One Student at a Time; One Teacher at a Time: Reflections on the Use of Instructional Support

Abstract

The use of instructional-support teams (ISTs) is one way to improve our response to the needs of young learners who are struggling in the early grades. Instructional support is a concept, not a program or a model, that is based on a set of principles that can be applied in various ways to 'search for what works,' and whatever it takes to help a student to succeed in school. Pawlowski (2001) lists the beliefs that underlie the use of instructional support: We believe: (a) in reducing the amount of time a student struggles before appropriate intervention is provided; (b) that the most effective learning occurs in the regular classroom; (c) that effective intervention must include the identification of individual learning strengths; (d) that the most powerful interventions are developed collaboratively; and (e) that teachers will accept responsibility and ownership for student learning when appropriate support is provided. From these aforementioned beliefs, the concept of instructional support was developed to be family focused, community centered, collaborative, and data based. More specifically, instructional support identifies effective instruction is the most important force in education, instruction by parents in the home and instruction by teachers in the classroom, and that leads to a special education for all children that fosters lifelong learning. Finally, the purpose of education is to develop the capacity of every student for success as an adult. Because it is collaborative, instructional support is best provided by a team of individuals rather than by a single professional. The IST is a flexible collection of professionals and parents who can lead the search for answers in meeting the needs of individual students. Inevitably, the question will be asked how instructional support relates to the more recent concept called response to intervention (RTI; Gresham, 2001). Although the two concepts are obviously interlinked and have similar origins, the focus of each could be different. Some have used RTI to focus on the response to a planned intervention and the use of that response as a measure of the student's learning capacity. In instructional support, the focus is on the support that a student needs to succeed. The degree to which the support is successful will be the measure of the efficacy of that support, but the assessment of success is primarily for the purpose of determining whether or not to continue the support, to alter it, or to terminate it. Furthermore, it is a mistake to assume that instructional support is a method for diagnosing a learning disability. Instructional support is simply support for instruction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)