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Article Excerpt
Abstract. This article provides a synthesis of the literature published from 1990 to 2000 on college students with learning disabilities and writing difficulties (LD/WD). Thirty-eight articles met the criteria for describing writing difficulties in this cohort of students. Upon reviewing the articles, four major topics emerged: (a) assistive technology for college students with LD/WD; (b) effectiveness of assistive technology for college students with LD/WD; (c) characteristics and error patterns in the writings of college students with LD/WD; and (d) instructional support and methods. The review of the literature shows that there is an urgent need for empirical studies, especially on instructional methods and strategies. Recommendations for future research are presented.
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In 1989, Professor of English Carolyn O'Hearn brought attention to the lack of research and scholarship on college student writers with learning disabilities (LD), saying that "very little has been written specifically about the LD college writer" (p. 295). O'Hearn (1989) conducted a review of the literature at that time, in an effort to assist the instructors who work with this growing college population. More and more students with LD were entering college, and thus enrolling in composition courses and laboring through written assignments. These students were encountering instructors who might not have known anything about their difficulties with written language. Additionally, the literature about these issues was sparse. In O'Hearn's words, "the relative absence of scholarship in this area is indeed unfortunate because composition is crucially important to the success or failure of the LD college student" (p. 295).
The difficulties of students with LD have been explored by many researchers (e.g., Gregg & Hoy, 1990; Hughes & Smith, 1990; Leuenberger & Morris, 1990), even if the specific causes have not been addressed. For example, Blalock (1981) claimed that 80% to 90% of adults with LD experience written language difficulties. Furthermore, writing problems have become a major concern of students with LD and their instructors. Indeed, they are believed to exceed students' other academic difficulties (Gajar, 1989; Ganschow, 1984; Gregg, 1983; Plata, Zelhart, & House, 1995; Scott, 1991). A review of the literature shows that the writing difficulties range from mechanical aspects of writing, that is, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization, to content aspects of writing, such as organization and coherence issues. In addition, students with LD are also likely to experience perceptual difficulties, suffer from test anxiety, demonstrate poor study and planning skills, and have weak revision skills (Higgins & Zvi, 1996; Sills, 1995; Stracher, 1993). These writing difficulties tend to be "exacerbated in secondary schools, where more complex curricular demands and higher teacher expectations compound the difficulties of adolescents with LD' (Hallenbeck, 1996, p. 108). If the secondary environment increases the demands on students with LD, then, as Norton asserts (1992), the next educational step, the postsecondary experience, must place its own unique and intense demands on writers with LD. As Norton writes, many institutions of higher education "acknowledge that learning disabled students at the postsecondary level present unique needs" (p. 106).
With this reality in mind, and in light of the increasing percentage of students with LD who progress to the postsecondary level, the authors asked the following questions: How far have we come in the decade since O'Hearn's literature survey in exploring the specific issues that face college student writers with LD? Much information is necessary to successfully meet the needs of these students. Has this information been culled and disseminated since 1990 in a way that O'Hearn claims it had not been before that time?
Charged through the Program to Enhance and Ensure Learning for Students with Disabilities (PEEL) grant with conducting a survey and synthesis of the literature on college students with LD, the authors searched 67 peer-reviewed journals in both LD and composition/writing since 1990 to see if the dearth of research on this population and its writing issues that O'Hearn discovered had been addressed.
The PEEL grant charge limited the scope of the search to postsecondary students; therefore, literature on younger students with LD was not included. Further, the literature review did not seek to provide a comprehensive critique of the work that has been done in this time period, although critical comments are provided in presenting the articles. Rather, the purpose was to synthesize the literature of the last decade from both the LD and the composition/writing fields that focuses on college students with LD, in order to determine whether or not the lack of research that O'Hearn identified has been addressed, and to spark dialogue in these two fields on how to proceed to ameliorate the challenges that face this student population.
As noted in the current literature review, various names have been assigned to college students with LD, such as postsecondary learning disabled students, college students with writing disabilities, LD college students, college writers with LD, college students with dysgraphia. Further, the review of literature also revealed that only two articles specified their samples as college students with writing disabilities as opposed to the broader label of learning disabilities. In this article, the authors uniformly use the term "college students with LD/WD" when referring to students with LD and writing difficulties in or from a four-year or a two-year postsecondary college, except when a specific term by the researchers is used as their study is presented and discussed in this article.
In the studies reviewed, some researchers did not provide a definition for learning disability. Among those who did, most conform to the definition by the National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities (e.g., Raskind & Higgins, 1995). Some researchers (e.g., Neff, 1994; Sills, 1995) use the definition from Public Law (PL) 94-142 and its recent update, PL 99-45, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). IDEA defines learning disability as a "disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using spoken or written language, which may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell or to do mathematical calculations." Learning disabilities include such conditions as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia. Learning disabilities do not include learning problems that are primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities; mental retardation; or environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage. Whereas IDEA is geared toward a younger LD population (under age 22 and attending high school or lower grade levels), the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Section 504, mandates that two-year and four-year colleges provide accommodations to students with LD, such as extended test time, a scribe, a reader, and the right to tape a lecture.
As mentioned, little effort has been made to delineate subgroups of learning disabilities, and studies have not reported on the different characteristics of subgroups of learning disabilities (i.e., math, reading, spelling, written expression, spoken expression). Thus, it appears that that the term "writing disability" is still not specifically defined and the diagnostic criteria vary across studies, with most studies conforming to local institutional, state, and national definitions and criteria. For example, in a study on the assessment of the writings of college students with and without LD, Morris-Friehe and Leuenberger (1992) identified their students with LD in accordance with their state's special guidelines. The specific criteria for LD are a Full Scale IQ of 85 or higher and a 1.3 or greater standard deviation discrepancy between ability and achievement in one or more of five areas (writing expression, spoken expression, math or listening comprehension, and reading) on at least one standardized measure. Similar criteria were used in a study by Leuenberger and Morris (1990), who also included the criterion of "no sensory, mental, emotional or environmental deficiencies." The students with LD in the study by Raskind and Higgins (1995) were identified based on the criteria specified by the chancellor's office of the state university system and also by the definition of the National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities. Specifically, they required that students with LD have a Full Scale IQ of 90 or better and a significant intracognitive discrepancy and/or achievement and ability discrepancy; in addition, students were to have an average or greater score (25th percentile or above) in at least one academic area. Instruments to determine the ability and achievement discrepancy are mainly the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (Wechsler, 1981), Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery (W-J) (Woodcock & Johnson, 1977), and Test of Adolescent Language (TOAL) (Hammill, Brown, Larson, & Wiederholt, 1980). Some researchers used either the WJ or TOAL as the standard achievement score in the same study without further validating the concurrent validity of the two instruments, which may negatively affect the results.
METHOD
The studies reviewed in this article were selected using the following steps. First, a thorough computer search was conducted using various on-line databases and search engines, such as ERIC, PsycInfo, Northern Light, and the local university library system. Next, articles on writing and learning disability in postsecondary students were identified. The second author, the supervisor of the writing project, also provided journal articles and book chapters on similar topics. The authors searched the contents of 67 peer-reviewed journals from 1990 to 2000 from both the LD and composition/writing fields. For each article meeting the criteria (i.e., the content is related to college students with both LD and/or writing difficulties), the reference section was carefully examined to identify additional studies to be reviewed. The search yielded a total of 38 articles on college students with LD/WD.
SEARCH RESULTS AND SYNTHESIS
Based on the search results, four content categories appeared to be most prevalent in the related literature: (a) overview of the available assistive technology for college students with LD/WD; (b) empirical studies of the effectiveness of assistive technology for college students with LD/WD; (c) characteristics and error patterns in the writings of college students with LD/WD; and (d) instructional methods for this student population. Reviews of the literature for each of the four categories of studies are presented individually in the following sections. A list of the four categories with the authors' names and publication year is provided in Table 1. Finally, full citations of these articles appear in the reference section.
The following reasons may account for why educators and policy makers put more emphasis on the four categories identified than others. First, more and more students with LD are going to college, with 67% of the 100,000 students with LD exiting high school every year planning to attend secondary institutions (Office of Special Education Programs, 1992; White, Alley, Deshler, Shumaker, & Warner, 1982). Thus, there is an urgent need for postsecondary institutions to provide programs to help these students succeed, and it is essential to educate general faculty and other professionals about the learning features of students with LD and the areas where they most need help (e.g., Gregg, Hoy, Mcalexander, & Hayes, 1991). Second, after getting to know the features and error patterns of students with LD/WD, LD practitioners put a lot of effort into exploring instructional strategies and testing what strategies are most effective in teaching these students. Third, no more than 15% of educators use computer technology in instruction and many do not use it at all (Hunt-Bert & Rankin, 1994), due to ignorance of the advanced capability of computer systems and existing educational software. Thus, there is a need to "inform educators of the technology available that can offer advanced program in current computer system" and help students with LD/WD in the various stages of the writing process ((Hunt-Bert & Rankin, 1994, p. 169). Finally, the four categories are essential for students with LD/WD to know what is available when they need help.
Thus, it may be mainly due to pragmatic concerns that the majority of the studies fall into the four categories presented above. Most of the empirical studies reviewed here, especially those examining the effectiveness of assistive technology and characteristics and error patterns, were funded by the Office of Special Education. A more comprehensive examination is needed to determine if the topics and publications are influenced by the nature of funding competitions.
The four categories are further classified into four types of articles based on their purpose, main content, and research method: research report, literature review, informational, and program description. The types of articles, name of authors, year of publication, and number of articles in each type are presented in Table 2.
The following is a synthesis of the studies and conclusions discussed in these 38 articles organized by...
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