The application of scientific research has resulted in tremendous gains in many fields. However, Slavin (2002) noted that educational research has been applied haphazardly in schools. The gap between research and practice is particularly problematic in special education, as learners with disabilities require highly effective instruction to reach their potential. Accordingly, bridging the research-to-practice gap is a prominent theme in contemporary special educational reforms. For example, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) of 2004 both emphasize using research as the basis of training and practice. Yet, important caveats exist for using research to identify what works in special education. Research is difficult to conduct in real world educational settings, error is present in all research, not all research is designed to examine the effects of instruction, and research is sometimes conducted poorly. All of these issues can result in inaccurate research findings that should not serve as a basis for practice. Thus, rather than relying on the findings of a single, potentially flawed study, research consumers should identify effective practices on the basis of multiple, high-quality studies that use experimental research designs and demonstrate robust effects on student outcomes (i.e., evidence-based practices or EBPs).To guide the identification of EBPs in special education, prominent special education scholars delineated (a) indicators of high-quality research and (b) criteria for identifying EBPs on the basis of those high-quality studies for group experimental (Gersten et al., 2005) and single-subject research (Horner et al., 2005). The pioneering work of Gersten et al. (2005) andHorner et al. (2005) has been applied to examine the evidence base of practices in many areas of special education (e.g., Cook, Tankersley, & Landrum, 2009b) and has been instrumental in advancing evidence-based special education. Yet, these scholars were charged with identifying and describing indicators of quality research (Cook, Tankersley, & Landrum, 2009a), not 557271R SEXXX10.

Determining evidence-based practices is a complicated enterprise that requires analyzing the methodological quality and magnitude of the available research supporting specific practices. This article reviews criteria and procedures for identifying what works in the fields of clinical psychology, school psychology, and general education; and it compares these systems with proposed guidelines for determining evidence-based practices in special education. The authors then summarize and analyze the approaches and findings of the 5 reviews presented in this issue. In these reviews, prominent special education scholars applied the proposed quality indicators for high-quality research and standards for evidence-based practice to bodies of empirical literature. The article concludes by synthesizing these scholars' preliminary recommendations for refining the proposed quality indicators and standards for evidence-based practices in special education, as well as the process for applying them.

Although students with emotional or behavioral disorders have historically experienced poor school outcomes compared to other students with and without disabilities, a number of effective practices are available that can make special education for students with emotional or behavioral disorders special. Within the three broad intervention areas of inappropriate behavior, academic learning problems, and interpersonal relationships, we provide a brief overview of a number of empirically validated practices. We argue that teaching students with emotional or behavioral disorders demands unique interventions that are beyond that typically available or necessary in general education. We conclude that special education is special for students with emotional or behavioral disorders and that it can be even more special with greater efforts at implementing research-based practices early, with integrity, and sustaining these interventions over the course of students' school careers.

This investigation examines teachers' attitudes toward their included students with disabilities. Seventy general education teachers of inclusive elementary classrooms nominated three of their students to prompts corresponding with the attitudinal categories of attachment, concern, indifference, and rejection. Consistent with predictions based on a theory of instructional tolerance, chi-square analyses indicated that included students with disabilities were significantly underrepresented in the attachment category, and significantly overrepresented in the concern and rejection categories. Greater experience teaching in inclusive classes was also associated with higher rates of concern nominations for included students with disabilities. Results are discussed in regard to their implications for inclusive policies and practice.

The concept of learning styles has tremendous logical and intuitive appeal, and educators' desire to focus on learning styles is understandable. Recently, a growing emphasis on differentiated instruction may have further increased teachers' tendency to look at learning styles as an instructionally relevant variable when individualizing instruction in increasingly heterogeneous classrooms. We discuss the overlapping concepts of individualized instruction and differentiated instruction, briefly review the evidence base for learning styles, and argue that instruction should indeed be individualized and differentiated. We conclude that there is insufficient evidence, however, to support learning styles as an instructionally useful concept when planning and delivering appropriately individualized and differentiated instruction. The idea that people learn things differently has tremendous intuitive appeal. It is not difficult to argue, for example, that among the myriad skills people master over their lifespan, some things are learned more quickly than others, skills are mastered with greatly varying amounts of practice, and the acquisition of some skills demands different types and levels of instruction and support. Moreover, different people learn to read, write, solve mathematical computation problems, hit a baseball, and bake a cake to hugely discrepant levels of success or mastery. An understandable outgrowth of this generally accepted logic is that humans must have some discernible way or method of acquiring information or mastering skills that suits them best: a learning style. In education, there has been no shortage of controversy about learning styles, with fundamental questions centering on quite basic issues. Do learning styles exist? Can learning styles be assessed and established reliably? If so, does the assessment of learning styles lead to instruction that serves students better? A huge volume of literature appeared in the late 1970s through the 1990s regarding learning styles, with much of the literature focused on debate about whether science supports the construct and its utility for educators. More recently, the notion of learning styles has received perhaps unintended attention as the concept of differentiated instruction has become a mantra for schools and classrooms nationwide. Differentiated instruction, broadly defined as "varying