The authors of this introductory book have a vision for special education—to equip general and special education teachers with the principles, values and teaching practices that support the education of the majority of students with disabilities in general education programs. Beginning with a thorough review of the principles that undergird IDEA and the process of nondiscriminatory evaluation, the authors explore the teaching and collaborative processes necessary for implementing best practices and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1997. Using a categorical approach, the authors highlight real students with real disabilities and use their stories as a vehicle for describing the characteristics, causes, and challenges that people with exceptionalities face—and that both general and special education teachers must consider when making decisions about how, where, and what to teach. For teachers of general and special education.
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A Principled Approach: Strategies and interventions are based on six core values for working with students with exceptionalities: envisioning great expectations; enhancing positive contributions; building on strengths; acting on choices; expanding relationships; and ensuring full citizenship.
Real People, Real Issues: Every student in each chapter's opening vignette is a real person. Within each chapter as well as in the My Voice and Making a Difference boxes, real people's stories are integrated to provide additional insight into the exceptional lives of students with disabilities, their families, and their teachers.
A Focus on Inclusion: While acknowledging the very real challenges of inclusion, the authors believe that the great majority of students with disabilities can receive an appropriate education in general education classrooms if programs and classrooms are designed for individualized instruction, if supplementary supports and services are available, and if educators are prepared to work in inclusive environments. This book prepares educators to make inclusion work.
Practical Ideas for Today's Classrooms: Newly organized chapters spotlight curricular goals and teaching methods, which are demonstrated in the Programs in Practice section of each categorical chapter. Into Practice boxes also share best practices for inclusive education.
The Most Current Coverage: New coverage of important topics such as behavior management, assistive technology, and universal design as well as an increased focus on collaboration and early intervention. Hundreds of new references and resources have been added.
Integrated Multimedia: State-of-the-art topical coverage is matched with new, integrated technology features:
Our Vision
When we wrote the second edition of this book, we set out our vision for special education. It's worth repeating here. We hope you will adopt it as your own:
When principles and values guide teaching techniques and when the techniques are at a state-of-the-art level, no challenge that confronts students, families, schools, communities, or policy leaders is too daunting.
A Value-Based Book
You will find our six values in Chapter 1 and indeed elsewhere throughout our book. They are
Every chapter returns to these six principles. Sometimes, these principles will be explicit. Sometimes, implicit. Look for them, and incorporate them into your life as a teacher and as a citizen. You will be surprised what a difference you will make when you put these values behind your techniques.
Features of the Text
Real People, Real Issues
This is not a book of fiction. There are no imagined characters here. Every student, every teacher, every parent, every friend is real. To tell their stories serves a powerful didactic purpose: to describe, in their own words and through these snapshots of their lives, how special education benefits each and every one of them. These students, teachers, family members, and friends show you what can happen—how exceptional lives can be made all the more exceptional—when you approach them on the basis of principles and state-of-the-art teaching techniques.
Emphasis on Today's Schools
What an exciting time this is. A turn of the century, yes; a new millennium, yes. But those are hackneyed milestones. The real milestones are small and sometimes hard to find; yet iii when they are laid out consecutively, one after the other, they create a path that was unimagined when special education began as a discipline nearly a century ago. There is no need to go that far back. Indeed, the markers to the schools of today were first laid twenty-five years ago when Congress enacted the federal special education law. Today's schools are indeed the legacies of the past, but, more, they are the creatures of imaginative educators, policy leaders, family members, and, yes, students themselves. If you want to teach in today's schools and be ready to teach in tomorrow's, we invite you into the exceptional lives that we portray here. Each life, each school . . . those are the milestones of the recent past and of the immediate future. And they are the focus of this book.
Inclusion
When we wrote the first edition of this book (copyright 1995), we were clear about one thing: we favored including students with disabilities in the classes that students without disabilities attended. When we wrote the second edition (1999), we were equally keen on inclusion. But in both editions, we were clear about this one caveat: no inclusion without support. When Congress amended the federal education law in 1997, it reinforced the law's presumption that students with disabilities should be educated with students without disabilities to the maximum extent appropriate for the students with disabilities. This edition shows you the many ways that Congress strengthened the inclusion provisions; it also shows you how to practice inclusion and the benefits—and limitations—of inclusion. What's really behind inclusion? Granted, it is a technique for more appropriately educating students with disabilities; and, yes, it is a civil right. But most of all, it is the path toward a different America—one in which everyone is valuable, without regard to their disabilities or great giftedness.
Universal Design
Almost certainly, you are familiar with public buildings constructed some 50 or more years ago. The county courthouse. The city library. The school you attended. Remember what they looked like from the outside? Were there ramps for people in wheelchairs? Doubtful. Remember what they looked like inside? Were there elevators with lights and bells to alert you to the- elevator's movement? Doubtful. Were they designed so that everyone—repeat: everyone—could come into them and use them, whether or not the person had a disability? Doubtful.
In that kind of "built environment," inclusion was nearly impossible. Full citizenship was elusive. Relationships could not be made and solidified. Great expectations excluded those individuals who were excluded from the environment. The positive contributions and strengths that people with disabilities could make were limited. So were their choices about how to live their lives.
Nearly three decades ago, Congress asked America to change. Open the buildings. Create opportunities. And that's exactly what Americans did. And as we changed the "built environment," we began to understand something profound about the "teaching environment," about the curriculum. It was this: a curriculum that excludes students with disabilities is just as limiting as a building that excludes them. Our response was to change the curriculum, so that it now can accommodate students with so many different types of strengths and needs without denying any single one of them the benefit of being educated with the others. We call this universal design—the design of the curriculum so that it yields benefits to everyone, universally. You will read about this new approach in our book; it is a state-of-the-art technique that we believe should accompany the six values you have just read about.
Collaboration
By collaborating with each other, students, their families, teachers and other professionals can ensure that every child with a disability and every supremely gifted or talented child can have an appropriate education, one that benefits them and in turn benefits society as a whole. None of us is independent; we are all interdependent. That is why, when it comes to education, we have to collaborate with each other. Remember your study groups? That's collaboration. In special education, we call it cooperative learning. A different name, but the same game: working together so that everyone benefits.
Technology
As authors of this textbook, we strive to provide you with the most current information about state-of-the-art interventions and instructional practices for individuals with special needs. This manner of reporting the most current information about best practices has led us to make technology a cornerstone of this textbook as well.
With coverage of the latest hardware, software, and assistive technologies that students learn more and better, and help teachers teach more effectively, we continue to advance this book into the twenty-first century.
Text Organization
The First three chapters are the foundation for the rest of the book. They tell a bit about history, a little more about the law that Congress passed in 1975 and that it amended in 1997, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and a great deal about today's schools—about how they evaluate students and then provide them with an appropriate education. Having laid the foundation (Chapters 1 through 3), we build on it (Chapters 4 through 16) by describing the education of various types of "categories" of students with disabilities.
Chapter Format
You will find that Chapters 4 through 16 have the same "flavor" and format. Their similar flavor comes from the six values that crop up in each. Their similar format is their structure, which is- the shared across all of the "categorical" chapters. By using a similar format, we can introduce you to real students, families, and teachers, emphasizing their common characteristics and describing special education services as they are now organized. Each of the categorical chapters follows this order:
Special Chapter Features
The following special features highlight the people who have exceptionalities and those who work to improve their lives.
Supplements
Several ancillaries supplement this text:
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