Educating Children with Multiple Disabilities: A Transdisciplinary Approach

Now in its fourth edition, this highly respected, bestselling textbook gives undergraduate and graduate students up-to-the-minute research and strategies for educating children with severe and multiple disabilities. This popular core text — for 15 years, a staple of teacher training programs in special education and related fields — thoroughly prepares preservice professionals with comprehensive coverage of the topics they'll need to know about. This expanded edition gives readers

• a new chapter outlining an integrated, collaborative approach to planning, instruction, and alternate assessment
• contributions from well-known experts representing a wider variety of disciplines, including special education, occupational therapy, nursing, and psychiatry
• extensive updates, including new vignettes, figures such as sample graphic overlays for alternate communication devices and illustrations of proper handling and positioning, sample forms such as IEP pages, and references
• a FREE online study companion, featuring learning objectives, sample syllabi, student activities, key terms, hundreds of study questions, and annotated links to web sites that supplement each chapter

With the practical, research-based guidance in this textbook, future educators will learn how to educate students with severe and multiple disabilities in the setting where they will best be served.

Fred P. Orelove, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Special Education and Disability Policy, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia

Dr. Orelove founded and served as director of the teacher preparation program in severe disabilities at Virginia Commonwealth University from 1981 to 2011. He also served for 20 years as Executive Director of the Partnership for People with Disabilities, Virginia's university center for excellence in developmental disabilities. Since the 1970s, Dr. Orelove has taught children and has directed numerous training and demonstration projects related to individuals with disabilities. In addition to this book, he has co-authored two books on teamwork and one on inclusive education. In his retirement, Dr. Orelove is engaged in non-profit work in Richmond, Virginia, including working for an inclusive performing arts program and volunteering with children who have been traumatized.

Dick Sobsey, Ed.D., Professor Emeritus, Educational Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Dr. Sobsey has worked with children and adults with severe and multiple disabilities since 1968 as a nurse, teacher, and researcher. He taught courses on teaching students with severe disabilities and inclusive education at the University of Alberta from 1982 to 2005. He also served as Director of the J.P. Das Centre on Developmental and Learning Disabilities from 1994‐2008 and the John Dossetor Health Ethics Centre from 2006 to 2011. He is the father of an adult son with severe and multiple disabilities due to MECP2 (methyl CpG binding protein 2) duplication syndrome.

Rosanne K. Silberman, Ed.D., is a professor in the Department of Special Education at Hunter College, The City University of New York in New York City, where she coordinates the graduate teacher preparation programs in blindness and visual impairment and severe disabilities including deafblindness. Currently, in addition to serving as Project Director of a training grant from the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) in Severe Disabilities including Deafblindness, she is Project Director of a long-term training grant from Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) in Rehabilitation Teaching/Orientation and Mobility. Dr. Silberman also is project director of training grants from private foundations including The New York Community Trust, the Allene Reuss Memorial Trust, and the Lavelle Fund for the Blind. She has served as a consultant for many school districts and has conducted educational evaluations of preschool, elementary, and secondary-level students with visual impairments and multiple disabilities in general education classrooms. Dr. Silberman is a member of the Board of Trustees of The New York Institute for Special Education, a member of the advisory board of DB-LINK, and a consulting editor for Deaf-Blind Perspectives. She is co-editor with Sharon Z. Sacks of Educating Students Who Have Visual Impairments with Other Disabilities (Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., 1998). Dr. Silberman is the recipient of several distinguished awards including the 2000 Harold Ladas Award for Exemplary Teaching in the School of Education at Hunter College and the 2002 George E. Keane Award for Distinguished Service and Contributions to the Field of Blindness and Visual Impairment from the New York State Association for Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired.