Study Skills

Abstract

STUDY SKILLS are becoming more and more prominent as components of an instructional block that is believed to be essential to school success for many students in remedial and special education programs. Although the topic has been around for some years in general education, it is only recently that it has been mentioned within the literature of instructional methods and materials for educationally handicapped students. The resources available to the practitioner are currently not usable in any practical or programmatic sense because they are largely scattered and unfocused. Study Skills: A Resource Guide, prepared by Cronin and Currie, is a pioneering effort at locating and organizing instructional resources into a useful format. In the course of their literature and materials search, the authors found that the information available to instructional personnel is more voluminous than they had anticipated. Thus, their report is selective. They have included information that is currently available to most practitioners and they have not included information that is obscure or esoteric. The authors have separated those general study skills that are content-free in the sense of being useful in nearly any curriculum area from those associated specifically with a certain content such as social studies or spelling. The Guide does not include either the wealth of published child-use materials or the published research reports concerning the relative effectiveness of specific skills. The authors point out, and I would like to re-emphasize, that they did not attempt at this time to suggest standards for quality or to determine how much overlap there is in the references available. The Guide is intended solely as an initial effort designed to alert the busy practitioner to the sources of information currently available in the area of study skills.