensure that students understand and remember the to-be-learned content-area subject. To attain this goal, teachers use various content enhancementtechniques (Ellis & Lenz, 1990; Lenz et al., 1989) and mediate students' use ofvarious cognitive strategies and processes as they interact with the contentsubjects. Thus, this first goal is driven by the to-be-learned content-area cur-riculum.

The second goal is to provide students with an experiential base related tothe to-be-learned information-processing skills. Thus, this goal is driven by theto-be-learned strategies curriculum. The intent is to provide students with aset of contextual experiences related to the relative benefits of performing theinformation-processing skills. The purpose is to use teacher-student interac-tions to increase students' awareness of the specific information processesteachers have been mediating. Specifically, the purpose is to promote recogni-tion of (a) conceptual patterns of problem solving and (b) action sequences ofoperations (J. R. Anderson, 1983).

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

INTEGRATED STRATEGY INSTRUCTION 73

* Recognizing the need to analyze the graphic / setting goals* Reflecting on best way to decode the graphic* Using positive coping / reinforcing self-statements* Activating knowledge about the type of information usually communicated given the type of graphic

encountered.* Relating information gleaned from graphic to an existing schema* Activating knowledge related to the genre of content-information addressed by the graphic* Activating knowledge about the type of information different text clues provide* Forming predictions* Generating to-be-answered questions* Prioritizing importance of different data gleaned from graphic* Elaborating via summarizing* Monitoring comprehension* Monitoring goal attainment* Regulating use of these and other processes in a non-linear fashion.* Problem solving

FIGURE 1 Sample cognitive strategies and processes tha t may be used when analyzingcomplex graphics.

Teaching Content Lessons via Teacher Mediation of aProblem-Solving ProcessDuring this first phase of the orienting process, teachers mediate a specific setof problem-solving processes while teaching the content-area lesson. Mediationof specific processes for learning a content subject helps students become ori-ented to the manner in which information is processed in specific situations.For example, when mediating processes for analyzing graphics, teachers es-sentially mediate key information processes associated with this task (seeFigure 1) without alerting students to the specific strategic processes beingmediated.

Teacher mediation of these processes can be an effective way to promotecomprehension and memory of the material (Ellis & Lenz, 1990). Later, duringthe framing process, explicit instruction in the strategic information processescan begin. Then, when teaching the task-specific learning strategy, teacherscan refer to how they had used these processes when teaching the contentlessons. The primary purpose of this first phase of orienting, however, is toensure that students master content information. Teachers prompt the use ofcognitive strategies as a means of facilitating content mastery.

Strategic Analysis ActivityAfter teachers have prompted the specific set of information-processing skillson several occasions, they structure a strategic analysis activity designed tohelp students recognize the cognitive processes that were mediated.

Strategic analysis activities are loosely patterned after Klausmeier's (1990)levels of understanding. On the concrete level, students learn to discriminate apattern as a separate entity. In this case, the pattern is a set of processesprompted by the teacher when analyzing graphics. On the identity level, stu-dents recognize the same pattern as it is encountered in different contexts andsituations. Eventually, students need to be able to verbally define and analyzeconcepts in terms of their relevant and nonrelevant attributes (Bulgren et al.,1988). The orienting process provides opportunities for students to form these

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

74 E. S. ELLIS

Stra tegy ProcessesMotivation strategiesClarifying purpose of task * Figuring out what you need to do and whySetting goals * Deciding what you want to accomplish / how wellUsing self-affirmation statements * Saying positive things about your self & your abilitiesUsing self-coping statements * Saying positive things to help you during difficult tasksUsing self-reinforcement * Doing something positive for yourself after reaching a goal

Personalizing Information StrategiesActivating knowledge * Thinking about what you already know about somethingRelating * Linking new information to what is knownImaging * Picturing in your mind what something looks,

tastes, feels, and/or sounds likeParaphrasing * Putting something into your own wordsSummarizing * Stating the main ideas and most important detailsClarifying information * Finding out what something really meansCategorizing * Grouping pieces of information that are similar in some wayClustering * Breaking large groups of information into

smaller, more manageable groupsPrioritizing * Deciding what is most / least important to rememberPredicting * Hypothesizing what something is aboutMonitoring prediction * Checking to see if prediction is trueRevising predictions * Changing prediction to what you think is a more accurate oneGenerating to-be-answered questions * Deciding ahead of time what you want to learn

or think you will learnPinpointing not-answered questions * Clarifying what you learned from what you wanted to learnRevising questions * Changing a question so that it better reflects

what you want to leamMonitoring comprehension * Checking to make sure something makes senseMonitoring errors * Looking for errors to fixVerbally rehearsing * Saying something over-and-over to remember itUsing mnemonic words * Using words or letters in words to help you recall something

(first letter-word, key-word, peg-word)Using mnemonic stories & images * Using a story to help you recall something

FIGURE 2 Powerful cognitive strategies and processes for learning and performing.

discriminations as teachers prompt the strategic processes and subsequentlyto analyze and identify them.

This activity is also patterned after "informed training procedures" (A. L.Brown, 1978; Pressley et al., 1985). Students are provided with explicit in-struction regarding the effectiveness of various problem-solving cognitivestrategies and tactics, including how and when they can be used. The goal is forstudents to leam which tools are the most useful for different learning situa-tions and contexts.

An example of a strategic analysis activity used at this time is to dividestudents into cooperative learning groups composed of four students. Theteacher reviews a list of key cognitive strategies (Figure 2) and then asks eachgroup to observe the upcoming instruction and identify the cognitive processesbeing prompted as they attempt to understand the graphic. The teacher thenprovides a short content lesson that involves prompting the specific set ofinformation-processing skills. After the mini-lesson, the teacher asks differentgroups to share their list of cognitive learning strategies they observed beingprompted.

In sum, explicit scaffolding is used during the orienting process in the man-ner in which teachers introduce students to the information-processing skills

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

INTEGRATED STRATEGY INSTRUCTION 75

Start with questionsQuestion to clarify your goals. Why you are analyzing the visual aid?Question to find out what kind of information to look for.

Picture What is it a picture of? What's the motion or emotion?Graph / Chart What is being compared? How?Map What key areas are important to see? Why are they key areas?Time-line Shows the history of what? From when to when?

Note what you can learn from the hintsLook for hints that signal answers to your question. (e.g., Title, Caption, Lines, Numbers, Color)Activate your knowledge.

Identify what is importantIdentify the main message of the graphic.Identify two facts from the graphic.

Plug it into the chapterHow does the visual relate to what the chapter or unit is about?

S ee if you can explain the visual to someoneFind someone to whom who you can explain the visual

(explain it to yourself if nobody else is available).Tell what you think the visual is about and how you think it relates to what the chapter is about.Identify what you think are the best hints on the visual and tell why they are good hints.

FIGURE 3 Illustration of a task-specific strategy tha t students may use to analyzecomplex graphics.

to be learned. These skills are mediated by the teacher during content-arealessons and are used in a manner that enables students to recognize, throughexperience, the advantages of using them. Subsequent teacher-student inter-actions enable students to recognize the processes as a discrete set that facil-itate attainment of specific goals.

The Framing Process

The purpose of framing is to provide explicit instruction on a set of informa-tion-processing skills used to attack specific academic tasks. Students areshown how the set of strategic processes modeled, prompted, and subsequentlyidentified during the orienting process can be framed into a specific learningstrategy (Figure 3). Unlike orienting instruction, in which the emphasis was onfacilitating students' mastery of the content information, the emphasis now ison facilitating students' understanding and mastery of a task-specific learningstrategy. Although the teacher's understanding of the strategic process is ex-plicitly communicated to students, the purpose is not for students to adopt acopy of this understanding; rather, as a function of teacher-student transac-tions, students gain their own personalized understanding.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

76 E. S. ELLIS

"Informed training" procedures (A. L. Brown, 1978) are used when commu-nicating the critical features of a set of problem-solving processes. At thispoint, the teacher-student dialogue focuses on the critical actions associatedwith each step in the strategy and why these are important (Pressley et al.,1992; Roehler & Duffy, 1984). Thus, the beginning of the framing process is anatural progression from the ending of the orienting process. As students'understanding of the information-processing skills develops, dialogues alsoaddress the use of self-motivational techniques and how self-speech can beused when making decisions about using the strategy, using specific strategysteps, and monitoring the effectiveness of the strategy (e.g., Meichenbaum,1977; Pressley et al., 1992; Roehler & Duffy, 1984; Wong, 1985b). The steps ofthe strategy illustrated in Figure 3 appear to be linear, but students need tounderstand that performing the various cognitive strategies is a nonalgorith-mic, circuitous process.

The strategy instruction that occurs during the framing process is explicitand involves three components that overlap considerably. These include de-scribing the to-be-learned strategy, modeling how the strategy is performed,and promoting student elaboration and analysis of the strategic processes.

Describing the Strategy

Describing the strategy involves explaining not only the various processesinvolved in using the strategy, but also the advantages of using it and when,where and how to use it (e.g., A. L. Brown, 1978; Pressley et al., in press;Roehler & Duffy, 1984). This information can be communicated by providingstudents with explicit information on the critical overt or covert behaviors eachstep in the strategy is designed to cue and why these behaviors are essentialto the overall problem-solving process (Roehler & Duffy, 1984). Students alsoneed to be informed about how to use self-motivational techniques and howself-speech can be used when making decisions about using the strategy, usingspecific strategy steps, and monitoring the effectiveness of the strategy (e.g.,Meichenbaum, 1977; Pressley et al., 1992; Roehler & Duffy, 1984; Wong,1985b).

Modeling the Strategy

In-depth, intensive teacher modeling of the strategic processes involved inperforming the learning strategy should occur both early in the framing pro-cess and also extensively throughout the instructional sequence. Any timestudents need insight into a covert process they are learning to perform, teach-ers need to effectively model the process.

Naturally, modeling is one of the most important techniques in the entireinstructional process, and effective modeling of the strategic processes requiresthat teachers think aloud to demonstrate essential self-instructional, problem-solving, and self-monitoring processes (Hermann, 1988). Finch and Spirito(1980) and Meichenbaum (1977) demonstrated that students' behavior can bechanged when teachers verbalize what they are doing. Meichenbaum sug-gested teachers begin performing the task while talking out loud about how

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

INTEGRATED STRATEGY INSTRUCTION 77

they are thinking. Then students are prompted to think out loud as theyperform the task under the teacher's guidance. Teacher prompts are graduallyreduced, and students gradually switch from thinking out loud, to thinking ata whisper, to private speech that takes place in their head. Modeling of thestrategy should be performed on stimulus materials that students commonlyencounter (e.g., from the content-area textbook).

Subsequent modeling of the strategy should be interactive with students(e.g., Harris & Pressley, 1991). In other words, students actively cue teacherswhat to do as the strategy is performed and collaborate with them while form-ing responses. In essence, teachers and students perform the strategy to-gether. During this process, students should be prompted to be involved as wellas think aloud (A. L. Brown, 1978; Palincsar & Brown, 1984).

Dialoguing is used to check students' comprehension of the processes (i.e.,"Why is it a good idea to think about goals before doing this?"; "Why are weparaphrasing the title of this graphic?"; "What should we do if we can't thinkof a prediction?"; "Why are we generating questions here?"; and "Why do wesay how the visual aid is related to the chapter?"). During this part of theinstructional process, teachers help shape students' responses. They also needto ensure that students are experiencing a great deal of success as the strategyis performed.

Promoting Verbal Elaboration and Analysis of the StrategyLess capable students tend to master the strategy more rapidly if they havefirst made precise verbal elaborations about its use (Ellis et al., 1991; Pressleyet al., 1987a). The objective is for students to be able to describe in their ownwords the purpose of the strategy; when, where, and how it can be used; andhow each step is performed. Making these elaborations helps students formtheir own connections between the new to-be-learned processes involved in thestrategy and previously known processes and helps them construct their ownpathways for accessing this information from memory, thus increasing theprobability of retrieving it when necessary (DiSibio, 1982). Strategic analysisactivities during the framing process can take the form of having studentssystematically analyze how the new learning strategy is the same as or dif-ferent from the processes they used before learning about the new strategy.

In sum, explicit scaffolding is used during the framing process in the man-ner in which teachers build on the understandings of the strategic processesthat were facilitated during the orienting process. Using concrete representa-tions, teachers help students develop a basis for building their declarativeknowledge (what the strategy is), procedural knowledge (how the strategy isperformed), and conditional knowledge (why the strategy is used and whenand where it should be used). The scaffolding procedures move studentsthrough a process of providing concrete representations of the steps, modelingan expert's understanding of how these processes are used dynamically andnonlinearly, interacting with students to identify how the concrete represen-tations were put into actual practice when the processes were modeled, andthen facilitating students' development of their own conceptual understandingvia student verbal elaboration activities.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

78 E. S. ELLIS

The Applying Process

The applying process is designed to enable students to use the learning strat-egy independently to master content in an effective and efficient manner.During the applying process, use of the strategy is thoroughly integrated intocontent instruction. Teachers use transactional instructional techniques (Bos& Anders, 1990; Pressley et al., 1991) when teaching content lessons, andintegration of the strategy now becomes an integral part of the content-areainstructional routine (e.g., if students are learning a task-specific strategy foranalyzing complex graphics, for each new complex graphic that is encounteredduring a content lesson, teachers and students interact and collaborate toanalyze it). Various forms of coaching, designed to enable students to performthe strategy independently, fluently, and flexibly, are provided. In addition,cooperative learning activities are used extensively during this stage of in-struction.

Teachers should provide students with a variety of stimulus materials fromtheir normal content-area curriculum to practice applying the strategy. Thesemultiple practice opportunities should be accompanied by extensive use ofteacher-student dialogues to ensure that students are learning to perform thestrategy effectively.

The steps to a task-specific strategy serve only as a general guide for oneapproach to performing a specific academic task. Students need to recognizethat (a) the approach is nonlinear and thus can be modified if it increases theireffectiveness and (b) other approaches may also be effective in solving theproblem. Thus, students need to view the task-specific strategy as a routinethat can be flexibly applied and modified. As students become aware that anacademic problem can be systematically analyzed and attacked, they should beencouraged to adapt or extend the strategy targeted for that academic problemto include other processes they find useful.

There are several important reasons why teachers should structure oppor-tunities for students to adapt the strategy. One is to enhance their metacog-nitive knowledge base and use of executive metacognitive processes. Studentsreflect on how they approached the academic problem before they were taughtthe task-specific strategy and identify specific processes they have found themost valuable from previous experiences. Another reason is to enable studentsto personalize the problem-solving process (an important motivational andexecutive dimension).

Once students are aware of the strategy they are learning, content-areateachers should take steps to ensure that using the strategy becomes a naturalresponse to solving a specific academic problem. One technique that can beused is to make integration of the strategy an integral part of the content-areainstructional routine. For an example, each time a visual aid is used to en-hance or clarify critical content-area information, the teacher should walkstudents through the steps of the task-specific strategy while teaching thecontent from the graphic.

Teachers should provide students with a variety of stimulus materials topractice applying the strategy. Multiple practice opportunities should be ac-

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

INTEGRATED STRATEGY INSTRUCTION 79

companied by extensive use of teacher prompts to ensure that students arelearning to perform the strategy effectively. These prompts should be gradu-ally faded as students become more competent.

The following are other activities that promote student knowledge andskills for applying the strategy.

Enlist Students as Collaborative InstructorsMany educators are aware of the benefits of enlisting students as peer tutorsand involving them in cooperative learning processes. Enlisting students ascollaborative instructors can also be a very effective way to maintain students'investment in the learning process and their interest in the content-area sub-ject. To enlist students as collaborative instructors, teachers seek students'opinions about instructional activities and assistance in making decisions crit-ical to the instructional process. For example, instead of presenting a visualaid as a means to convey important to-be-learned information and then simplyteaching the subject matter, the teacher presents the visual while enlistingstudents as instructional collaborators (i.e., the teacher asks students to helpher decide whether the visual should be used when teaching another afternoonclass, why, and how best to explain it).

Critique Stimulus MaterialsPerhaps one of the best ways to integrate use of a learning strategy withcontent-area instruction and provide opportunities for interactive instructionis to empower students to critique stimulus materials from the perspective ofthe materials' usefulness. In other words, students are encouraged to be crit-ical consumers of instructional materials. Teachers may find that students aremore invested in the learning process when instruction is approached from acritical consumers' perspective. The approach also provides students withpractice in making decisions concerning materials to which the strategy can bereadily applied versus those that have been so poorly designed that even useof the strategy does not make them comprehensible.

Critical consumer activities also address a very important motivationaldimension that concerns students' beliefs or attributions to success and failure(Licht & Kistner, 1986). Many students believe that their failure is due to theirown inadequacies (e.g., "I can't make sense of this visual because I'm dumb"),rather than to more accurate variables (e.g., the visual aid has been poorlydesigned). Critical consumer activities provide opportunities for students tolearn alternative, less self-effacing beliefs.

From a motivational perspective, one of the goals of strategy instruction isto enable students to understand the dimensions of a formula for success. Asapplied to the context of analyzing graphics, there are two such dimensions:

1. The authors did a good job of presenting the information in a clear mannerthat is relatively easy to understand and accurate. The author (a) madegood decisions about whether a visual aid should be included in the text, (b)used an effective and efficient strategy when designing the visual, and (c)made good decisions about when to present the visual in the text.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

80 E. S. ELLIS

2. The student does a good job of using an effective and efficient learningstrategy so that content information is understood, related to the unit ofstudy, and remembered. The student (a) makes good decisions aboutwhether a specific visual aid should be analyzed, (b) uses an effective andefficient strategy for analyzing the visual, (c) makes good decisions aboutwhen to use the strategy and how to use it flexibly when analyzing visuals,and (d) uses sufficient effort in applying the strategy.

If the author does a poor job at designing the instructional materials, studentsuccess is impaired. If the student does a poor job at performing the appropri-ate strategy, student success is impaired. Success is a function of the authorbeing strategic and students being strategic.

Critical consumer activities are best conducted using cooperative learningformats. An example activity would be to assign each group specific materialsto critique and have them rate the commercial materials. This activity is fol-lowed by group discussion and comparisons of ratings.

Have Students Create Materials to Which the Task-Specific StrategyIs to Be AppliedAs students become proficient in performing the learning strategy, groupprojects that require them to create products to which the strategy can beapplied is an effective way of integrating what they learned about how to thinkabout strategic functioning. After students have created their instructionalmaterials, they should formally present them to the class. As they do so, thegroup should be asked to walk the class through the strategic process involvedin understanding their product. An example would be having cooperativegroups of students create graphic organizers depicting content-area informa-tion to be learned.

Integrate Use of the Task-Specific Strategy with Study Guide andTest QuestionsHomework assignments can include specific cues to generalize the strategy.Teachers can evaluate students' ability to perform the strategy from theirwritten responses. For example, a test can include a copy of a visual aid andquestions that require students to analyze it. Test instructions can remindstudents that they know an effective strategy that can be used.

Provide Peer-Mediated Cooperative Learning Practice ActivitiesThe purpose of providing peer-mediated cooperative learning practice activi-ties is to enable students to learn how others think when performing a strategyand what they understand about it. The primary activity is having studentsperform the strategy collaboratively on challenging (but not too difficult) tasks.In conjunction with these practice activities should be various strategic anal-ysis activities designed to enhance students' conceptual understanding of themetacognitive processes and cognitive strategies involved when learning. Forexample, teachers can provide exclusive time for student dialogue about thestrategy they are learning. An ideal time for dialogue is immediately after

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

INTEGRATED STRATEGY INSTRUCTION 81

cooperative learning practice activities. The topic of the dialogue should beloosely structured by the teacher, and topics will vary, depending on the so-phistication of the learners as well their experience learning this and otherstrategies. Potential topics include the

• Relative importance of attacking the academic problem that the task-specific strategy is designed to address,

• Effectiveness of the strategy,• Value of various metacognitive and cognitive processes involved in per-

forming the task-specific strategy,• Most important/least important steps or components of the task-specific

strategy,• Different ways to use or adapt the task-specific strategy, and• Hardest or most difficult versus easiest part of performing the task-spe-

cific strategy.

In addition, teachers should ensure that students perceive the problem-solving process as heuristic in nature (rather than algorithmic). Although thekey steps of the strategy have been encapsulated with a remembering device(the first letters in each step of the strategy spell a word), the steps of thestrategy represent a generally nonlinear heuristic problem-solving procedurethat can be applied across several problem domains (Ellis & Lenz, 1987). Forexample, the basic processes used when analyzing a visual aid are very similarto those used when reading texts. Effective reading of a textbook chapter oftenbegins with the reader's clarification of the purpose of the task and perusal ofthe chapter. While reading the text, elaboration strategies (i.e., predicting,generating questions, summarizing, imaging, and clarifying) are used flexibly,as are metacognitive processes (i.e., monitoring comprehension). Moreover,processes associated with schema building and modification inherent in effec-tive graphics analysis and reading are frequently used in other problem-solv-ing domains as well. For example, many of these same processes are also usedduring listening and note taking. Thus, the intent is to enable students torecognize the generic applicability of the information-processing skills.

A sample activity that can be used to facilitate students' awareness of thegeneric nature of effective information-processing routines is to have studentscompare the information processes involved in different task-specific strate-gies. For example, teachers can show students a task-specific strategy theyhave previously learned (e.g., a strategy for identifying information to study fora test) and ask them to compare and contrast the information processes in-herent in it with those associated with the strategy they are currently learn-ing. Because most students are generally unaware of the components of infor-mation processing, they can be provided with a checklist of common thinkingprocesses and strategies (see Figure 1) to help them identify the processesinherent in each of the task-specific strategies.

Most students are ready to begin the extending process when they are ableto apply the task-specific strategy without assistance to most of the graphicsthey encounter. However, there is no distinct end of the applying process and

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

82 E. S. ELLIS

beginning of the extending process. Rather, the instruction evolves graduallyfrom one form of scaffolding to the next.

The Extending Process

During the extending process, instruction in a set of metacognitive processesand cognitive strategies for solving one type of academic problem evolves intoinstruction focusing on how many of these same processes are used in a dif-ferent problem domain. In other words, this form of instruction is designed toextend students' understanding of the generalizability of cognitive strategiesand processes and to extend their ability to act on this understanding. Al-though many students may have already made this leap in understanding,some less capable students will not have gained this insight and will requiremore directive forms of mediation to ensure that they begin to extend thisknowledge. The extending instructional processes place heavy emphasis onthree categories of procedural learning (Derry, 1990): (a) identifying and an-alyzing conceptual patterns inherent in an effective task-specific strategy, (b)perfecting pattern recognition and action sequence procedures, and (c) increas-ing self-evaluation of performance. Students are encouraged to analyze per-formances and discover important patterns via guesswork, reasoning, inves-tigation, and experimentation.

The focus of instruction during the extending process is on enabling stu-dents (a) to adapt the previously learned task-specific strategy to, as well ascreate new learning strategies for, different academic problems and (b) toexperiment with these adaptations and creations. Attending to students' rel-ative level of understanding is particularly important during this stage ofinstruction because many students with learning problems may be less capa-ble of conducting a rational analysis that will reveal underlying structuresinvolved in the task-specific strategies they are attempting to learn (Derry,1990) and many students do not activate appropriate prior knowledge that canbe used strategically (Short & Weissberg-Benchell, 1989). Thus, they do notuse what they know about strategic functioning to extend this knowledge intonew problem-solving domains.

In the extending process, students are provided with a concrete basis forhow many of the processes previously learned can be applied in another, spe-cific learning context. In addition, teachers may need to explain and modelmetacognitive processes associated with analyzing tasks and analyzing theirown skills in relation to these tasks in order to show students how to use theirexisting knowledge about strategies when problem solving.

The routine of applying the newly designed strategy in real-life circum-stances (i.e., taking notes during a content-area lesson), evaluating its use andadapting it for future use, and then evaluating the adaptations after furtherexperimentation in real-life circumstances should be an ongoing process (A. L.Brown, 1978; Meichenbaum, 1977). Even when students appear to have be-come competent in their use of the student-designed strategy, teachers shouldcontinue to prompt students to evaluate, refine, and adapt the strategy.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

INTEGRATED STRATEGY INSTRUCTION 83

Promote Adaptation of the Strategy

Cooperative learning formats are ideal for providing activities designed tofocus students' attention on adapting the strategy. Some students may identifyapproaches to solving the problem that are effective and efficient and commu-nicate these to their peers in a manner and language that is readily under-standable to peers. In addition, when these processes are communicated andmodeled by peers with high social status, the credibility and desirability ofusing these processes may be considerably enhanced.

After potential adaptations have been discussed, groups should share withthe class the adaptations they have identified, the rationale for these adapta-tions, and how they fit into the overall problem-solving process associated withthe academic problem.

Create New Strategies

Using what students have learned about problem-solving processes associatedwith attacking an academic problem as a basis for creating new task-specificstrategies can be an effective way to enhance students' understanding andapplication of metacognitive and cognitive processes (Ellis et al., 1989; Harris& Pressley, 1991). Teaching students to use a general problem-solving ap-proach has been advocated by a number of educators (e.g., Baron, 1981; Brans-ford & Stein, 1984; Deny & Kellis, 1986). To facilitate student development ofnew strategies, teachers can follow four steps.

Step 1 Structure cooperative learning activities designed to have studentsanalyze the various problem-solving demands of their classroom settings topinpoint tasks and problems for which a new strategy is needed (e.g., studentsmight identify a need for a note-taking strategy, a textbook-reading strategy,or a test-taking strategy).

Step 2 Because the need for a new strategy has been identified by stu-dents, cooperative learning activities should be designed to focus students'efforts on analyzing the demands of the specific task for which the new strat-egy is needed. Analyzing tasks demands include identifying as precisely aspossible the desired outcomes of the task as well as the key processes impor-tant to perform during the task. For example, if students have identified aneed for a note-taking strategy, they need to identify desired outcomes of notetaking (e.g., the most important information provided during the teacher'slecture has been noted in a whole-to-part fashion indicating main ideas andsupporting points). Students also need to identify key processes associatedwith using the strategy (e.g., focusing attention on the teacher, monitoringattention, listening for key words that signal main ideas, and abbreviating).

Step 3 Using a cooperative learning format, students use what theylearned about the process of associated with the recently learned task-specificstrategy to design a new learning strategy for a different problem domain (e.g.,students use what they learned about a strategy for analyzing visual aids todesign a strategy for note taking). The heuristic procedure associated with therecently learned strategy is essentially modified and adapted to fit the moreunique dimensions of the new academic problem.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

84 E. S. ELLIS

Step 4 Opportunities for testing the new strategy, evaluating its effective-ness, and modifying it as needed are provided. For example, if students de-signed a note-taking strategy, the teacher provides a content-area lesson dur-ing which students attempt to use their new strategy to take notes.Throughout the content-area instruction, the teacher cues use of the new strat-egy. At the end of the content-area lesson, specific time is allotted to mediatingstudents' analysis of their new strategy, extending, adapting, or modifying it.

Before the next content area-lesson, teachers review the adaptations stu-dents made in the new student-designed strategy and discuss with them howthey might apply the strategy in the upcoming content-area lesson. The con-tent subject matter is presented, and students practice applying their revisedstrategy.

Develop an Experiential Basis for the Generalizability of CognitiveProcesses and RoutinesOne of the purposes of the orienting process is to provide students with anexperiential base related to information-processing skills to be learned. A sim-ilar goal is associated with the extending instructional processes. Now, how-ever, students are shown how many of the same processes associated with therecently learned strategy are used in a different learning context. Like instruc-tion during the orienting process, educators teach content-area lessons whileprompting students to use a set of information-processing skills. Later, theseprocesses are compared with those previously learned.

For example, as a means of teaching content during the orienting phase,teachers prompted students to use a set of processes (e.g., processes for ana-lyzing graphics included setting goals, activating knowledge, generating ques-tions, using clues, generating main ideas relating to schema, etc.) to help themunderstand a complex graphic. These processes were subsequently explicitlyidentified and framed in the form of a task-specific strategy during the framingprocess and practiced during the applying process. During the extending pro-cess, teachers mediate use of many of these same processes for a differentacademic problem. For example, many of the processes associated with ana-lyzing complex graphics are now prompted in the context of perusing textbookchapters. Here, teachers orient students to the various processes used whenperusing a textbook chapter as a way to introduce a new content-area chapterof study. Later, these processes are framed into a learning strategy for textperusal. Thus, the extending phase for one type of academic problem may alsoserve as the orientation phase for a different academic problem.

Although the example used in this article involved first teaching a strategyfor analyzing graphics and then later using it as a basis for teaching a differentstrategy for perusing textbook chapters, the order in which these two strate-gies are taught could be reversed; likewise, instruction in a strategy for ana-lyzing graphics could just as well lead to instruction in a strategy for solving aproblem in a different domain (reading comprehension, listening and notetaking, etc.).

Although most normally achieving students will readily comprehend the

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

INTEGRATED STRATEGY INSTRUCTION 85

inherent generalizability of various cognitive strategies and processes, my ob-servations suggest that a mistake that many general education content-areateachers make is to assume that all students infer these relationships andsubsequently apply them in different problem domains. These teachers oftenfail to realize that many students with learning difficulties require more di-rective forms of teaching whereby these relationships are made explicit andthat these students often require more directive forms of teaching to enablethem to perform these processes effectively and efficiently. Thus, although theextending process may seem redundant to some educators, and the problem-solving processes associated with a specific learning strategy are overmedi-ated, this form of instruction is often necessary for less successful students tobecome more independent and successful.

In sum, explicit scaffolding is used during the extending process to ensurethat students' declarative, procedural, and conditional understandings of theoriginal processes are extended and applied to other domains. The relativeexplicitness or implicitness of the scaffolding procedures depends on the so-phistication of the learners. For example, some students require explicit scaf-folding as they learn how the processes involved in one problem-solving pro-cess (e.g., analyzing complex graphics) can also be used in another domain(analyzing textbook chapter components). When learning this new strategy,these students may require explicit scaffolding procedures similar to thoseused when they were learning the text perusal strategy. For example, duringthe framing process, these students are provided a concrete representation ofthe new strategy steps, the teacher extensively models his or her understand-ing of how the new strategy is used, etc.

Other students, having developed a more robust understanding of informa-tion processing when the first strategy was taught, may not require suchexplicit scaffolded instruction (i.e., they may not require that the processesinvolved in the new strategy be concretely represented to them in the form ofa set of strategy steps or that the teacher intensively model his or her under-standing of the new strategy, etc). For these students, scaffolded instructionwould continue as new strategies are taught, but its focus is considerably moreimplicit and dialectical and less concrete. Thus, the process of shifting theemphasis of instruction from explicit to implicit scaffolding as students' knowl-edge becomes more robust is, in itself, an illustration of scaffolded instruction.

RECURSIVE AND DYNAMIC ASPECTS OF THE INTEGRATEDSTRATEGY INSTRUCTIONAL MODEL

Although the four sets of instructional processes included in the ISI model mayappear linear and somewhat mechanistic as described herein, what actuallyhappens in a classroom is very recursive and dynamic. For example, teacher-student interactions related to generalization of the strategy do not occur onlyduring the extending process; they almost always also occur in both the fram-ing process and the applying process, as well as, to a less degree, in the ori-enting process. A major task of teachers is to help students learn to think in

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

86 E. S. ELLIS

broad terms about a strategy and to extend their thinking about the strategicprocesses beyond the scope of the problem domain in which the strategy wasoriginally targeted. Likewise, teachers encourage novice learners to be risktakers experimenting with various adaptations of the strategy—a process thatinherently means that the students' applications of the strategic processes willdiffer from those of the expert model. Risk taking is encouraged not only asstudents are first learning to apply the processes, but throughout the learningprocess. For example, when students do not apply the strategy in the exactmanner in which it was modeled by an expert, feedback from the teacherfocuses less on getting the student to imitate the expert model than on en-abling both parties (student and teacher) to understand how the performancesdiffered, why they differed, and whether the differences seemed to affect theattainment of goals. This form of transactional feedback can occur during anyof the four instructional dimensions.

As noted earlier, there is no clear-cut end of one set of instructional pro-cesses and beginning of another. These dimensions differ more in the emphasisof the scaffolding techniques used during the instructional sequence. For ex-ample, expert modeling is used pervasively during the framing process, butteacher modeling occurs extensively throughout all of instruction, although theemphasis of the modeling differs in somewhat, depending on the students'competence. During the orientation process, teachers model use of the strategyas it is used to mediate students' understanding and remembering of content-area subjects. During the framing process, extensive modeling is used for fa-cilitating the development of a conceptual understanding of how the strategicprocesses can be used fluidly and recursively. During the applying process,modeling takes the form of the teacher's collaborating with students to applythe strategic processes during the students' learning of content. During theextending process, teachers model adaptations and generalizations of thestrategy. These forms of modeling are not exclusive to each stage, but ratherare representative.

I began this article by discussing the limitations of failing to integrateendogenous with dialectical and exogenous forms of instruction as well as aninformation-processing skills curriculum with a content-area curriculum. Thistreatment of specific instructional paradigms too often results in the view thatinstructional models should stand alone and cannot, or should not, be inte-grated. This lack of integration makes little sense conceptually.

The instructional framework presented in this article illustrates how teach-ers can integrate features of a variety of instructional models (directed instruc-tion, direct explanation, scaffolding, cooperative learning, etc.) as well as in-tegrate curricula (the learning strategies curriculum and content-area subjectcurriculum) to create a learning environment conducive to facilitating thedevelopment of broader knowledge than that typically achieved in content-area classes. In the ISI model, scaffolding is used both implicitly via the use ofteacher-student dialogue and explicitly via the controlled manner in whichcomplex concepts are introduced to students and the manner in which studentsgradually assume responsibility for performing the strategies. Students withlimited knowledge of cognitive strategies and metacognitive processes are first

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

INTEGRATED STRATEGY INSTRUCTION 87

provided opportunities to develop their own experiential basis for problemsolving in a specific domain and then provided an initial simple format forunderstanding the problem-solving process for this domain. Interactions withothers during various instructional activities gradually enable students to con-struct their own understanding of the strategic process by integrating theunderstandings of more capable persons with their own. These interactionsand activities gradually lead to a recognition of the generic nature of problemsolving and the ability to apply various cognitive strategies and metacognitiveprocesses effectively in other domains.

REFERENCESAnderson, J. R. (1983). The architecture of cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-

sity Press.Anderson, L., Stevens, D. D., Prawat, R. S., & Nickerson, J. (1988). Classroom task

environments and students' task-related beliefs. The Elementary School Journal, 88,281-295.

Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory.Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Baron, J. (1981). Reflective thinking as a goal of education. Intelligence, 5, 291-309.Borkowski, J., Carr, M., Rellinger, E. A., & Pressley, M. (1990). Self-regulated strategy

use: Interdependence of metacognition, attributions, and self-esteem. In B. F. Jones(Ed.), Dimensions of thinking: Review of research (pp. 53-92). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Bos, C. S., & Anders, P. L. (1990). Interactive teaching and learning: Instructionalpractices for teaching content and strategic knowledge. In B. Wong & M. Scruggs(Eds.), Intervention research in learning disabilities. New York: Springer-Verlag.

Bransford, J. D., & Stein, B. S. (1984). The ideal problem solver: A guide for improvingthinking, learning, and creativity (pp. 166-185). New York: Freeman.

Brown, A. L. (1978). Knowing when, where, and how to remember: A problem of meta-cognition. In R. Glaser (Ed.), Advances in instructional psychology (Vol. 7, pp. 55-113). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Brown, D. S. (1988). Twelve middle school teachers' planning. The Elementary SchoolJournal, 89, 69-87.

Brophy, J. (1984). The teacher as thinker: Implementing instruction. In G. Duffy, L. A.Roehler, & J. Mason (Eds.), Comprehension instruction: Perspectives and suggestions(pp. 71-92). White Plains, NY: Longman.

Bulgren, J. A., Schumaker, J. B., & Deshler, D. D. (1988). Effectiveness of a conceptteaching routine in enhancing the performance of LD students in secondary-levelmainstream classes. Learning Disability Quarterly, 11, 3-17.

Clark, C., & Peterson, P. (1986). Teachers' thought processes. In M. C. Wittrock (Ed.),Handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed., pp. 225-296). New York: Macmillan.

Derry, S. J. (1990). Remediating academic difficulties through strategy training: Theacquisition of useful knowledge. Remedial and Special Education, 11, 19-31.

Derry, S. J., & Kellis, A. (1986). A prescriptive analysis of low ability problem solvingbehavior. Instructional Science, 15, 49-65.

Deshler, D. D., & Schumaker, J. B. (1986). Learning strategies: An instructional alter-native for low achieving adolescents. Exceptional Children, 52, 583-590.

DiSibio, M. (1982). Memory for connected discourse. A constructivist view. Review ofEducational Research, 52, 149-174.

DuCharme, C , Earl, J., & Poplin, M. S. (1989). The author mode: The constructivist viewof the writing process. Learning Disability Quarterly, 12, 237-242.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

88 E. S. ELLIS

Ellis, B. S., Deshler, D. D., & Schumaker, J. B. (1989). Teaching learning disabledadolescents to generate and use task-specific strategies. Journal of Learning Disabil-ities, 22(2), 108-119.

Ellis, E. S., Deshler, D. D., Schumaker, J. B., Lenz, B. K., & Clark, F. L. (1991). Aninstructional model for teaching learning strategies. Focus on Exceptional Children,23, 1-24.

Ellis, E. S., & Lenz, B. K. (1987). An analysis of the critical features of effective learningstrategies. Focus on Learning Disabilities, 2(2), 94-107.

Ellis, E. S., & Lenz, B. K. (1990). Adaptive techniques for mediating content-area learn-ing: Issues and research. Focus on Exceptional Children, 22(9), 1-16.

Finch, A. J., & Spirito, A. (1980). Use of cognitive training to train cognitive processes.Exceptional Education Quarterly, 1, 31-39.

Garner, R. (1990). When children and adults do not use learning strategies. Review ofEducational Research, 60, 517-529.

Glen, H. S., & Nelson, J. (1987). Raising children for success: Blueprints and buildingblocks for developing capable people. Fair Oaks, CA: Sunrise Press.

Harris, K., & Pressley, M. (1991). The nature of cognitive strategy instruction: Interac-tive strategy construction. Exceptional Children, 57, 392-404.

Hermann, B. A. (1988). Two approaches for helping poor readers become more strategic.The Reading Teacher, 42, 24-28.

Jones, B. F., Palincsar, A. S., Ogle, D. S., & Carr, E. G. (1987). Strategic teaching andlearning: Cognitive instruction in the content areas. Alexandria, VA: Association forSupervision and Curriculum Development.

Klausmeier, H. J. (1990). Conceptualizing. In B. F. Jones & L. Idol (Eds.), Dimensions ofthinking and cognitive instruction: Implications for educational reform (pp. 93-131).Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Kronick, D. (1988). New approaches to learning disabilities: Cognitive, metacognitive,and holistic. New York: Grune & Stratton.

Lenz, B. K., Bulgren, J. A., & Hudson, P. (1989). In T. E. Scruggs & B. L. Y. Wong (Eds.),Intervention research in learning disabilities (pp. 122-165). New York: Springer-Verlag.

Licht, B. C, & Kistner, J. A. (1986). Motivational problems of learning disabled children:Individual differences and their implications for treatment. In J. K. Torgesen & B. Y.K. Wong (Eds.), Psychological and educational perspectives on learning disabilities(pp. 225-255). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Meichenbaum, D. (1977). Cognitive behavior modification: An integrative approach. NewYork: Plenum Press.

Meichenbaum, D. (1983). Teaching thinking: A cognitive-behavioral approach. In D.Carnine (Ed.) Interdisciplinary voices in learning disabilities and remedial education(pp. 1-28). Austin, TX: ProEd.

Moshman, D. (1982). Exogenous, endogenous, & dialectical constructivism. Developmen-tal Review, 2, 371-384.

Nagel, D. R., Schumaker, J. B., & Deshler, D. D. (1986). The first-letter mnemonicstrategy. Lawrence, KS: Excell Enterprises.

Newman, R. S. (1990). Children's help seeking in the classroom: The role of motivationalfactors and attitudes. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82, 71-80.

Niedelman, M. (1991). Problem solving and transfer. Journal of Learning Disabilities,24, 322-329.

Palincsar, A. M., & Brown, A. L. (1984). Reciprocal teaching of comprehension fosteringand monitoring activities. Cognition and Instruction, 1, 117-175.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

INTEGRATED STRATEGY INSTRUCTION 89

Palincsar, A. M., Ransom, R., & Derber, S. (1989). Collaborative research and develop-ment of reciprocal teaching. Educational Leadership, 46, 37-40.

Paris, S. G., & Winograd, P. (1990). Promoting metacognition and motivation of excep-tional children. Remedial and Special Education, 11, 7-15.

Poplin, M. (1988a). Holistic/constructivist principles of the teaching/learning process:Implications for the field of learning disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 21,401-416.

Poplin, M. (1988b). The reductionalistic fallacy in learning disabilities: Replicating thepast by reducing the present. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 21, 389-400.

Pressley, M. (1983). Making meaning material easier to learn: Lessons from cognitivestrategy research. In M. Pressley & J. R. Levin (Eds.), Cognitive strategy research:Educational applications. New York: Springer-Verlag.

Pressley, M., Borkowski, J. G., & O'Sullivan, J. T. (1985). Children's metamemory andthe teaching of metamemory strategies. In D. L. Forrest-Pressley, G. E. MacKennon,& T. G. Waller (Eds.), Metacognition, cognition, and human performance (pp. 111-153). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Pressley, M., Borkowski, J. G., & Schneider, W. (1989). Good information processing:What it is and what education can do to promote it. International Journal of Edu-cational Research, 13, 857-867.

Pressley, M., El-Dinary, P., Gaskins, I., Schuder, T., Bergman, J., Almasi, J., & Brown,R. (1991). Direct explanation done well: Transactional instruction of reading compre-hension strategies. Unpublished manuscript, University of Maryland.

Pressley, M., Harris, K. R., & Marks, M. M. (1992). But good strategy instructors areconstructivists!! Educational Psychology Review, 4, 3-31.

Pressley, M., Johnson, C. J., & Symons, S. (1987a). Elaborating to learn and learning toelaborate. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 20, 76-91.

Pressley, M., Snyder, B. L., & Cariglia-Bull, T. (1987b). How can good strategy use betaught to children? Evaluation of six alternative approaches. In S. M. Cormier & J. D.Hagman (Eds.), Transfer of learning: Contemporary approaches and applications (pp.81-120). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Resnick, L. B. (1987). Constructing knowledge in school. In L. S. Liben (Ed.), Develop-ment and learning: Conflict or congruence? (pp. 19-50). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Roehler, L. R., & Duffy, G. G. (1984). Direct explanation of comprehension processes. InG. G. Duffy, L. R. Roehler, & J. Mason (Eds.), Comprehension instruction: Perspec-tives and suggestions (pp. 265-280). White Plains, NY: Longman.

Salomon, G., & Perkins, D. N. (1989). Rocky roads to transfer: Rethinking mechanismsof a neglected phenomenon. Educational Psychologist, 24, 113-139.

Schumaker, J., Denton, P. H., & Deshler, D. D. (1984). The paraphrasing strategy.Lawrence: University of Kansas.

Schumaker, J., & Deshler, D. D. (1988). Implementing the Regular Education Initiativein secondary schools: A different ball game. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 21,36-42.

Sheinker, A., Sheinker, J. M., & Stevens, L. J. (1984). Cognitive strategies for teachingthe mildly handicapped. Focus on Exceptional Children, 17, 1-15.

Short, E. J., & Weissberg-Benchell, J. A. (1989). The triple alliance for learning: Cogni-tion, metacognition, and motivation. In C. B. McCormick, G. Miller, & M. Pressley(Eds.), Cognitive strategy research: From basic research to educational applications(pp. 33-63). New York: Springer-Verlag.

Shunk, D. (1989). Self-efficacy and cognitive achievement: Implications for students withlearning disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 22, 14-22.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014

90 E. S. ELLIS

Swanson, H. L. (1988). Toward a metatheory of learning disabilities. Journal of LearningDisabilities, 21, 193-256.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind and society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Wong, B. Y. L. (1985a). Potential means of enhancing content skills acquisition in learn-

ing disabled adolescents. Focus on Exceptional Children, 17(5), 1-8.Wong, B. Y. L. (1985b). Metacognition and learning disabilities. In T. G. Waller, D. For-

rest-Pressley, & E. MacKinnon (Eds.), Metacognition, cognition and human perfor-mance (pp. 137-180). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Wood, P., Bruner, J., & Ross, G. (1976). The role of tutoring in problem-solving. Journalof Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 17, 89-100.

Zimmerman, B. J., & Schunk, D. H. (1989). Self-regulated learning and academicachievement: Theory, research, and practice. New York: Springer-Verlag.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McG

ill U

nive

rsity

Lib

rary

] at

12:

17 2

2 N

ovem

ber

2014