Individual Education Plans

The use of Individual Education Plans (IEPs) is a long-established practice in many countries. Categorized as planning documents, their purported purpose is to provide school-based instruction that is more closely matched to pupils’ skills and needs. In light of the widespread use of IEPs, the number of recent studies that examine authentic IEPs in terms of their content appears rather limited. Therefore, the present study investigated the extent to which these documents contain practically relevant information for teachers to implement in practice. Based on a sample of 112 authentic IEPs from one federal state in Germany, the support proposals in these documents were examined in detail. Results showed that about half of the entries consisted of common, content-specific methods to be carried out in school. On average, in only 30% of these entries per IEP, the content deviated from the curricula for a particular grade level. Another large proportion of support proposals consisted of common but content-unspecific methods to be carried out in school. These entries were mostly limited to generic practices of differentiated instruction and were usually not described in enough detail for implementation. Analyses of variance concerning specific contextual and structural characteristics of IEPs made it possible to assess the features of documents with higher potential information value for teachers and support staff. Overall, for most IEPs, it seems unlikely that they could fulfill their primary purpose. At the same time, there were indications about how they could be improved.