ABSTRACT
Many students who experience significant academic difficulties, including those identified with learning disabilities, benefit from validated standard intervention protocols delivered with fidelity. Yet some students require even more intensive, individualized instruction. Researchers have devoted considerable effort to identifying who requires such individualized instruction, what it should entail, and whether it leads to positive outcomes for students, including reaching long-term academic goals and narrowing achievement gaps. Further, researchers have investigated how to support teachers’ implementation of effective individualized instruction. In this chapter, we describe how special education researchers have conceptualized a data-based individualization (DBI) framework to advance (a) knowledge regarding how best to identify and provide effective intervention to students with intensive academic needs and (b) practitioners’ capacity to systematically intensify, individualize, and examine the effects of their own instruction. First, we describe how research on curriculum-based measurement (CBM) has established a validated assessment approach that is foundational to DBI. Second, we describe how researchers have applied CBM to develop and evaluate the DBI framework. Third, we discuss how DBI has been implemented in practice, including barriers to and facilitators of teachers’ use of data to effectively intensify and individualize instruction. We end with a discussion of next steps needed in research to advance the practice of DBI and improve outcomes for students with intensive academic needs.
