Quality indicators for assistive technology: A comprehensive guide to assistive technology services, More than 6 million children with disabilities in North America require assistive technology and related services each year in order to participate and succeed in school. This book, Quality Indicators for Assistive Technology, provides an essential guide for assessing a child's needs, choosing and implementing the right technologies and services, and training education professionals in how to…
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Our “Excerpts from the Experts” collection features content from experts in educating students with significant cognitive disabilities. Topics cover authentic inclusion, presuming competence, and strategies for teams supporting students with complex access needs.
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Beyond treats and timeouts: Humanistic behavior supports in inclusive classrooms, Schools face a different set of challenges today than they did years ago. In the inclusive classroom, teachers rate behavior as one of the most significant issues they face. This article examines the widespread behavior management systems found in elementary schools across the United States, and offers a critique of these systems to help create more inclusive educational contexts. We utilize…
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Communication services and supports for individuals with severe disabilities: Guidance for assessment and intervention, The National Joint Committee for the Communication Needs of People with Severe Disabilities (NJC) reviewed the literature regarding practices for people with severe disabilities in order to update guidance provided in documents originally published in 1992. Changes in laws, definitions, and policies that affect communication attainments by persons with severe disabilities are presented, along…
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Dimensions of family and professional partnerships: Constructive guidelines for collaboration, The development of collaborative partnerships between parents and professionals is too often unsuccessful. One reason for this failure may be the lack of empirical understanding of the components of interpersonal partnerships. Using qualitative inquiry, 33 focus groups were conducted with adult family members of children with and without disabilities and service providers and administrators. In…
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Toward Realizing the Influence of ‘Toward Realization of the Least Restrictive Educational Environments for Severely Handicapped Students', This paper re-examines the findings of a 1977 paper by Brown and colleagues titled Toward the Realization of the Least Restrictive Educational Environment for severely handicapped students. Since this article was published, hundreds of rigorous research studies have been undertaken to determine the effectiveness of integrating and including students with severe disabilities. In this comprehensive…
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Welcome to the beginning of a new year! If you’ve been doing this for years, you know to expect the unexpected. You may have an ample amount of activities in your stash, ready to pull out and differentiate for any level. You also know that one student can turn your plans upside down. If you are a new teacher, you may have a mix of feelings, simultaneously excited, scared, feeling like you’re…
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In this video, Cheryl Jorgensen, an expert on inclusion for students with the most complex access needs, discusses presuming competence and the Least Dangerous Assumption. This video aligns with the Rubric of Effective Practices from TX CAN Indicator III: Classroom Climate - Component 10 and Indicator IV: Differentiated Instruction - Component 7.
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Academic or functional life skills? Using behaviors associated with happiness to guide instruction for students with profound/multiple disabilities, The field of special education has begun to concentrate its efforts on developing objectives and procedural strategies that promote a positive quality of life for students with profound multiple disabilities, while determining which educational strategies are the most appropriate. A multi-element design was used to compare the effects of two educational conditions, academic skills instruction and…
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Research-based practices for creating access to the general curriculum in reading and literacy for students with significant intellectual disabilities, The purpose of this monograph is to conduct a systematic review of the literature as it relates to literacy instruction for students with significant intellectual disabilities. The review describes the multiple components of comprehensive instruction (i.e., phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, as well as writing and emergent literacy) and identifies research-based…
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