There is no use denying the fact that education plays an important role in the life of people. Coherent society has high demands for a person who wants to become successful and, that is why, it is vital for him/her to obtain knowledge which will help to build a good career and achieve good results. However, very often there are some obstacles which can prevent a person to get education. These obstacles can be of different character, however, it is vital to understand how to overcome them for a student to be able to get knowledge. That is why, there is a great number of different investigations which are aimed at the development of new ways how to help students with different problems. The article The Effects of Teaching Text-Structure Strategies to Postsecondary Students with Learning Disabilities to Improve Their Reading Comprehension on Expository Science Text Passages written by Stephanie Gaddy, Jeffrey Bakken and Barbara Fulk is of this sort.
Purpose
The main purpose of this very article is to determine “the relative efficacy of text-structure strategy instruction compared to traditional instruction on the reading comprehension of 40 postsecondary students with learning disabilities (LD)” (Gaddy, Bakken & Fulk, 2008, p. 101). Resting on this fact, it is possible to say that the researchers try to find another way which will be able to help students to become more efficient and conduct a special research in order to prove their hypothesis. Moreover, the article also serves to another purpose which is to investigate the issue of LD among students and suggest some new ways how to overcome it (Gaddy et al., 2008).
Participants
The article under analysis can be taken as a very credible source as the authors support their work with a special study. That is why, forty postsecondary students with some forms of LD were chosen to take part in the research (Gaddy et al., 2008). They decided to do it in their own free will. The choice of the participants was not accidental as the candidates had to fit demands of the research. That is why only students with LD could be chosen.
Methods
They were told that some information about interventions would be given to them. This information could help these students to improve their level of skills and get rid of existing problem. Formal documentation connected with their LD was not required. Though, they were asked to describe the classroom accommodations which they had in high school (Gaddy et al., 2008). Additionally, some demographic data was collected from students. Finally, “twenty students were randomly assigned to either a text-structure strategy condition or a traditional instruction condition” (Gaddy et al., 2008, p. 102).
Findings
Having conducted the research, the authors were able to obtain credible data. All information which was collected with the help of this research showed “that students in the text-structure strategy condition outperformed students in the traditional instruction condition on the sum of combined scores across all measures” (Gaddy et al., 2008, p. 110). However, at the same time effect sizes were very large (Gaddy et al., 2008). These results can be taken as the evidence of the efficiency of instruction in text-structure strategies.
Limitations
However, it should also be said that the given research has some limitations because of the relatively small group of participants and, that is why it is difficult to judge about the results of investigation in case if it involves more people.
Having analyzed the article, it is possible to make a certain conclusion. First of all, it should be said that it can be used to prove efficiency of measures which are aimed at helping students with LD. Additionally, the information presented in the article can be used in further investigations connected with the issue.
Reference
Gaddy, S., Bakken, J., & Fulk, B. (2008). The Effects of Teaching Text-Structure Strategies to Postsecondary Students with Learning Disabilities to Improve Their Reading Comprehension on Expository Science Text Passages. Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability,20(2), 101 – 119.