The article relates to the author’s former experiences gained during the work with individuals with developmental disabilities at the Association for the Help of Retarded Children, Nassau Chapter in New York State in the United States (US), as well as with autistic children at the Loddon School in Hampshire County in the United Kingdom (UK). Strategies for Crisis Intervention and Prevention–Revised (SCIP–R) were used in both settings. The history of the Strategies for Crisis Intervention and Prevention (SCIP) training program began in the US in the 1980s and was connected with some of the most difficult turning points in the US social care system. For many years, one of the most disturbing issues in providing professional care to individuals with challenging behaviors was to find an appropriate approach to them, especially during their aggressive and self–injurious incidents. SCIP–R is one of the proposals of contemporary solutions to aggressive and challenging behavior of developmentally disabled individuals in care facilities. Its content refers to programs for individuals with other disabilities, as well. SCIP–R is addressed to staff members with direct care responsibilities. The general idea of this comparatively new training program is to prepare employees for prevention crisis and to effectively intervene when behavioral crisis occurs.... [more]

Burgstahler (2003) lists the benefits of implementing these technologies for special students as follows. He maintains that using these technologies; - Maximizes independence in academic and employment tasks, - Increases participation in classroom discussions, - Helps students gain access to peers, mentors and role models, - Helps them self-advocate, - Provides them with access to the full range of educational options, - Helps them participate in different experiences not otherwise possible, - Provides them with the opportunity to succeed in work-based learning experiences, - Secures high levels of independent living, - Prepares them for transitions to college and careers, - Gives them the opportunity to work side-by-side with peers, - Helps them enter high-tech career fields, - Encourages them to participate in community and recreational activities. In the present study, researchers considered above assumptions plausible and tried to investigate the instructional and daily use of PDA’s by the students with hearing impairment. In this respect, the following parts focus on the education of students with hearing impairment in Turkey, investigate the instructional uses of mobile technologies, and questions the ways to integrate mobile technologies into hearing impaired students’ daily lives and instructional experiences.... [more]

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of two corrective feedback methods, word-supply and phonics-based, on the oral reading fluency of students with mild disabilities. The participants included three students in the fourth grade who were diagnosed with a Specific Learning Disability (SLD) or Emotional and/or Behavioral Disorder (EBD). A single subject modified parallel treatments design (Alberto & Troutman, 2008) was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the two types of feedback methods (e.g., word-supply and phonics-based) on the students oral reading fluency skills. In the word-supply condition, students were provided the whole word upon a miscue, while in the phonics-based condition students were provided the word phoneme-by-phoneme in a sounded-out fashion. Feedback procedures were implemented upon the occurrence of word miscues during the oral reading. Dependent measures included the number of correct words per minute, recorded as a rate on individual passages taken from leveled readers. Results of the fluency data collected on the errors corrected using either the word-supply or phonics-based feedback method revealed that the word-supply feedback condition was slightly superior for two of the three students.... [more]

A challenge for teacher educators in special education is to impact the beliefs and attitudes of preservice teachers in ways that cultivate or strengthen dispositions and inform practice. This study investigated the impact of service-learning experiences on the development of professional dispositions by undergraduate students in two preservice special education courses. A constant comparative analysis of student focus-group transcripts and reflective journal entries uncovered two convergent themes. First, students in both courses developed a sense of professional efficacy. Secondly, students developed positive regard for the abilities of students with disabilities and the contributions of parents as partners in their children’s education. Recommendations are provided for designing service-learning experiences in ways that maximize the impact of the experiences on preservice teachers’ perceptions and attitudes toward working with students with disabilities and their families.... [more]

This three year longitudinal study examined the effects of IQ, age of diagnosis, school socioeconomic status (SES) and participation in desegregation programs on the remediation of learning disabilities. Participants included 176 children who were diagnosed with a learning disability, 44 of whom were participants in a voluntary transfer program. Baseline discrepancies between standardized cognitive and achievement scores were obtained at the time of the initial learning disability diagnosis. The effect of remediation was measured at a three-year re-evaluation period. Results indicated that IQ and age at diagnosis were significant predictors of remedial success, while school SES and transfer status were not. Students with higher IQ scores, who were identified at an earlier age, showed greater remedial gains. The results underscore the importance of early identification and suggest more intensive services and follow-up be given to children with lower IQ... [more]

A quantitative analysis of the admissions and graduation requirements guidelines of the special education doctoral programs at 20 top American universities was conducted. Admission requirements typically include an application fee, previous coursework GPA, previous field experience, GRE scores, TOEFL scores, professional writing sample(s), and enrollment. Graduation requirements may include continuous enrollment, completion of courses, yearly progress reviews, doctoral products, a qualifying examination, dissertation completion, and final defense. Results indicate that the quality of the instruction is comparable to that of the top 20 universities around the world, of the top 20 universities in the U.S., and of the top 20 graduate education programs in the U.S.... [more]

This small-scale phenomenological interview study explored how seven poor, illiterate mothers in five different slum areas in a bigger city in the Punjab province of Pakistan, viewed the significance of education for their daughters with disabilities. The mothers’ views were influenced by cultural aspects and behaviour patterns in the families’ context, as well as by individual interpretations of religious and social values. Their views were coloured by previous experiences with an educational system and by their assumptions about the girls’ situation when the parents are no longer there. The categories enlightenment, empowerment and protection emerged from the data as perspectives that contributed to an understanding of the mothers’ views. In a process of change from a traditional to a more modern society, mothers’ feelings of security and trust towards the world out there will influence their views and efforts regarding education for their daughters with disability. Mothers may need support and help in their encounters with the educational system. Although mothers have a central role, there is a need to bear in mind the complete family and the context when planning and implementing educational programs for girls with disabilities.... [more]

Special education teachers working in intermediate grades and in middle school grades face many challenges as they teach both developmental reading skills and subject matter material. Not only must they deal with the increased vocabulary and domain demands of teaching informational text, they must also handle the needs of students who have not yet mastered basic reading skills. The complexity of this task is reflected in recent NAEP fourth-grade reading scores that show approximately 30 percent of fourth-grade students reading at a proficient level or higher in the United States. While increased attention to vocabulary growth and exposure to informational text in primary grades may eventually ameliorate this problem in fourth-grade and beyond, currently intermediate and middle school teachers need instructional strategies they can use to foster reading skills, develop vocabulary, and teach subject matter comprehension to all students. We believe that current technology offers both special and general education teachers teaching at these levels the opportunity to use instructional cloze to improve students’ reading ability and enhance subject matter knowledge.... [more]

This is a critical review of surveys conducted on the American deaf population since 1990. There is no agreement among the surveys on the number of deaf and hard of hearing individuals in the US. This behooves us to study the question: Why the lack of agreement in estimates and prevalence rates of the American general deaf and the deaf child population across the surveys? Prior studies explained the discrepancies in terms of sampling and probability errors, different survey methodologies, federal mandates, changing medical conditions and fluctuations in prevalence rates. It is proposed here that the estimates are delimited by the mandates, purposes, survey questions, definitions of population cohorts and survey methodologies devised by the surveying institutions... [more]

Few studies explore the specific sources of stress, and the coping strategies applied by teachers of children with special educational needs, particularly in small countries such as Greece. The present study investigated the specific work-related stressors affecting special educational needs teachers in Greece and the coping strategies applied by them. 158 One hundred fifty eight special education teachers participated in the study, recruited from Athens (n = 113), and other urbanised areas of Greece (n = 45). Pilot interviews were conducted in order to generate a scale for measuring specific sources of stress in Greek special education teachers. The resulting scale(s), together with the Coping sub-scale of the Occupational Stress Indicator were administered to the sample, and a number of sociodemographic factors were also obtained by the use of a detailed biographical questionnaire. The results identified five key stressors, loading mainly onto the domains of working conditions, workload, and organisational problems, which appear to have an impact on teachers of Special Educational Needs students in Greece. Furthermore, a number of key coping strategies were identified by the teachers, as a means of dealing with work-related stress. The implications of the study are discussed, with a view to forming suggestions for stress intervention programmes.... [more]

Teacher efficacy and teacher tolerance, along with teacher gender, were examined for their relationship with the number of students teachers referred to special education. In a sample of 167 elementary school teachers from an urban school district in the State of Texas, no statistically significant relationships were yielded between teacher tolerance and referrals made to special education; between teacher efficacy and referrals made to special education; and, between teacher years of experience and referrals made to special education. In addition, no differences were found in teacher tolerance and teacher efficacy as a function of gender. Results were not supportive of previous research studies. Implications of these findings are discussed.... [more]