Special Education Research

Faculty Research

Computer-Assisted Math Intervention Program Development, Principal Investigator: Dr. Yan Ping Xin
www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1503451

Professor Yan Ping Xin, special education program faculty member, is the PI/ Project Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded project: Conceptual Model-based Problem Solving: A Response to Intervention Program for Students with Learning Difficulties in Mathematics (COMPS-RtI). Dr. Signe Kastberg (faculty member of Curriculum and Instruction), along with Dr. Victor Chen (faculty member of the College of Technology), are the co-PIs of this project. The goal of this project is to develop a cross-platform mathematics tutoring program that addresses the problem-solving skill difficulties of second- and third-grade students with learning disabilities/difficulties in mathematics (LDM).

The COMPS-RtI project is the continuation of Professor Xin’s another NSF-funded seven-year project (nmrsld.education.purdue.edu): “Nurturing Multiplicative Reasoning in Students with Learning Disabilities/difficulties” (NMRSD). The goal of the NMRSD project was to: (a) create an intelligent tutoring system that dynamically models individual student’s evolving conceptions and promotes her/his multiplicative reasoning, and (b) study how this intelligent tutor impacts student mathematics outcomes, including diminishing the gap between students with LDM and their normal-achieving peers.

LDQ Special Series: Intersection of Math and Special Education, Principal Investigator: Dr. Yan Ping Xin

Professor Yan Ping Xin is guest editing a Cross-disciplinary Thematic Special Series, Special Education and Mathematics Education, to be published in an influential journal in the field of special education (Learning Disability Quarterly). All four articles, to be published in this special series, arose out of meetings of a cross-disciplinary Working Group at the International Group of the Psychology of Mathematics Education (PME), as well as its North-American Chapter (PME-NA). Establishing this group resulted from the growing concerns, shared by scholars in both disciplines, about promoting all students’ accomplishment of the mathematics outlined in the new curriculum standards.

Teachers as Coaches for Paraprofessionals, Principal Investigator: Dr. Mandy Rispoli

Often young children with the most intensive behavioral needs are served by paraprofessionals who are typically among the least trained and least supported staff in the school. While challenging behavior professional development opportunities are generally limited for special education teachers, such professional growth opportunities are often completely unavailable for paraprofessionals. Delivery of high quality challenging behavior professional development programs to early childhood special educators and paraprofessionals is a critical, unmet need. Teachers as Coaches is based on practice-based coaching for early childhood special education teachers and paraprofessionals. Using single-case research designs, this project evaluates the effects of the Teachers as Coaches package on proximal teacher and paraprofessional intervention fidelity outcomes and distal child behavioral outcomes.

STEP² (Supporting Teachers in Evidence-based Practices) Principal Investigator: Dr. Mandy Rispoli

Young children with developmental disabilities are at risk of having challenging behaviors in need of intensive, individualized supports. The purpose of STEP² is to develop and evaluate models to support high quality practices in functional behavior assessment and function-based interventions in early learning classroom environments.