Cognitive-Behavioral Training in Spelling for Learning Handicapped Students

This paper proposes that development of effective cognitive-behavioral training (CBT) approaches in academic domains, such as spelling, requires greater appreciation of the instructional character of such interventions. Teaching in its purest form, we argue, is cognitive-behavioral training. Therefore, design of CBT interventions needs to be imbued with greater concern for trainers' (i.e., teachers') knowledge of the academic domain as well as their pedagogical expertise in finely and precisely adjusting their instructional use of language to communicate that knowledge. Learning handicapped students, more than normally achieving peers, require such expertise if they are to learn even basic skills.