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Cognitive Behavior Modification, Direct Instruction and Holistic Approaches to the Education of Students with Learning Disabilities

In this paper, cognitive behavior modification (CBM), Direct Instruction (DI), and holistic approaches to the education of students with learning disabilities are compared for the purpose of identifying similarities and differences in instructional practices. An overview of the approaches is followed by comparative discussions organized around four distinctions: (a) specific vs. general, (b) bottom-up vs. top-down, (c) structured vs. unstructured, and (d) effectiveness vs. ineffectiveness. In a final discussion section, some conclusions and recommendations are offered. All three of the approaches included in this paper are considered to be cognitive in the sense that they seek to describe and/or change students' cognitive behaviors that are not directly observable. However, each of these cognitive approaches has retained some elements of the purer behavioral approaches that were so popular in special education in the 1970s. Those behavioral elements will be addressed in this paper also.