Teaching Rate of Change and Problem Solving to High School Students With High Incidence Disabilities at Tier 3

Implementing an integrated sequence of concrete-representational-abstract depictions of mathematics concepts (CRA-I) can improve the mathematics achievement of students with disabilities, and explicit instructional strategies involving problem-solving heuristics and student verbalizations can help facilitate students’ conceptual understanding of mathematics. Combining CRA-I and explicit instructional strategies may increase students’ conceptual understanding and ability to express mathematical reasoning through writing. This study included three ninth-grade students with disabilities, and employed a multiple-probe design across-participants to investigate a functional relation between an explicit instructional strategy within a CRA-I framework and high school students’ with disabilities proficiency in solving rate of change problems. Results showed that all three students improved their mathematics scores (combined Tau- U effect size = 0.77, p < .001) and maintained improvements during a 1- to 7-week post-instruction phase. Implications for research and practice related to mathematics instruction and intervention specifically for students with learning disabilities are discussed.