Fractional Practices in Special Education: A Critique

Diagnostic/Prescriptive Instruction: a Reconsideration of Some Issues

“…The concept is not new; educators have used it for decades. Such programming had its roots in the 18th century with such pioneering educators as Itard, Seguin, and Decroly (Mann & Phillips, 1967). Over the past 20 years, specific academic areas in regular education have improved instructional delivery systems by implementing diagnostic/ prescriptive teaching.…”

“…The literature focusing on the first issue finds several educational theorists (Mann & Phillips, 1967;Mann, 1969;Ysseldyke & Salvia, 1974) writing extensively on fractionating of learning processes. These writers theorize that separation of learning processes, as presumed in the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities and Frostig's Developmental Test of Visual Perception, has not been validated.…”

Therapy for the Mentally Retarded: Application of Psychological Findings

“…Thus training of specific functions or abilities ("fractional approaches") may be of little value per se, but such abilities can be combined into general meaningful skills which provide a basis for the transfer of learning sets to real-life situations (Mann and Phillips, 1967).…”

The Relationship of Reading Method and Reading Achievement to ITPA Sensory Modalities

“…Some tests and training programs have been developed to implement the clinical approach to teaching, but we do not have sufficient evidence to support a direct relationship between the tests and educational treatment (Mann & Phillips, 1967 Weener, Barritt, & Semmell (1967), in an evaluation of the available research, concluded that &dquo;the ITPA will become a useful instrument as empirical evidence is provided to show how subscale performance is related to educationally relevant behaviors [p. 379].&dquo; The present study was designed to yield information on this point.…”