Translating Intervention Research for Students With Mild Disabilities to Practice: A Systematic Journal Analysis

Abstract

Gains have been made over the last two decades in how to identify evidence-based practices for students with disabilities, but less progress has been made in ensuring that these interventions are used by classroom teachers. Although it is not the only area that needs to be addressed to bridge this research-to-practice gap, providing high-quality information about effective interventions in a format that is easy for teachers to understand is an important piece of a much larger implementation science puzzle. The current study analyzed a wide range of prominent special education practitioner journals to develop a comprehensive picture of the extent to which research is translated to practice for teachers who work with students with mild disabilities (learning disabilities, emotional/behavioral disorders, autism-Level 1 [A-L1]). Results from the analysis of 3,245 articles showed that across journals, fewer than 30% of articles translated intervention research findings to practice, with over half targeting academics.