Learning Disabilities: Historical Perspectives

Daniel P. Hallahan, University of Virginia, & Cecil D. Mercer, University of Florida
Learning Disabilities Summit: Building a Foundation for the Future White Papers

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SOLIDIFICATION PERIOD (C.1975 TO 1985)

The period from about 1975 to 1985 was a period of relative stability as the field moved toward consensus on the definition of learning disabilities as well as methods of identifying students with learning disabilities. It was a period of considerable applied research, much of it funded by the USOE, that resulted in empirically validated educational procedures for students with learning disabilities. There was some upheaval with respect to professional organizations, but this unrest was relatively brief.

Solidification of the Definition

In 1975, Congress passed Public Law 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act. With this law, learning disabilities finally achieved official status as a category eligible for funding for direct services.

U.S. Office of Education 1977 definition. By the early 1970s, the NACHC definition of 1968 had become the most popular one among state departments of education (Mercer, Forgnone, & Wolking, 1976). This no doubt figured into the USOE's virtual adoption of the NACHC definition for use in the implementation of P.L. 94-142:

The term "specific learning disability" means a disorder in one or more of the psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, which may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations. The term includes such conditions as perceptual handicaps, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia and developmental aphasia. The term does not include children who have learning disabilities which are primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor handicaps, or mental retardation, or emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage. (USOE, 1977, p. 65083)

The 1977 USOE definition, with minor wording changes, has survived until today as the definition used by the federal government. However, that does not mean that other definitions have not been promulgated by parent and professional groups. Examples of two developed during this period were those of the National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities (NJCLD) and the ACLD.

NJCLD definition. In 1978, the major learning disabilities professional organizations as well as the ACLD formed the NJCLD in order to attempt to provide a united front in addressing issues pertaining to learning disabilities. In 1981, the NJCLD developed the following definition:

Learning disabilities is a generic term that refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders manifested by significant difficulties in the acquisition and use of listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning or mathematical abilities. These disorders are intrinsic to the individual and presumed to be due to central nervous system dysfunction. Even though a learning disability may occur concomitantly with other handicapping conditions (e.g., sensory impairment, mental retardation, social and emotional disturbance) or environmental influences (e.g., cultural differences, insufficient-inappropriate instruction, psychogenic factors), it is not the direct result of those conditions or influences. (Hammill, Leigh, McNutt, & Larsen, 1981, p. 336)

In formulating this definition, the NJCLD was purposeful in its exclusion of any mention of psychological processes, which were integral to the USOE definition. By not mentioning psychological processes, the NJCLD distanced itself from perceptual and perceptual-motor training programs, which had lost favor in the research community.

Federal Regulations for Identification of Learning Disabilities

When P.L. 94-142 was implemented in 1977, in addition to the inclusion of a definition of learning disabilities, the federal government issued regulations pertaining to the identification of students with learning disabilities. Because the federal definition was not explicit about how states and local school systems were to identify students as learning disabled, the regulations were intended to provide an operational definition for use in identification. The USOE first proposed a formula that defined a severe discrepancy as "when achievement in one or more of the areas falls at or below 50% of the child's expected achievement level, when age and previous educational experiences are taken into account" (USOE, 1976, p. 52405).

Public response to the notion of a formula was overwhelmingly negative. Thus, no formula was included in the definition or regulations. However, the USOE stayed with the idea of an ability-achievement discrepancy in the regulations:

(a) A team may determine that a child has a specific learning disability if:
(1) The child does not achieve commensurate with his or her age and ability levels in one or more of the areas listed in paragraph (a) (2) of this section, when provided with learning experiences appropriate for the child's age and ability levels; and
(2) The team finds that the child has a severe discrepancy between achievement and intellectual ability in one or more of the following areas:
(i) Oral expression;
(ii) Listening comprehension;
(iii) Written expression;
(iv) Basic reading skill;
(v) Reading comprehension;
(vi) Mathematics calculation; or
(vii) Mathematics reasoning
(USOE, 1977, p. 65083)
Empirically Validated Educational Procedures

The heavy criticism of psycholinguistic process and perceptual process training programs toward the end of the previous period had left the field of learning disabilities with a relative void of research-based educational practices. Beginning in the 1970s several learning disabilities researchers began to turn their attention to developing educational methods for students with learning disabilities. A major impetus for this effort was the USOE's funding of five research institutes from 1977 to 1982. These institutes were housed at Columbia University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Kansas, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Virginia. In addition to the work of the institutes, another major body of influential intervention work was that which focused on Direct Instruction.

Columbia University. The Columbia institute, directed by Dale Bryant, focused on information processing difficulties of students with learning disabilities (Connor, 1983). The institute conducted research in five areas: memory and study skills (led by Margaret Jo Shepherd), arithmetic (Jeanette Fleischner), basic reading and spelling (Bryant), interaction of characteristics of the text and the reader (Joanna Williams), and reading comprehension (Walter MacGinitie).

University of Illinois at Chicago. The main foci of the Illinois institute, directed by Tanis Bryan, were on the social competence and attributions about success and failure of children with learning disabilities (Bryan, Pearl, Donahue, Bryan, & Pflaum, 1983). Social competence was an area that had largely been ignored by researchers up to this point. By focusing on social competence, the Illinois team validated the ACLD's concern for social skills evident in their definition of learning disabilities. Bryan and her colleagues established that students with learning disabilities have deficits in the pragmatic use of language, which interferes with their ability to make and keep friends. For example, they found that such students have problems in adapting their communication style to fit the listener, are less persuasive in conversations, and are less apt to request clarification when faced with ambiguous information.

With respect to attributions, the Illinois researchers found that students with learning disabilities tend to attribute their failures to lack of ability, but attribute their successes to luck or the task being relatively easy. Furthermore, mothers of children with learning disabilities believe that their children's successes are due more to luck than ability and that their failures are due more to lack of ability than to bad luck.

The University of Kansas. Researchers at the Kansas institute, directed by Donald Deshler, focused on educational interventions for adolescents with learning disabilities (Schumaker, Deshler, Alley, & Warner, 1983). The focus on adolescents filled a void in the research literature on learning disabilities. By focusing on older children, the Kansas team reinforced the ACLD's concern for the lifelong nature of learning disabilities evident in their definition. The Kansas researchers first conducted epidemiological studies to determine the characteristics of adolescents with learning disabilities. Among other things, they found that many of these students have deficiencies in study skills, learning strategies, and social skills.

Based on what they had found to be the characteristics of adolescents with learning disabilities, the Kansas team developed a variety of educational strategies for working on academic problems, called the Learning Strategies Curriculum. They also field-tested a number of social skills strategies.

University of Minnesota. Directed by James Ysseldyke, the Minnesota institute primarily focused on two areas: (a) the decision-making process related to identification of students with learning disabilities, and (b) curriculum-based assessment (CBA) procedures (Ysseldyke, Thurlow, et al., 1983). With respect to identification, they raised concerns about whether students identified as learning disabled could be reliably differentiated from low achievers:

After five years of trying, we cannot describe, except with considerable lack of precision, students called LD. We think that LD can best be defined as "whatever society wants it to be, needs it to be, or will let it be" at any point in time. Who have other researchers studied? The 1% of the school-age population that some experts think are LD or the 85% of the school-age population other experts think are LD? We think researchers have compiled an interesting set of findings on a group of students who are experiencing academic difficulties, who bother their regular classroom teachers and who have been classified by societally sanctioned labelers in order to remove them, to the extent possible, from the regular education mainstream. (Ysseldyke, Thurlow, et al., 1983, p. 89)

Led by Stanley Deno, the Minnesota researchers working on CBA were interested in developing a method of assessing students' progress in the curricula to which they were exposed. They saw this as providing more educationally useful information than the typical, nationally-normed, standardized tests of achievement. Deno and his colleagues found that students with learning disabilities and their teachers benefit from CBA.

University of Virginia. The Virginia institute, directed by Daniel Hallahan, focused on children with learning disabilities who also had attention problems (Hallahan et al., 1983). The Virginia researchers documented metacognitive problems in the students and developed cognitive behavior modification techniques for the remediation of those problems. In particular, they had students use self-monitoring techniques while engaged in academic work. Their findings indicated that self-monitoring of attention generally results in increased academic productivity.

The Virginia institute also focused on providing strategies for direct use on academic tasks. Led by John Lloyd, this research on academic strategy training resulted in a number of specific techniques for instruction in reading and math.

In assessing the impact of the institutes as a group, Keogh (1983) noted that four of the institutes approached learning disabilities as a strategic, information processing problem and developed educational interventions accordingly: "I am impressed by the effectiveness of the experimental interventions developed and tested. In this sense these data are among the most optimistic to be found in the literature" (Keogh, 1983, p. 123).

McKinney (1983), likewise, noted that

the central concept that emerges from this research is that many LD students have not acquired efficient strategies for processing task information and therefore cannot use their abilities and experience to profit from conventional instruction. Most of this research, however, also demonstrates that they are capable of acquiring the strategies that account for competent performance and that they can improve their academic skills and adaptive functioning when they are taught task-appropriate strategies. This conceptualization of learning disabilities contrasts with the traditional view that emerged during the 1960's that LD students suffered from relatively enduring deficits in the development of specific abilities, such as perception and language, which impaired their capacity to perform academic tasks. (McKinney, 1983, p. 131)

McKinney, however, was critical of some of the Minnesota institute's conclusions regarding identification of learning disabilities:

First, the conclusions of this institute and the implications they draw suggest that LD students are not handicapped in any significant way apart from underachievement. In my opinion this conclusion is not supported by the evidence presented in the Minnesota report or by that obtained by the other four institutes....

Second, the conclusions of this group imply not only that special education services for LD students are ineffective but that they are unnecessary and potentially do more harm than good. The evidence for this implication appears to be based on research of placement team decision making as opposed to research on instructional processes and intervention.

Third, ...the idea that we provide intervention at the point of referral has intuitive appeal, ...and may be worthy of additional consideration...; but the issues of what constitutes intervention, exactly who receives the intervention, who provides the intervention, and whether parents are involved in planning the intervention were not discussed in the report. (McKinney, 1983, pp. 137-138)

Whether Keogh's and McKinney's praise of some of the institutes' work and McKinney's criticisms of some of the Minnesota institute's work are justifiable is debatable. There is no doubt that all of the institutes' work has remained influential up until the present day in terms of theory and practice. With particular reference to the Minnesota work, there are those, today, who agree with McKinney's criticisms and those who do not. We address some of these influences and disagreements in our discussion of the Turbulent Period.

Direct Instruction. In the 1970s, Sigfried Engelmann, Wesley Becker, and their colleagues developed a number of intervention programs for language, reading, and math (Englemann, Becker, Hanner, & Johnson, 1978, 1988; Englemann & Osborn, 1977). Often referred to as Direct Instruction, these programs emphasized the systematic teaching of language subskills and the integration of these subskills into broader language competence. Several studies, including large-scale evaluations such as Project Follow-Through (Abt Associates, 1976, 1977) found Direct Instruction highly effective.

Learning Disabilities Professional Organization Turmoil

Toward the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s, several members of DCLD began voicing dissatisfaction with their parent organization, CEC. Among other things, they complained that DCLD was not receiving its fair share of services from CEC. In addition, they were upset with CEC's policy of not allowing individuals to be members of DCLD without being a member of CEC. More relevant to our discussion of the history of the learning disabilities field, however, were philosophical differences brewing between the leaders in DCLD. Many of the younger, rising leaders in learning disabilities were disenchanted with the older guard's tacit, and sometimes explicit, acceptance of assessment and intervention approaches embracing perceptual and psychological processing, such as the ITPA.

In 1982, the Council for Learning Disabilities (CLD) was founded as an organization separate from CEC. Several key figures in the old DCLD immediately organized and petitioned CEC to start a new division. In 1983, the Division for Learning Disabilities (DLD) of CEC was established, with its first president being Sister Marie Grant.

Over the years the philosophies of the two organizations have become more and more similar. Today, there are virtually no philosophical differences between the two organizations, and many professionals, especially academics, belong to both organizations. In fact, some have pointed out that having two organizations--CLD, with about 3,000 members, and DLD, with about 10,000 members--makes it difficult to provide a united front with respect to advocacy for learning disabilities.

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