Integrated Academic and Occupational Curricula: Identifying Valid Indicators for Secondary Classrooms Serving Students with and without Disabilities. Final Report.

This final report presents a study of 27 classes that participated in a school-to-work initiative that used systematic observation methods combined with teacher and administrative surveys to examine the construct validity of classroom practices related to the integration of academic and occupational curricula for secondary students with and without disabilities. A summary of research methodology and study results is presented first, followed by the full report, which is divided into sections covering methods, results, and discussion. Four appendices describe coding definitions, data collection instruments, and teacher and observer manuals (excluding coding definitions). The measures that were observed included general vocational content; reinforced/fused content blend; coaching instruction strategy; applied student activity; and cooperative instruction grouping. Classes represented academic, vocational, integrated academic/occupational, and special education/academic curricula. Results of the study indicated: (1) teachers and students in integrated classes spent more time engaged in activities represented by the measures than those in academic or special education academic classes; (2) teachers and students in vocational classes also spent more time on these variables, except for coaching, than their counterparts in academic and special education classes; (3) tests of significance based on mean ranks typically demonstrated that integrated curricula or vocational classes could be differentiated from academic or special education classes, except for coaching, as instruction strategies; (4) teacher-research staff interobserver agreement was moderate to low; and (5) teachers reported that the measures and instruments were easy to use and produced useful descriptive information. Appendices include assessment instruments. (Contains 100 references.) (CR)