Scaffolding Inference-making for Adolescents with Disabilities that Impact Reading.

Middle and secondary grade students with disabilities that impact reading, including learning disabilities in reading (LD-R), high functioning autism (HFA), emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD), and students who are at-risk for reading failure due to the effect of poverty often struggle to make knowledge-based inferences while reading informational texts. As a result, this population of students is not able to read for understanding and learn from grade-level texts. Unfortunately, many special educators have had little preparation in how to develop their knowledge of inference-making or methods for explicitly teaching inference-making. Despite their lack of knowledge, special educators are often solely responsible for teaching skills that support reading comprehension, such as knowledge-based inference-making, to students with LD-R, EBD, HFA, and students reading below grade level. This article provides special educators, via self-directed learning, with information and resources to enhance their understanding of knowledge-based inferencing and methods for teaching knowledge-based inference-making to middle and secondary grade students with and at-risk for disabilities that impact reading achievement.

Error Patterns in the Knowledge-Based Inference-Making of Less Skilled Middle-Grade Readers: An Exploratory Study.

The primary aims of this mixed method study were to (a) examine the effectiveness of a brief inference intervention, (b) compare the types of knowledge-based inferencing errors less skilled middle grade readers make, and (c) evaluate if self-reported cognitive load relates to inferencing. Participants (n = 17) were randomly assigned to a graphic organizer-inference intervention (GO-Inference) (n = 9) or business as usual (BAU) condition (n = 8), and differences between groups were explored for each study purpose. Quantitative and qualitative results suggested that while less skilled readers in the GO-Inference condition made modest progress in forming knowledge-based inferences, they continued to struggle to distinguish relevant versus irrelevant information from text and/or retrieve knowledge necessary to form inferences. Students in the BAU condition were more likely to make errors such as providing irrelevant information or failing to respond. Additionally, students in the GO-Inference condition reported lower cognitive load during inference-making tasks.