A Survey of Secondary Special Education Teachers’ Word Reading Instructional Practices

In this study, we present results of a national survey of 285 secondary special education teachers’ (SETs) literacy instructional time use and the materials and instructional strategies they use for word reading instruction. We report overall results as well as disaggregated results for middle (Grades 6–8) and high school (Grades 9–12) SETs. Participants reported spending more time addressing language comprehension skills than word recognition skills. Of all word recognition skills, they allocated the largest proportion of instructional time to oral reading fluency. SETs endorsed evidence-based practices for word reading instruction with greater frequency than practices without empirical support. Middle school SETs reported spending more time teaching word reading skills and using word reading instructional practices with greater frequency than high school SETs. We discuss these results in the context of prior research on evidence-based practices for word reading instruction.