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Document 1 of 1 Adolescents with and without LD make the transition to middle school Author: Forgan, James W; Vaughn, Sharon ProQuest document link Abstract: The purpose of this 2-year study was to describe how Hispanic students with and without learningdisabilities fared academically and socially during the transition from elementary school to middle school.Participants were 14 Hispanic students who were instructed in a sixth-grade consultation/collaboration, inclusiveelementary classroom before making the transition to middle school. Examination of social, academic, andstudent perception data revealed that, on the whole, the students with learning disabilities and those withoutexperienced the transition similarly and fared well during the elementary-to-middle-school transition. Full text: Headnote Abstract Headnote The purpose of this 2-year study was to describe how Hispanic students with and without learning disabilitiesfared academically and socially during the transition from elementary school to middle school. Participants were14 Hispanic students who were instructed in a sixth-grade consultation/ collaboration, inclusive elementaryclassroom before making the transition to middle school. Examination of social, academic, and studentperception data revealed that, on the whole, the students with learning disabilities and those withoutexperienced the transition similarly and fared well during the elementary-to-middle-school transition. The main purpose of our study was to describe how students with and without learning disabilities (LD) faredacademically and socially over a 2-year period, during their transition from a sixth-grade inclusive elementaryclassroom to seventhgrade, in middle school. Data regarding students' progress in the following domains werecollected: reading comprehension, global and academic selfconcept, and friendship quality Students'perceptions of their transition experiences were also gathered in two individually administered interviews. To date, a modest body of research exists regarding the effects of making the transition from elementary tomiddle school on the development of adolescents in general education but not in special education (e.g., Eccles&Midgley, 1989; Eccles et al., 1993b; Nottleman, 1987). For general education students, this period of schooltransition often leads to declines in their selfperceptions, academic performance, school-related behaviors(Eccles, Lord, &Midgley, 1991), and grade-point average (Seidman, Allen, Aber, Mitchell, &Feinman 1994).Students' schoolrelated declines from elementary to middle school are usually not extreme but, rate occur at agradual rate (Eccles &Midgley, 1989). Academic Outcomes Researchers have investigated the academic performance of general education students during schooltransition (e.g., Lord, Eccles, &McCarthy, 1994; Simmons &Blyth, 1987; Wigfield &Eccles, 1994), and, assummed up by Midgley and Urdan (1992), "after the school transition, many students feel less positively abouttheir academic potential and the value of schooling, they give up more quickly and put forth less effort, and theirgrades decline" (p. 5). Most researchers agree that the academic performance and competence of generaleducation adolescents tend to decrease after the transition to middle school (Eccles et al., 1993a; Wigfield,Eccles, Mac Iver, Reuman, &Midgley, 1991). Academic competence (i.e., a student's belief in his or her controlover positive academic outcomes) tends to decrease from sixth grade to the beginning of seventh grade forstudents in general education (Wigfield et al., 1991). By the end of seventh grade, these students' academiccompetence generally increases but does not reach the same level as was present at the beginning of sixthgrade. It seems that students' academic performance rebounds after the elementary-to-middle-school transitionbut does not return to prior levels.

Researchers' explanation for the academic and behavioral declines of general education students lies in thechanges in the classroom environment that typically occur when students make the transition from elementaryto middle school (Eccles &Midgley, 1989; Simmons &Blyth, 1987). In middle school, teachers are less likely toform interpersonal relationships with students and more likely to display higher levels of control and to disciplinemore frequently (Eccles et al., 1993b). This level of control contrasts with elementary school classrooms, wherestudents are often given opportunities to take responsibility for their own schoolwork. Furthermore, middle school students likely receive whole-class instruction, with little small-group orindividualized instruction (Vaughn &Schumm, 1994). Observations of sixthand seventh-grade students haverevealed that most students work on the same assignments, use the same textbooks, and receive the samehomework (Feldlaufer, Midgley, &Eccles, 1988). Whole-class instruction encourages teachers to publiclyevaluate student performance and use stricter grading standards, often leading to declines in student academicperformance and academic self-concept (Eccles &Midgley, 1989). Self-Concept Most of the studies that have investigated non-learning disabled (NLD) students' self-concept during the middleschool transition period have reported consistently that students' academic self-concept decreases afterelementary school (Eccles et al., 1989; Wigfield et al., 1991). In one longitudinal study examining theelementaryto-middle-school transition, adolescents' math and English self-concepts declined during thetransition from sixth to seventh grade and continued to decline throughout the seventhgrade year (Wigfield etal., 1991). These results support other researchers who have also reported a decrease in students' academicself-concept (Eccles et al., 1993b; Marsh, 1990). Although NLD students experience decreases in academic self-concept, most maintain a stable globalselfconcept during the transition to middle school and the middle school years (Jones &Thornburg, 1984;Nottleman, 1987; Wigfield &Eccles, 1994). Some researchers have even reported increases in the self-conceptand self-esteem of general education students (Hirsch &Rapkin, 1987; Nottleman, 1987). Given that NLD students' academic self-concept often decreases during the transition to middle school but theirglobal self-concept remains stable, one of our purposes for this study was to determine how the self-concept ofadolescents with LD fared across the transition. Chapman's (1988) synthesis of 20 studies on the self-conceptof students with LD, some of which included adolescents, revealed that general education students held higheracademic self-concept than students with LD in all studies but one. Additionally, most researchers havereported that elementary-age students with LD have a lower global selfconcept than their NLD peers (Bear,Cleaver, &Proctor, 1991; Rogers &Saklofsky, 1985). At the secondary level, however, researchers havereported that students with LD have a global self-concept on par with that of their NLD peers (Hagborg, 1996;Kirstner, Haskett, White, &Robbins, 1987, Tollefson et al., 1982). Silverman and Zigmond (1983) examined the global self-concept of seventh- and eighth-grade adolescents withand without LD and found that the self-concept scores of students with LD were not significantly different fromthose of their NLD classmates or the norming population of the PiersHarris Children's Self-Concept Scale.These conclusions were bolstered by Sabornie (1994), who compared middle school students with and withoutLID and found no significant differences in the students' global selfconcept scores. Friendship Quality Friendship functions as an important social support when adolescents face stressful life events, such as makingthe transition from elementary to middle school. Often, adolescents' behavior and adjustment improves whenthey have friendships that are trusted and supportive (Berndt &Keefe, 1991). Strong friendships can even booststudents' self-esteem (Berndt &Keefe, 1993). A longitudinal study of adolescents revealed that students whoreported positive friendships also had a positive perception of their global selfworth. Likewise, adolescents whohad ongoing and recurring negative interactions with peers perceived their global self-worth negatively (Berndt&Keefe, 1993).

As children develop and mature, their perspective on the characteristics needed to form a quality friendshipchanges from the personal to the situational (Berndt &Perry, 1986). Elementary-age children often explain theirrelationships with friends in terms of the friends' actions (e.g., being "nice" or "mean"), whereas adolescentsrealize that supportive friendships may involve an occasional disagreement or argument. Adolescents alsodevelop more friendships based upon extracurricular interests and class scheduling. As adolescents mature,they find that having one or two close friends is often more important than boasting a large group ofacquaintances. Perhaps making the middle school transition is less stressful for adolescents with supportivefriendships than it is for those who lack such relationships. In summary, there is limited research on how general education students make the transition from elementary tomiddle school. At least for many general education students, this period results in (a) gradual declines inacademic performance, (b) stable global-self concepts, but (c) declines in academic self-concept. No multiyearstudies were located that investigated the performance of students with LD, and little is known about thefriendship quality of students with LD as they make the transition to middle school or their perceptions of thisprocess. This study sought to better understand the academic and social outcomes for a cohort of students withLD and their non-LD peers who made the transition from elementary to middle school. Method Participants Permission for participation in this study was obtained from parents and students. Participants were in the samesixth-grade classroom during the 1994-1995 academic year. These students attended a school, composedmainly of Hispanic students, in a large southeastern metropolitan area that had implemented an inclusion modelfor the past 2 years. Fourteen Hispanic students (7 with LD and 7 without) participated in this study, which thenfollowed the original cohort of 14 students into middle school. Table 1 provides a description of the participants. All students with LD in the sixthgrade inclusive classroom (n = 7) were selected for this study. Students wereclassified as LD if they met the following criteria: Their intelligence score was within the normal range as measured on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale forChildren-HIll (WISC-III; Wechsler, 1991); One or more standard scores on the WISC-III were 1 standard deviation below either the Verbal or thePerformance IQ score; Evidence of processing difficulties existed; and Their learning difficulty was not the result of a precipitating condition, such as second language learning, asensory handicap, or a mental handicap. The seven students without LD were selected from the same sixth-grade inclusive classroom. These studentswere purposively selected to match the students with LD on the basis of ethnicity and gender. According to theirscores on the Stanford Achievement Test, six of the students were average achieving (stanine of 4-6) and onestudent was high achieving (stanine of 9). Measures Basic Academic Skills Samples (BASS). The Basic Academic Skills Samples (Espin, Deno, Maruyama,&Cohen, 1989) has been utilized in several large-scale research studies (Elbaum &Vaughn, 1997; Zigmond etal., 1995). It was originally designed as a screening instrument to yield an index of student achievement in thebasic academic skill areas and to study programs designed to meet the needs of students with LD in generaleducation classrooms (Espin et al., 1989). The BASS is group administered and requires a total of only 5minutes, making it ideal for administration at regular intervals throughout the school year. The Reading subtest of the BASS consists of a cloze procedure in which every 7th word (starting with the 14thword) is replaced by a multiple-choice item containing the correct word and two distracters. Students are given Iminute to read the passage and correctly mark the word that belongs in the sentence. The BASS reading score is the average across the three passages of the number of correct responses minus

half the number of incorrect responses (Zigmond et al., 1995). To prevent a score's being artificially inflated byguessing, scoring is discontinued after the student makes three consecutive incorrect choices (Espin et al.,1989). This instrument is reported to be a valid index of student achievement in reading, with a correlation of .81between the number of words read aloud and the total number of words read on the BASS (Espin et al., 1989).Elbaum and Vaughn (1997) administered the BASS to more than 1,400 students with LID from Florida andreported it as having high test-retest reliability and strong concurrent validity with the Stanford AchievementTest. Friendship Survey. This measure is an individually administered, 18-item measure that Vaughn, Elbaum,Schumm, and Hughes (1998) adapted from a structured interview originally developed by Berndt and Perry(1986). The purpose of this measure was to investigate dimensions of children's friendships (Vaughn et al.,1998). The following is an example of a question from the Friendship Survey: "Do you and your friends go overto each other's houses?" Students respond "Yes," "Sometimes," or "No" for each question. As reported inprevious research (Vaughn et al., 1998), the total score on the friendship survey can be used as a measure ofthe quality of a student's friendships; overall, the friendship survey gives an indication of how well he or sheinteracts with friends in, or outside of, school. Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Measure. The Piers-Harris (Piers, 1984) has also been used in previousresearch studies (Marsh &MacDonald Holmes, 1990; Proctor &Choi, 1994; Silverman &Zigmond, 1983;Tollefson et al., 1982; Yauman, 1980). This measure is an 80-item self-report questionnaire designed to assesshow children feel about themselves (Piers, 1984). For each of the 80 items, a brief statement is provided andstudents are asked to respond "Yes" or "No" to indicate whether each statement applies to them. "Myclassmates make fun of me" and "I have many friends" are two examples of items from this measure.

The total score of the Piers-Harris ranges from 0 to 80, with a higher score indicating a more positiveselfconcept. This research study reports two scores from the Piers-Harris: the total score and that of theintellectual/ academic self-concept subscale. The total score is reported because it is the single most reliablemeasure for the Piers-Harris (Piers, 1984). Marsh and MacDonald Holmes (1990) concluded that the subscalesof the Piers-Harris should be interpreted with caution because "the Piers-Harris originally was intended tomeasure a relatively global, unidimensional construct, and its scale scores were derived ex-post facto on the

basis of factor analyses" (p. 96). The Piers-Harris was normed on 1,183 children representing Grades 4 through 12. Test-retest reliabilitycoefficients are reported that range from .42 to .96 (Piers, 1984). Median testretest reliability was .73. Reportedinternal consistency coefficients range from .88 to .92 for the total score and from .73 to .81 for the clusterscales (Piers, 1984). Interviews. The purpose of the individual student interviews was to understand students' perceptions of thetransition to middle school. The researcher adhered to the following interview procedures (Bogdan &Biklen,1992) during the student interview: 1. Build a relationship and common ground with small talk; 2. Inform the student of the purpose of the interview and assure him or her of confidentiality; 3. Present questions as a guide for discussion; 4. Avoid using questions that can be answered by "yes" or "no"; 5. Encourage students to elaborate on key points and clarify responses when unclear; 6. Listen carefully; and 7. Be flexible. The interview consisted of 12 questions: Questions 1 through 5 were about the school transition, Questions 6through 8 related to inclusion and students' friendships, and Questions 9 through 12 investigated students'views of academics (see the Appendix for a copy of the first student interview). A second individual interview was developed to obtain further information about students' perceptions oftransition and inclusion. To develop the second student interview, the researcher examined the first level codingfrom the initial student interviews (Miles &Huberman, 1994), and new questions were developed that expandedon students' responses from the first-level coding. All questions from the second interview were openended andallowed students to expand on previous responses. Procedure This research study was conducted in four phases. Phase 1 of the data collection was administered during Year1, when the participants were in sixth grade (their final year of elementary school). During sixth grade, theparticipants were included as part of a larger study investigating the academic and social effects of inclusion(Vaughn et al., 1998). The consultation/collaboration model of inclusion consisted of approximately 36 studentsin one class, 6 of which were identified as LD. Trained graduate assistants administered the BASS, Piers-Harris, and Friendship Survey during October and May of the school year. Phase 2 of the data collection was completed during January of the following year, when participants were inseventh grade, their first year of middle school. During seventh grade, the students with LD spent a minimum ofone class period per day in the resource room and rotated to other classes throughout the day. Data werecollected from the participants in a 1-hour session at each school. When administering the Piers-Harris and theFriendship Survey, we read the items aloud to students when necessary; however, the BASS does not permitthe items to be read out loud. Phase 3 of the data-collection process was completed during May of the participants' 7th grade year. Again,data were collected and each student was individually interviewed for approximately 20 to 30 minutes, duringwhich responses were written down and the interview audiotaped. This recording was reviewed and transcribedfor accuracy. Phase 4 began after the data from all initial student interviews were transcribed and had receivedfirstlevel coding (Miles &Huberman, 1994), which summarized segments of data. This first-level coding helpedthe researcher identify students who provided descriptive details during the interview, in addition to areas thatneeded to be expanded upon during the second interview. With the information from the first student interviews,a second interview was developed to provide a more intensive examination of critical issues. The interviewswere audiotaped and transcribed for accuracy and data analysis purposes. The transcribed interviews were studied by the primary author, and an initial list of large common ideas

emerged (Strauss &Corbin, 1990). The interview data were then unitized and patterns of data became evident.After themes were derived to describe the patterns of data, another researcher, trained in qualitative dataanalysis, independently read the unitized data. Both researchers met and agreed upon a mutual set of factors.When differences existed, the researchers discussed the issues and came to an agreement. Intercoderagreement was .95. Results The findings from this study are discussed in terms of four areas: academic performance in reading, self-concept and friendship quality, intraindividual results, and students' perceptions of inclusion and schooltransition. Academic Performance in Reading The BASS is not a nationally normreferenced reading measure; however, the students from this transition studyare equated to students from Minnesota who participated in the development of the BASS measure to provide ameans of comparison (sixth grade was the highest grade in the comparison sample from Minnesota). We feelthis is a valuable comparison because the BASS reading measure has been used in several large-scaleresearch projects and serves as an indicator of how students in our specific geographic area achieve in regardto the findings of other researchers (Elbaum &Vaughn, 1997; Zigmond et al., 1995). As presented in Table 2, when the mean raw scores of the BASS were examined by group (LD and NLD), thegeneral education students' mean raw scores were higher on the BASS than the mean raw scores of thestudents with LD at each data point (i.e., September 1994, May 1995, January 1996, and May 1996). When the mean scores of the NLD students and students with LD are compared to the BASS comparisonsample, both groups of students achieved below the sixth-grade comparison sample from Minnesota at all datapoints. The comparison sample data from all six grade levels showed that the pattern of change for students'scores was an increase of approximately 2 points at each ascending grade level. On the basis of that pattern, itwas predicted that the mean raw score for a seventh-grade comparison sample would be 16. In our study, theseventh-grade NLD students' mean score was approximately 11 and the mean score of the students with LDwas approximately 5. When matched to the comparison sample scores, the students with LID scored on parwith second-grade students and the NLD students scored on par with fourthgrade students. The mean rawscores of both groups of students were much lower than the predicted seventhgrade comparison sample score. From the end of sixth grade to the end of seventh grade, reading scores for both groups of students wereslightly higher in middle school than in elementary school. The mean reading raw score of the NLD studentsincreased at each data-collection point. This slight upward trend indicated that the NLD students made onlyminimal progress in reading across the 2 school years.

The students with LD also made minimal reading gains during sixth grade. In the inclusion classroom, the meanraw score of the students with LD increased; however, from the end of sixth grade and throughout seventhgrade, it remained constant. The data from the BASS measure indicate that over the 2-year period, the studentswith LID made little academic progress in reading. Friendship Quality and Self-Concept Group Analysis of Global SelfConcept. Over the 2-year period, both groups of students fared well on the Piers-Harris measure of global selfconcept when making the transition from elementary school to middle school. Asshown in Table 2, the global self-concept raw scores of the students with LD were in the average range whencompared to those of the normative sample of same-age students. The global self-concept scores of the NLDstudents were in the high-average range-approximately one-half a standard deviation above the norm mean.Additionally, at all data points the NLD students' raw scores were higher than the raw scores of the studentswith LD. The largest increase in global selfconcept scores for both groups of students occurred in the sixth-gradeinclusive classroom. The mean global self-concept score of the students with LD increased 3 points and thescore of the NLD students increased 7 points. During seventh grade, there was relatively little change instudents' global self-concept scores. Both groups of students' mean raw scores decreased slightly from the endof sixth to the end of seventh grade. Overall, during the 2-year period, the global self-concept scores wererelatively stable for both groups of students. Group Analysis of Academic SelfConcept. The academic self-concept scores for both groups of students werein the average range at all data points when compared to the norming sample of same-age students from thePiers-Harris test manual (see Table 2). The mean academic self-concept scores of the students with LD werelower than those of their NLD peers but stayed in the low-average range. This finding is contrary to mostresearch studies, which have reported that students with LD do not have an academic self-concept on par with

their NLD peers' (e.g., see Chapman, 1988, for a review). As a group, the mean academic selfconcept scores of both groups of students increased the most in theirsixthgrade inclusive classroom. Students' mean academic self-concept scores were higher at the end of sixthgrade than they were at the end of seventh grade. An increase on the academic self-concept measure duringsixth grade is similar to students' mean score increases on the global selfconcept and Friendship Surveymeasures. Friendship Quality. Students' scores from the Friendship Survey were examined by comparing group meanscores for each data point. As presented in Table 2, one interesting finding from the Friendship Survey resultswas that the mean raw score of both groups of students increased more in sixth than in seventh grade.Students' mean raw scores at the end of sixth grade were higher than their scores at the end of seventh grade.Most of the gains in students' mean friendship quality scores occurred in the sixthgrade inclusive classroom andwere relatively flat during seventh grade. When the scores are examined across 2 years, the students'Friendship Survey scores remained relatively stable. In summary, on the measures of selfconcept and friendship quality, the mean raw scores of both groups ofstudents were relatively stable, with slightly higher scores found at the end of sixth grade. Furthermore, theglobal and academic self-concept mean raw scores of both groups of students decreased from the end of sixthto the end of seventh grade but were in the average range when compared to same-age students from thenormative sample in the Piers-Harris test manual. Intraindividual Results In addition to conducting a group analysis of academic and social performance, we examined individualstudents' raw scores on all measures, from the end of sixth to the end of seventh grade, to identify patterns ofchange. Students' scores were also visually examined to identify scoring responses that clustered into commongroups. The visual examination of students' scores provided an overall indication of how students fared on allmeasures when making the transition from sixth to seventh grade. Based on students' raw scores, there wasnot a clear pattern that distinguished the performance of the students with LD from that of the NLD students.Overall, the raw scores of 11 of the 14 students decreased from the end of sixth to the end of seventh grade.That slight decrease is consistent with the findings of other researchers studying adolescents as they make thetransition from elementary to middle school (Eccles et al., 1991; Wigfield &Eccles, 1994). Students' Perceptions of Inclusion and School Transition Five factors emerged from the qualitative data analysis of the student interviews: (a) inclusion as a positiveexperience; (b) inclusion as a less positive experience; (c) positive changes associated with middle school; (d)less positive changes associated with middle school; and (e) friendships. (See Table 3 for a summary ofstudents' interview responses.) Inclusion As a Positive Experience. Most of the students interviewed reported that the sixth-grade inclusive class was a positive experience, forthree main reasons. The first was related to the amount, and degree of difficulty@ of the academic content inthe inclusive class. Most students with LD felt they learned more material in the inclusive classroom than in themiddle school resource room. As one student with LD stated, "In LD [resource, the work] is always the samething. Every year the teachers keep teaching the same thing over and over. That's why people barely learnanything." This student and several other students with LD viewed the academics in the sixth-grade inclusiveclassroom as more challenging than the academics in the seventh-grade resource room. Second, many students favored the inclusive classroom because they felt they received extra help by havingtwo teachers in the classroom at the same time. When students were asked why the special education teachercame into the general education classroom, one NLD student said, "She would help the students that needed itbecause the teacher could not take care of us all." Students with LD also enjoyed the support of two teachers inthe classroom: "We had two teachers to teach us. It wasn't an LD class, it was just like having an extra teacher,"

said one student. Students perceived that teachers in the inclusive classroom expanded the support for allstudents during reading instruction. Third, it seems that the feelings of self-worth of some students with LD improved in the elementary inclusiveclassroom. One student was in a resource room during fifth grade, an inclusive classroom for sixth grade, andspecial education class for language arts during seventh grade in middle school. When asked what type ofsetting he liked best, he cautiously replied, "My sixth grade class, because in there nobody treated you like anLD kid, they just treated you like normal." Inclusion As a Less Positive Experience. Students with less positive experiences in the inclusive class voicedtwo specific concerns. First, some students with LD preferred the resource room because the academic workwas "easier" and they were able to "get good grades." These students viewed the academic material in theinclusive classroom as too hard. Second, some NLD students felt the resource classroom was the best place forstudents with LD to get extra help because there was "too much noise" in the inclusive classroom. One NLDstudent explained, "The noise got real loud sometimes ... you couldn't hear and you get confused." Positive Changes Associated with Middle School. There were no clear distinctions separating the views of theNLD students from those of the students with LD as they made the transition from elementary to middle school.Both groups of students viewed the transition favorably. Students identified four main reasons for preferring middle school over elementary school: the independencefound in middle school, the schedule of changing classes, the opportunity to make new friends, and liking theteachers, Increased independence in middle school was the main reason for this preference. One studentexpressed the feelings of many when he said,

Middle school lets you expand your life. You are not always in the same place at the same time, you can domore stuff and the teachers trust you. In elementary it's a group thing and you always have to go together andyou always have to be in the same classroom. It was always the same time, the same place.

One students' opinion of changing classes was, "If you forget your homework, like in third period, you can do itin first period." Furthermore, students enjoyed the larger environment in middle school and found that takingmultiple classes allowed them to meet more friends. Most students believed that the teachers in middle schoollooked out for their best interests. In other words, the teachers took a personal interest in them, were concernedfor their well-being, and cared about them. Less Positive Changes Associated with Middle School. Although students viewed most of the changesassociated with making the transition to middle school positively, there were some changes they did not like.Some were minor, such as disliking the school dress code, losing a backpack, finding the schoolbooks tooheavy to carry@ and not getting their first choice of elective classes. More consequential negative changesincluded increased academic competition, feeling victimized or picked on by other students, and perceiving thatteachers in middle school did not take a personal interest in students. Six of the 14 students felt they were picked on by other students in seventh grade. They were called names andphysically pushed around; one student felt he was always being accused of things he had not done. One NLDstudent, asked why he was being called names, replied, "Kids think they are tough and pick on kids that are notlike that. Before you wear something to school, you think about it to see if people would make fun of you." A few of the students felt the teachers in middle school did not "look out" for them as much as their elementaryschool inclusion teachers did. Students defined "not looking out for you" as teachers' not taking a personalinterest in their academic work, not paying attention to them, and occasionally yelling at them. One student said,"I liked having one teacher for the whole day because she took care of you and looked out for you, and you gotto know her better. In middle school, teachers don't look out for you." Friendships. Friendships played an important role for students when making the transition from elementaryschool to middle school. When students were asked if they had more friends in sixth or seventh grade, allstudents responded they had more friends during seventh grade. Most students' rationale for having a largergroup of friends in middle school than elementary school related to the larger student population, meetingpeople at different grade levels, and having different class periods in middle school. "It's easier to have friendsbecause you have more people in your classes and you can see people in different grades in the halls and inspill-out," said one student. All students viewed the opportunity to make new friends in middle school positively. Discussion This study was conducted to determine how students with and without LID fared academically and socially asthey made the transition from a consultation/collaboration inclusive elementary classroom to traditional middleschool. The results of this study across the 2-year period revealed that the social scores of both groups ofstudents were relatively stable. The mean raw scores of the students with LID were slightly higher at the end ofsixth grade than at the end of seventh grade on the Friendship Survey and the Piers-Harris self-conceptmeasure. Furthermore, during seventh grade, the global and academic self-concept scores of the students withLD were in the average and low-average range when compared to same-age students from the Piers-Harrisnormative sample. It is interesting to speculate about potential factors that might have contributed to students' relatively stable self-concept and friendship-quality scores during the transition from elementary to middle school. On the FriendshipSurvey there were no clear distinctions between the scores of students with LD and those of the NLD students.When the Friendship Survey scores were examined from the end of sixth to the end of seventh grade, bothgroups of students' scores had decreased slightly. However, that slight decrease may be explained by thestandard error of measurement. Of greater importance was the relative stability of students' scores on theFriendship Survey and the results of the interview data, in which students reported having more friends inseventh than in sixth grade. Because the Friendship Survey assessed students' quality of friendships in and outof school, students could have been finding support from friends in school or within their community. Previous research studies have not focused on the self-concept of students with LD during the elementary-

tomiddle-school transition, and therefore it is encouraging to note that at all data points the global self-conceptscores of the students with LD were in the average range when compared to same-age students from thePiersHarris norming sample. The finding of average global self-concept scores for middle school students withLID supports earlier research on the selfconcept of adolescents with LD (Hagborg, 1996; Sabornie, 1994;Silverman &Zigmond, 1983). Silverman and Zigmond also reported that the selfconcept of adolescents with LIDwas not significantly lower than that of their NLD classmates or of the norming population from the Piers-Harris.Three possible explanations for how students with LD maintained an adequate self-concept were offered bySilverman and Zigmond: multiple reference groups, impaired self-perceptions, and strength in nonacademicareas. The compensatory-strengths hypothesis, which says these students have other, nonacademic areas ofstrength, is the one most likely to support the findings from our transition study. Throughout the structuredinterviews, it seemed that most students found success in nonacademic areas, such as participating in fund-raising activities, being involved with peers, playing sports, and so forth. Involvement in extracurricular activitiesmay have helped the students with LD maintain an average global self-concept. Subsequent research has built upon the compensatory-strengths hypothesis. Hagborg (1996) studied theselfconcept of three subgroups of middle school students with LID and found evidence to support the idea thatstudents with LD, especially those with an internal locus of control for academic successes, have an averageglobal selfconcept. In that most researchers in the area of self-concept (e.g., Byrne, 1984; Marsh, 1990; Marsh,Byrne, &Shavelson, 1988) agree that self-concept is multidimensional, it is probable that some students withLID in our transition study compensated for a low academic self-concept by having strengths in other self-concept domains, which in turn allowed their global selfconcept to fall in the average range. The academic self-concept scores of the students with LID were in the lowaverage range at all data points whencompared to those of the Piers-Harris norming sample. The mean selfconcept scores of the students with LIDwere in the low-average range of performance and were lower than those of the NLD students at all data points.This finding is consistent with Chapman's (1988) review of the self-concept literature, which revealed that, in allbut 1 of 20 studies, the academic selfconcept of students with LD was lower than NLD students'. It was unexpected that the mean reading comprehension scores of both groups of students increased onlyslightly from the beginning of sixth to the end of seventh grade. Any combination of the following three reasonsmay have contributed to students' apparent lack of progress in reading. First, students' academic gains in thesixth-grade inclusive class may have been enhanced by the external university support of this classroom.Second, there may have been less emphasis on teaching reading at the middle school level, as studentsprimarily took classes in language arts. Third, the BASS measure may not be a valid tool for assessing thereading comprehension of adolescents in middle school. Regardless of the reasoning for students' minimalreading gains, we feel that this is an area that warrants further investigation. When the social and academic data were aggregated, the results converged to reveal that most studentsexperienced a slight decline in raw scores from the end of sixth to the end of seventh grade. However, acrossthe 2-year period, students' scores changed less than expected and can be viewed as rather stable on mostmeasures. We believe that the students' positive perceptions of the transition, considered in conjunction withthe relative stability of their test scores, can be viewed as promising. We feel that the students' perceptions area powerful indicator of how they fared as they made the transition from elementary to middle school. Equallyimportant, students' self-concept and friendship-quality scores were in the same range as those of averageachieving students from the comparison samples. Our study provides descriptive data for an area of limited investigation: the middle school transition experiencefor students with LD. The quantitative and qualitative data from this study suggest no obvious differencesregarding how students with LD and NLD students make the transition to middle school. As a group, thestudents with LD did not experience much difficulty-in fact, it seems they were more deficient on academicachievement measures than on measures of academic or global self-concept. Perhaps rather than focusing on

how students fare socially during the transition, future researchers need to investigate students' academicperformance prior to and after the middle school transition. Readers should note that this study may have been limited by the confounding factor of students' placement inthe externally supported inclusive classroom prior to the transition to middle school. Future research should beaimed at replicating this study with a larger sample of students over a 3- to 5-year period.

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Volume: 33 Issue: 1 Pages: 33-43 Number of pages: 11 Publication year: 2000 Publication date: Jan/Feb 2000 Year: 2000 Publisher: SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC. Place of publication: Austin Country of publication: United States Publication subject: Education--Special Education And Rehabilitation, Psychology, Medical Sciences ISSN: 00222194 CODEN: JLDIAD Source type: Scholarly Journals Language of publication: English Document type: Journal Article Accession number: 15505954 ProQuest document ID: 194222878 Document URL:http://search.proquest.com.ezaccess.library.uitm.edu.my/docview/194222878?accountid=42518 Copyright: Copyright PRO-ED Journals Jan/Feb 2000 Last updated: 2013-08-22 Database: Arts & Humanities Full Text

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