Children with disabilities--Education

Historically, individuals with special needs have been isolated from society and educational opportunities. Though the professional care for these individuals improved in two hundred years, only since the passage of Public Law 94-142, in the past twenty-seven years, have the needs and accomplishments of special needs individuals been made public. Based on ten years in the classroom, one special educator experienced the need for parents and classroom teachers to have a resources reference for educating special needs individuals and to improve the communication among parents, classroom teachers and special educators. Each group should have an understanding of some history of persons with disabilities, the legislative timeline implemented to aid these individuals, the process in which special education services are provided within a public school setting, and alternatives to resolving disputes. A survey to establish baseline data concerning communication and knowledge was designed and gathered within one Colorado school district.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether a selected number of variables can predict the attitudes of regular-education elementary school teachers toward specific issues on inclusion. Specifically, this study analyzed the relationship between the criterion variable of attitude, and the predictor variables of experience with teaching handicapped students, number of years of teaching experience, number of special education courses and inservice training hours completed, age, grade level taught, and gender. Additionally, the issue of whether teachers have a positive attitude toward inclusion was addressed. The instrument used in this study was developed by researchers at the Division of Special Education and Rehabilitation, Syracuse University (Erevelles, Black, & Meyer, 1992). It contains 22 questions and uses a 5-point Likert-type scale. However, after conducting a reliability study, only 16 of the 22 questions were used for this study. Validation of the instrument was obtained by submitting the instrument to several authorities in the area of special education. Reliability was obtained by the use of a FORTRAN program to maximize coefficient alpha (Morris, 1978a, 1978b). The entire population of 473 respondents showed a coefficient alpha of .85. The sample of 20 schools was randomly selected from the 115 elementary schools within the Broward County Public School System in Florida, during the 1994-1995 school year. Surveys were distributed to 473 regular-education teachers from the 20 elementary schools. Eight hypotheses were developed to determine if there was a significant difference between attitudes and the aforementioned variables. Multiple linear regression was the statistical tool used for data analysis. All hypotheses were tested at the.05 level of significance. Based on the findings of this study, years of teaching experience and age were the only variables that predicted the attitudes of regular-education elementary school teachers toward the inclusion of students with disabilities in the regular classroom setting. Additionally, a significant multiple correlation of.07 (F[7,465] = 4.97, p < .0005) was evidenced in predicting the criterion variable of attitude from all predictor variables. Results also revealed teachers' negative attitudes toward the topic of inclusion.

Historically, there have been questions concerning the areas and methods of assessment that are appropriate with individuals with profound handicaps. Recently, research efforts toward the assessment of biobehavioral states of these individuals have been advocated. The purpose of this study was to examine how biobehavioral states and orienting responses might be influenced by environmental variables. More specifically, this study involved investigation into whether increasing degrees of stimulation provided through individuals, activities, and objects in the environment appeared to influence the biobehavioral states of the subjects. Additionally, the influence of time of day, day of week, the position of the subject, and the subject's prior state were explored. Five subjects were selected from a classroom for students with profound mental handicaps in southeast Florida. Subjects were observed using a partial-interval recording procedure and a previously developed and piloted instrument. Each subject was observed for 20 observation periods with each period consisting of 15, 20 second intervals. These observation periods were evenly distributed across mornings and afternoons and across the days of the week. Subjects were randomly selected for the order of observations. One additional rater was used in addition to the investigator for reliability purposes. The overall reliability coefficients for all observed variables exceeded.90. All environmental variables and the prior state variable were crosstabulated with the state variable and the significance of each bivariate relationship was tested using the chi-square statistic. All environmental variables, with the exception of the continuous auditory stimulation variable, shared a statistically significant relationship with the state variable (p < .0277). Prior state also shared a statistically significant relationship. Additionally, those environmental variables with the strongest relationships with the state variable along with the prior state variable were used as predictors for a multiple regression procedure. State was used as the criterion variable and significant variance was predicted by the environmental and prior state variables. This study resulted in an increase in the data base concerning state assessment in students with profound handicaps, investigated environmental variables that may have affected state occurrences, and raised issues concerning previous and future research. In addition, implications concerning how instructional grouping, provision of stimulating activities, intensity of staff-student interactions, positioning of students, and time of day and day of week might have affected subjects' biobehavioral states were discussed.

There has been a substantial amount of research supporting the use of functional behavioral assessment (FBA) for students with severe to profound disabilities. Many of the studies with these populations have shown to greatly impact the behavior of students when FBA-generated interventions, which match the function of the targeted behavior, are used to improve behavior. This research was the basis for the 1997 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which specifically requires the use of the FBA to generate educative, positively-based interventions. Since IDEA '97, research has shown the effective use of the FBA to create interventions matching the function of the problem behavior for students with milder disabilities. This is promising as research has been lacking in what assessment data teachers use to select behavioral interventions. Furthermore, school personnel have been ineffective in dealing with the problem behavior of students with disabilities as evidenced by high suspension rates for students with disabilities. There is also very limited research in the area of what assessment data is used in the development of individualized education programs (IEP) for students with emotional disabilities. The psychological evaluation is used to determine eligibility for special education, yet there is no research indicating that the information contained within a psychological evaluation is used for either goal development or intervention selection. This is problematic in that IEPs developed for students with emotional disabilities are lacking in quality and effectiveness. This study examined the effect that types of assessment report played on teachers' selection of interventions and IEP goal development for a student with an emotional disability. After reviewing an FBA or psychological evaluation, participants were to develop a behavioral goal. These goals were rated for the presence or absence of five quality indicators that should be present in a well-developed goal. No significant differences were found in the frequencies of these goal indicators. Participants were then asked to indicate preference of use of three interventions to increase appropriate behavior and three interventions to decrease inappropriate behavior and then to rank order their potential use of the interventions. No significant differences were found in the indication of use on either measure. Participants did consistently indicate preferred use of the three positively-based interventions.

This study investigated the effect of the disability labels learning disabilities (LD) and emotional handicaps (EH) on general education and special education teachers' willingness to refer students to gifted programs. Referral differences between general education and special education teachers were also examined. Two hundred forty-seven teachers (195 general education teachers and 52 special education teachers) from one south Florida school district participated in this study. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions (no label, LD, EH) and asked to read a vignette describing a gifted student. All vignettes were identical except for one statement added to the LD or EH group stating the student had a disability. After reading the vignette, teachers completed a survey instrument with six questions regarding possible referral options. One of the six questions asked if they would refer the student to their school's gifted program. Teachers indicated their responses by circling one of four choices: strongly agree, agree, disagree or strongly disagree. Responses to the gifted referral question on the survey instrument served as the dependent variable. A 2 x 3 factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to evaluate the main effects of labeled conditions (three levels), teacher certification type (two levels), and the interaction between labeled condition and teacher type. Results indicated that teachers were significantly influenced by the LD and EH label when making referrals to gifted programs. Both special education and general education teachers were much less willing to refer students with disability labels to gifted programs than identically described students with no disability label. Additionally, when compared to general education teachers, special education teachers were less likely to refer a gifted student, with or without disabilities, to a gifted program. Implications were discussed and recommendations for future research were made.

The purpose of this study was to develop a model management program which would substantially increase the efficiency of the special education teacher and administrator by using the microcomputer. An investigation utilizing a survey of South Florida schools to determine which schools had access to microcomputers, followed by a questionnaire to forty-two selected schools revealed that only fifteen of the schools surveyed were using the microcomputer in special education classes. Telephone calls to these fifteen schools revealed that only six were using the microcomputer to assist with management procedures for special education classes. A personal visit to each of the six schools which were using the microcomputer determined that the only duty the microcomputer was performing was attendance record-keeping. The information gathered from the survey, questionnaire, telephone calls, and personal visits indicated a need for the development of a program to be utilized with a microcomputer at the school level which would assist in the management of special education. The study then focused on the development of a model program in one elementary school which would assist with special education management. This was accomplished by designing a computer program that accomplished a variety of record-keeping tasks on the microcomputer such as attendance records, mailing labels, classroom rosters and other demographic data for individual classes. Programs were also utilized that assisted with the scoring of student mastery tests that were a part of a county-wide unified curriculum. The RECIPE program, which assists with the task of creating and implementing the individual education program, was incorporated into the model. Several recommendations were made at the conclusion of this study. The microcomputer should be more accessible to school administrators and teachers. In-service training in the use of the microcomputer should be provided to all interested personnel and students. A computer department should be a part of the school system to provide programmers, in-service trainers, and to program, evaluate, and disseminate software. Colleges and universities should begin classes in computer literacy and programming for all future teachers. Educators must take over the job of writing and programming appropriate software for use in our schools. Education in the microcomputer age should not be in the hands of technicians.