Unit 1Disabilities and Special Education:

Making a Difference

Prepared by:Cicilia Evi GradDiplSc, M. Psi

Origins of Special Education

• Began on 1799 Victor, the wild child was brought by the farmers in southern French to Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard now known as the father of special education

• Early 1800s Edouard Seguin began his efforts to educate students with disabilities at the US

• Italy Maria Montessori children at young age can learn through concrete experiences in environments rich in manipulative materials

Origins of Special Education (2)

• Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet began to develop deaf education

• Samuel Gridley Howe founded the New England Asylum for the Blind (Perkins Inst)

• Elizabeth Farrell initiated public school classes for students with disabilities in 1898

Disability and Social Justice

• Social Justice illusive, hard to define, but one we all support

• Disability ??– Something absolute you have it or you don’t – Explanation on complexity of disability different

perspectives (individual, fam, culture), diff conditions/experiences that influence intensity, society and educational response

• Our interpretation ↔ individual with disability (outcomes)

Perspectives about Disabilities

• Deficit perspective • Cultural perspective• Sociological perspective

Deficit Perspective

• Human behavior and characteristics shared by people are distributed along a continuum

• Intelligence, academic achievement, behavior• Normal curve typical learners • Common method used to describe individuals

Cultural Perspective

• Some hold to concepts that differ greatly from mainstream ideas

• Understanding teacher – parents is important:1. Understanding of disability2. Common belief of the causes 3. Responses to student’s disability

• Disability not universal in all cultures

Sociological Perspective

• Differences among people’s skills and traits are constructed socially

• How a society treats someone differently makes that person different from others

• Radical view: disabilities are a necessity of American society maintain class structure

• Potential danger: minimize disability and could lead to reduction of services

• Being positive: how we can think positively affect treatment, opportunities and achievement

Perception Make a Difference

• Perceptions and attitudes are related to the way people are treated

• People are treated as a reflection of how they are perceived

• Beginning of last century people with disability were perceived as being villain, evil, punished by God for their (family) sins

What do you think of them?

Language Makes a Difference

• People First Language:– Put people first– Don’t make the person equal or be the disability– Disabled is not a noun – They neither victims nor wheelchair bound

• Language can be offensive, disrespectful, demeaning to people with disabilities everyone’s responsibility to remain sensitive

• Students with intellectual disabilities, toddlers with hearing impairments, adult with speech impairments

Disability as a Minority

• Many individuals with disabilities believe that their disabilities (conditions and impairments) then handicap them

• Handicap challenges and barriers imposed by others

• Difficult situations occur not because of a condition/disability but because people with disabilities are denied full participation in society because of their minority status

Disabilities and Students

• Services for students with disabilities provide intensive supports, individualized instruction, related services by multidisciplinary teams of experts

• Costs twice as much as general education • Over 11% of students between 6017 years old identified as having disabilities and are provided special education services

Disabilities and Students (2)• 14 special education categories infants

through adulthood age 21 : – Autism, deaf-blindness, deaf, emotional disturbance,

hearing impairment, mental retardation, multiple disabilities, orthopedic impairment, other health impairment, specific learning disability, speech or language impairment, traumatic brain injury, visual impairment (incld. blindness), developmental delay

Disabilities and Students (3)

• Can be ordered by prevalence of the category:– High-incidence disabilities occur in greater

numbers – Low-incidence disabilities occur less often

• Does not relate to severity or significance of the disability

• All disabilities are serious • The category of mild to severe cases occur

within each disability type

General VS Special Education

• Not designed to meet the needs of students with the same learning styles or needs

• Law and regulations • General education tends to focus on groups of

learners, while special education focuses on individuals

Responsive Education

• Not set the expectations too high going to college

• But, community-based instruction functional and vocational skills are taught in real life situations

• On-the-job training, independent transportation, and home management

Increased Accessibility

• Being accessible to an appropriate education that prepares individuals to achieve their potential is important

• Orientation and mobility training for blind students, learning job skills in community placements, how to use public transportation, speech therapy for students with stuttering problems, etc

• Inclusion in general education system??

Data-Based Practices

• Intervention or teaching techniques have been proven effective through systematic and rigorous research

• Key features:– Validated proved through research– Individualized determined – Explicit directly to content and skills– Strategic apply methods to guide their learning– Sequential build upon previous mastery– Accountable monitoring by evaluating students’

progress

Progress Monitoring

• Systematically and frequently assessing students’ improvement directly on the skills being taught

• Measurements:– Directly on skills of concern– Systematically – Consistently – Frequently

Collaborative Teams

• Necessary to meet students’ individual needs • Co-teaching : team teaching between general

education and special education teachers in general education classroom

• Potential danger: the role is not equal and special education teacher is relegated to an assistant

• Some groups of students rather receive special education services outside the general education classroom (Leafstedt et al, 2007)

Differentiating for All

• Differentiating instruction adjusting instruction to meet the needs and learning styles of individuals or groups of learners

• Using less intensive supports and instructions for most students, and more intensive services for the few who need them most

• Gifted VS students with disabilities

Technology Integration

• Maximize the use of tech remove barriers for students with disabilities

• Availability of electronic text of materials enlarged print, braille version, or voice outputs to be immediately produced

• Wheelchairs, devices to help turning the pages in a book, computers, mobile phone

Multitiered Instruction

• A landmark shift on how struggling students should be supported

• Provide tiers of increasingly intensive supports to students, with/without disabilities, and is grounded in individualized instruction

• Positive Behavior Support (PBS) prevent inappropriate behavior by helping all students learn and use expected classroom behaviors with 3 levels of increasingly intensive supports of instruction and reinforcement

Multitiered Instruction (2)

• Response to Intervention (RTI) uses a conceptual comparable system to help students learn basic academic skills

• When students receive an early assistance problems can be corrected or minimized or even prevented!

• Stages: universal screening tier 1 tier 2 tier 3

Thank you!