A Systematic Instructional Approach to Teaching Finance Vocabulary to Students with Moderate-to-Significant Disabilities

Abstract

Federal law and judicial rulings in the United States direct educators to provide special education services to students with disabilities that enable them to demonstrate meaningful progress, considering their circumstances. The services are to comprise evidence-based practices and must account for students’ unique learning characteristics and the time allotted for instruction. Accordingly, this paper reports on two interconnected investigations involving four high school students with autism and an intellectual disability who were taught to read and define finance vocabulary via a systematic instructional approach presented during short-duration lessons (5–8 min). A multiple-probe, nonconcurrent single-case design established a functional relationship between the lessons and the students’ vocabulary acquisition. All four students learned to read their targeted words. One student demonstrated acquisition of all the definitions, whereas the other three demonstrated variable acquisition before the study was discontinued because of the end of the school year. The students also demonstrated variable skill maintenance and generalization. The results suggest an appropriate structure for a short-duration lesson and a corresponding research agenda for investigating parameters associated with its effectiveness and efficiency. The study offers teachers instructing students with moderate-significant disabilities a practical evidence-based instructional strategy that accounts for their time management challenges. Furthermore, the strategy’s framework offers a theoretical way for investigating the impacts of increased academic learning time and practice opportunities.