Contextual Influences and Response to Intervention

Individuals develop and learn within contexts. Despite numerous calls for reform, common assessment and intervention practices fail to account for these contexts; instead decontextualizing students’ successes and difficulties as within-child phenomena. Response to intervention (RTI) is an opportunity to link assessment to intervention through the consideration of the contexts in which children learn and develop. In this chapter, the implications of the premier theory of child development, ecological systems theory are examined, for assessment and intervention practices within RTI models. In addition, assessment and intervention tools that may be used to integrate ecological systems theory and RTI are described. The chapter concludes with a discussion of areas for future research.