Using Invitational Learning to Address Writing Competence for Middle School Students with Disabilities

This study describes the process of creating an Invitational Learning environment to improve the writing competence of middle school students in two special education classes. Teacher-student interactions were coded according to Purkey and Novak’s (1996) Intentionality/Invitation Quadrant with levels corresponding to intentionally disinviting, unintentionally disinviting, unintentionally inviting, and intentionally inviting. After only two training sessions, teacher-student interactions were markedly more inviting.