There are many challenges that educators can face when teaching children, and some of them often require applying specific practices to ensure positive outcomes and an effective educational process. That process may involve various obstacles that decrease the efficiency of standardized teaching techniques and methods because of the specificities of particular children or children’s groups. However, there is an appropriate teaching approach called Response to Intervention (RTI) for these purposes. Its implementation can significantly help students who struggle with learning, allowing educators to closely monitor children’s progress during each separate stage of intervention and identify the necessity for further instruction and intervention (RTI Action Network, n.d.a; Morin, n.d.). For instance, RTI can be beneficial for students with learning disabilities or neurodegenerative disorders, children from dysfunctional families, or teaching diverse student populations. The main goal of the RTI is to provide children with different practices with increasing intensity, thereby accelerating their learning rate. The corresponding decisions primarily come from individual student responses, which directly affect the further implementation of the intervention, including its intensity and duration. Everything mentioned above creates an effective educational environment, allowing struggling learners to improve their results.
Description and the Definition of the Topic
Therefore, this paper is a case study of the specificities associated with educating a diverse population of students, and it describes RTI methods that are the most appropriate to use in such a classroom. Diverse students may come from different cultures and speak different languages, which is why it can be challenging for them to collectively engage in the learning process, create a connection, and build appropriate relationships for the most efficient educational environment. Furthermore, teaching diverse populations of children often leads to the disproportionate representation issue, meaning that the representatives of different cultural or linguistic groups are overrepresented or underrepresented in a classroom compared to other groups (Hosp, n.d.). Disproportionate representation can negatively affect the overall educational process and cultural competence. According to RTI Action Network (n.d.b), cultural competence “describes what happens when special knowledge about individuals and groups of people is incorporated into standards, policies, and practices” (para. 2). In a classroom, the term can refer to the attitude of diverse students to each other. Considering everything described, implementing RTI can be an efficient tool for improving educational outcomes in diverse children’s groups.
Literature Review: Summary, Analysis, and Evaluation
The following section of the case study presents information from the current literature on culturally and linguistically diverse education and RTI effectiveness, providing a thorough analysis of the ways interventions can be used to enhance learning effectiveness in a diverse classroom. First of all, researchers claim that RTI has been the most effective practice in special education in recent years, especially considering the federal provision of special education regulations, which allow for the usage of RTI to diagnose learning disabilities (Burns & Coolong-Chaffin, 2006). Diverse population groups, in turn, have certain advantages in terms of education. According to Thoman et al. (2021), a diverse classroom is a place “where historically oppressed voices, ways of knowing, and lived experiences shape research and discovery” (p. 1). The learning environment built around representatives of different cultures promotes positive outcomes of cooperative education, allowing students to draw from each other’s knowledge and experience, positively impacting children’s understanding of multicultural society. Overall, diverse population classrooms have many advantages, and it is essential to ensure educational effectiveness in such classes using various methods, including RTI.
RTI in the Palm Beach District
In the United States, RTI as an educational approach has been implemented and developed for almost half a century. Applying RTI in the U.S. educational system overall and in the Palm Beach District specifically became problematic when the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) came into power in 2004 (Classroom Teachers Association, 2020). Before the enactment of the IDEA, RTI had been an efficient approach used to identify and instruct children with various learning difficulties, referring primarily to professional guidelines strictly correlated with educational purposes. However, the IDEA brought the necessity to balance professional recommendations and legal requirements, making the education of particular students bound to the law. The Classroom Teachers Association (CTA) in the Palm Beach district promotes RTI following the concepts of the IDEA, publicizing information about intervention’s legal implications and the similarities and differences between RTI and special education (Classroom Teachers Association, 2020). The RTI framework is still considered an effective tool for educators in specific classrooms, and its development continues. However, this case study analyzes diverse classrooms and not children with learning disabilities, which is why the IDEA policies do not apply to this research.
Setting and Methods
As mentioned previously, the setting for this case study is a diverse classroom consisting of children of different cultural origins, which is why the methods for improving educational outcomes would be techniques to introduce and promote multiculturalism. According to Batsche (n.d.b), implementing an RTI model involves several essential components of its infrastructure, such as a problem-solving process, technical assistance, an intervention map, and others. The last identified component is the most important one for this study as it allows for understanding the complete set of interventions and instructions available (see Figure 1: Flowchart of a suggested screening process below). An intervention map appears as a visual guideline for building the educational path for the class, which, in turn, can also help teachers build relationships with their students, which is a critical aspect of educational success in a classroom (Milner, 2011). Those relationships should be based on the concepts of differentiation: an educator should understand that they teach people, not lessons, and those people are not identical (Pappano, 2011). Differentiation can be crucial in almost every classroom, but it is especially significant in diverse children’s populations since they have even more differences than ordinary students.
Records and Results
The RTI differentiation method used in a diverse classroom requires a solid assessment to analyze the implementation results. Batsche (n.d.c) reports that implementation can provide educators “with evidence of how well the model is being implemented and informs the professional development process” (para. 7). Educators need to report the results from a certain period to their superiors to identify potential errors. Following the schedule of the assessment calendar, a school can improve its intervention practices, analyzing the children’s educational outcomes and ensuring that they are positive. Hall (n.d.a) suggests that the first year of intervention implementation is the most significant for assessment and finding possible improvements. The researcher explains that earlier stages of RTI implementation usually determine the intervention’s sustainability, meaning it is critical to achieve the desired results as soon as possible to maintain RTI’s positive influence on education (Hall, n.d.b). In this particular case, the most desirable achievement is to teach children to understand their cultural differences and then use them to explain the world’s construction, promoting multiculturalism and utilizing diversity to educational advantage.
Professional Partners and Parent Input
Parental involvement can be an essential aspect of RTI implementation as parents care for their children’s education and can directly influence them. According to Klotz and Canter (2007), helping children with difficulties at school (which can be present in diverse groups) is a common concern of educators and family members, especially parents. Recent studies inform that family-school professional partnerships can significantly support children’s learning in RTI frameworks (Reschly, n.d.; Bruce, 2015). Furthermore, all parties involved in RTI, including students, educators, and parents, require support. Batsche (n.d.a) suggests that people should take the necessary time to ensure supporting relationships among the intervention members before they proceed with actual educational development. Overall, parental involvement means much for RTI from two perspectives: children’s parents and school partners.
Reflection
It appears that RTI can be highly efficient in diverse population groups. The intervention can help identify children who struggle with learning and determine whether the reason for that is their multicultural surroundings. Personally, I believe that the development of RTI can positively affect the education system in the modern world. Representatives, including schoolteachers, private tutors, university professors, and others, should constantly seek new ways to make the educational process as effective and impactful as possible for their students. A single teaching strategy may not be enough to educate children worldwide since many of them have various specificities, making it challenging for them to assimilate knowledge using ordinary methods. Therefore, I see RTI as a unique educational tool that can be exceptionally helpful for both educators and their students in dealing with different issues.
References
Batsche, G. (n.d.a). Building support. RTI Action Network. Web.
Batsche, G. (n.d.b). Developing a plan. RTI Action Network. Web.
Batsche, G. (n.d.c). Evaluating and refining implementation. RTI Action Network. Web.
Bruce, S. (2015). A parent’s guide to response to intervention (RTI). Wrightslaw. Web.
Burns, M. K., & Coolong-Chaffin, M. (2006). Response to intervention: The role of and effect on school psychology. School Psychology Forum, 1(1), 3-15. Web.
Palm Beach County: Classroom teachers association. Web.
Hall, S. L. (n.d.a). Create your implementation blueprint stage 5: Innovation. RTI Action Network. Web.
Hall, S. L. (n.d.b). Create your implementation blueprint stage 6: Sustainability. RTI Action Network. Web.
Hosp, J. L. (n.d.). Response to intervention and the disproportionate representation of culturally and linguistically diverse students in special education. RTI Action Network. Web.
Johnson, E. S., Pool, J., & Carter, D. (n.d.). Screening for reading problems in grades 4 through 12. RTI Action Network. Web.
Klotz, M. B., & Canter, A. (2007). Response to intervention (RTI): A primer for parents. National Association of School Psychologists. Web.
Milner, R. H. (2011). Five easy ways to connect with students. Harvard Education Letter, 27(1). Web.
Morin, A. (n.d.). What is response to intervention? Understood. Web.
Pappano, L. (2011). Differentiated instruction reexamined. Harvard Education Letter, 27(3). Web.
Reschly, A, L. (n.d.). Schools, families, and response to intervention. RTI Action Network. Web.
RTI Action Network. (n.d.a). What is RTI? Web.
RTI Action Network. (n.d.b). Working with culturally and linguistically diverse families. Web.
Thoman, D. B., Yap, M. J., Herrera, F. A., & Smith, J. L. (2021). Diversity interventions in the classroom: From resistance to action. CBE – Life Sciences Education, 20(52), 1-15. Web.