Council For Exceptional Children Research Articles

The Effects of Paraeducator-Implemented Interventions on Student Literacy Skill Acquisition: A Review

Paraeducators are increasingly tasked with delivering early literacy instruction to students with disabilities in elementary schools. This review synthesized findings from 19 studies that examined paraeducator-implemented early literacy instruction and reported the included studies’ descriptive characteristics, methodological quality, and treatment outcomes. Studies were rated for methodological quality using the Council for Exceptional Children’s quality indicators. This systematic review was the first to describe paraeducator-implemented early literacy instruction in elementary school settings across single-case research designs and between-group research designs and the first to apply a set of quality indicators to rate study quality. The synthesized evidence suggests that, with the appropriate training and supervision, paraeducators were able to facilitate student acquisition in phonological knowledge, word reading, fluency, comprehension, and spelling domains. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Professional Development for Paraprofessionals on Inclusive Practices using Disability Studies in Education

Paraprofessionals serve a critically significant role on educational teams, yet often receive the least amount of training among educational professionals. This article details an online paraprofessional learning series created by a team of special education faculty. The professional development series draws on a disability studies in education (DSE) approach and high leverage practices to situate paraprofessionals as active contributors to inclusion as a social justice imperative. Aligned to the Council for Exceptional Children’s (CEC) Core Competencies for special education paraeducators (2022), topics addressed in the series are: (a) foundations of inclusive education, (b) learner development and characteristics, (c) supporting UDL in the inclusive classroom, (d) supporting specialized instruction for the inclusive classroom, and (e) learning environments and behavior support. We offer research-based strategies to build paraprofessionals capacity for inclusion through a lens of social justice and equity. This article can serve as a resource for paraprofessionals, and a model of bridging research-to-practice for special education faculty and administrators seeking to increase continuity across pre-and in-service teacher preparation and paraprofessional professional development.

A Systematic and Quality Review of Augmentative and Alternative Communication Interventions that use Core Vocabulary

AbstractCore vocabulary is defined as “lexical items that are accepted as being central and indispensable to language use” (Bell, 2012, p. 1). Use of core vocabulary is common amongst professionals who teach augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) to individuals with disabilities. Although the use of AAC is often classified as an evidence-based practice (EBP) (Steinbrenner et al., 2020; Wong et al., Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 45(7), 1951–1966, 2015) an analysis of the relevant intervention procedures as well as the vocabulary used is often missing from syntheses of the literature. Therefore, a systematic review was conducted to determine the quality and strength of the evidence for AAC interventions that use core vocabulary. A systematic database search and a subsequent screening process resulted in a total of 10 peer-reviewed studies that involved an AAC intervention that used core vocabulary. Each study’s outcomes were then categorized as positive, mixed, or negative and a quality review was performed using the Council for Exceptional Children’s (CEC) standards for evidence-based practices (Cook et al., Teaching Exceptional Children, 46(6), 206-212, 2015a; Remedial and Special Education, 36, 220-234, 2015b). Overall, the results suggest a lack of strong evidence in favor of AAC interventions that use core vocabulary. The results are discussed in the context of general suggestions for vocabulary selection and teaching practices for AAC systems.

Unleashing the Entrepreneurial Spirit: Nurturing Elementary Students' Potential for Innovation, Creativity, and Fearless Exploration

This paper advocates for the teaching of entrepreneurship to elementary students, specifically those from 98 percent minority, low socio-economic (Title I schools in the US) by recognizing and harnessing their inherent entrepreneurial spirit. The prevailing notion that entrepreneurship is exclusively reserved for adults disregards the natural inclination of young learners to explore, create, innovate, and fearlessly try new things. By fostering an environment that encourages curiosity, creativity, and problem-solving, educators can tap into the entrepreneurial potential of elementary students. This philosophical position emphasizes the importance of instilling an entrepreneurial mindset in students, promoting a growth mindset, integrating real-world connections, and empowering students to take ownership of their learning. Through age-appropriate activities and authentic experiences, students develop essential entrepreneurial skills and qualities such as critical thinking, adaptability, resilience, and a sense of agency. By embracing this perspective, educators can cultivate a generation of entrepreneurial thinkers and doers who are equipped with the skills, mindset, and creativity necessary for future success in the 21st century. Imagine the following scenario of events that took place in the Rawlings Elementary approach utilized in this paper. A collaboration with the Haitian Center for Inclusive Education founded by Gertrude Bien Aime, in which Rawlings students shared local neighborhood riffs and rhythms they bring into the school each day with neighborhood music of the children in Port au Prince.  The 40 students with special needs at the Haiti inclusion school are raised by Gertrude at the Notre Maison Orphanage where she maintains their care and safety regardless of outside conditions. When the Rawlings students met the students and Gertrude the female students in the class requested repeated conversations with Gertrude as a role model but also because of her entrepreneurial ability to face the challenges of gangs, food shortages, and variety of needs the students with disabilities she rescued and raises they engage with. The first comment from my students when the Zoom session ended was “Fundraiser!”. Disregarding their own daily socio economic, educational and potential safety needs in their lives and focusing on the opportunity to assist others. One student had suggesting recording their original music arrangements of their neighborhood music on Spotify.  By incorporating authentic experiences, such as connecting with local entrepreneurs, engaging in community projects, and exploring entrepreneurship in various fields, students can grasp the practical applications of entrepreneurial skills. As a result of these shared experiences, the Society for Education, Music and Psychological Research (SEMPRE) with support from Dr. Graham Welch paid for Gertrude to fly to Florida to attend the Florida Council for Exceptional Children Conference to receive added training and entrepreneurial opportunities.  Bien Aime received the Florida Council for Exceptional Children’s Landis Stetler Award for service to the field of special education and will be hired and brought to the US this fall as a consultant for the Florida Atlantic University Center for Autism and Related Disabilities. The purpose of this consultancy will be to encourage the parents of children with special needs in the Haitian community there to overcome a perceived stigma in receiving services for their children at the center. The funding also will help her in her efforts to continue to support the students in Haiti. This Rawlings Elementary approach helps students understand how their ideas and actions can make a meaningful impact on their community and the world around them and through journaling, critique discussions and critical thinking on these activities they take steps to improve their reading and writing skills.

Leading With an Equity Lens: Addressing the Intersection of Racism and Ableism in Public Schools

The Council for Exceptional Children studied the profession of special education and found that a substantial number of special educators rated their confidence as lower in culturally responsive instruction strategies (Fowler, et al., 2019). The recommendations in this article highlight how to confront the intersection of racism and ableism and eradicate deficit ideology in educational structures. Leading with an equity lens requires a conceptual framework and diversifying the workforce, adopting a theoretical framework, engaging with diverse students and families, developing skills through systemic professional development, and using practices such as culturally and linguistically sustaining practices, and anti-racist Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

Measures Used to Assess Treatment Outcomes in Children with Autism Receiving Early and Intensive Behavioral Interventions: A Review

Abstract This review is aimed at identifying assessment instruments used to measure treatment outcomes in children with autism spectrum disorder who received early and intensive behavioral interventions. Forty three articles were included and appraised using the Council for Exceptional Children’s Standards for Evidence Based Practice quality index rater. Ninety-two outcome measures were discovered. Measures of adaptive functioning (91%), intellectual functioning (86%), and core symptoms (67%) of autism were represented with the highest frequencies. Measures of challenging behavior and parent or caregiver wellbeing were reported at 30% and 14% respectively. Reliability and validity of each measure were determined by recently published psychometric data. The utility of outcome measures in clinical practice is discussed.

Standards for Early Intervention/Early Childhood Special Education: The Development, Uses, and Vision for the Future

Professional Standards identify what future educators should know and be able to do when they complete a program of study from an Institution of Higher Education (IHE). With support from the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC), the first ever stand-alone Early Intervention/Early Childhood Special Education (EI/ECSE) Standards were approved in 2020. In this paper, we (a) discuss the rationale for stand-alone EI/ECSE Standards within the current context; (b) briefly introduce the Standards; (c) present an overview of how the Standards were developed; and (d) provide a vision for and guidance to the field in the development of personnel systems that ensure application of the EI/ECSE Standards for preservice and in-service preparation, IHE program accreditation, cross disciplinary collaboration, research and development, and policy and advocacy.

Exploring Education Beyond Traditional Contexts: An Interview With Dr. Sarup Mathur

Dr. Sarup Mathur is the Ryan C. Harris Professor of Special Education in the Division of Educational Leadership at Arizona State University. She is nationally recognized as a leader in the fields of emotional and behavioral disorders and juvenile justice, particularly specializing in the areas of social skills and re-entry of adjudicated youth. She has been the co-editor of a yearly special issue of Education and Treatment of Children on severe behavior disorders of children and youth, is the former secretary and president of the Council for Exceptional Children’s Division of Emotional and Behavioral Health, and has enabled teachers in juvenile justice to support adjudicated youth by developing transitioning planning processes. She has written numerous scholarly articles, published and edited books, and has secured extensive grant funding to support the training of doctoral students specializing in working with adjudicated youth.

Preparing Preservice Teachers for Inclusive Education Through Standards-based Curriculum

This paper explores factors that impact inclusive teacher preparation programs in the United States, such as federal legislation, inclusive teacher shortage, state policies, and the standards developed by the accreditation organizations and specialty professional associations. It also discusses the process of developing and implementing a curriculum based on multiple sets of standards from different professional organizations to prepare preservice teachers for inclusive education in dual-certification teacher education programs in a mid-sized university located in the Northeastern US. Crosswalk examples between the Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) standards, Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) standards, the New York State Teacher Certification Examination (NYSTCE) – Students with Disabilities Content Specialty Test (SWD CST) Framework, and an excerpt of a standards-based assessment rubric are shared to help provide insights into the preservice inclusive teacher preparation in New York State, the United States.

The tradition of early childhood personnel preparation standards alignment analysis

ABSTRACT There is an extensive history of collaboration with respect to policy initiatives between the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and the Division for Early Childhood (DEC) of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC). In pursuit of promoting high quality inclusive education for all young children, DEC and NAEYC have partnered to create numerous resources and supports over the years for preservice preparation programs and professional development providers who seek to address both ECE and EI/ECSE personnel preparation standards. One notable result has been the development of formal procedures for alignments of the preparation standards promoted by these organizations. In this paper, we detail this established tradition of early childhood standards alignment analysis by describing the development and details of the procedures used for conducting alignment analyses. These procedures are now precedent and provide a roadmap for future alignment analyses. Implications for personnel preparation and future alignment analysis and standards development are discussed.

A Systematic Review of Second Step Social-Emotional Skills Program in Middle Schools

In this systematic review, we evaluated the quality and rigor of the current evidence base for the Second Step social-emotional learning program in middle schools. Eleven studies were coded using the Council for Exceptional Children Standards for Evidence-Based Practices in Special Education with an 80% weighted criterion. We determined five studies met the weighted 80% criteria and one study demonstrated a positive effect as defined by Council for Exceptional Children. The other four studies demonstrated neutral/mixed results, and we therefore classified Second Step for middle schools in the mixed evidence category. We discuss the strengths of evaluated studies and future directions for research.

Assessment of strategy instruction and self-regulation in reading comprehension: A review of the literature

Strategy instruction is a common instructional method for teaching academic skills, particularly reading comprehension, and it is commonly combined with self-regulation components (e.g., goal setting, self-monitoring). Previous meta-analyses and reviews have examined the effectiveness of strategy instruction on reading comprehension, but have not examined how reading comprehension is assessed, an area of need considering that reading comprehension assessments are not created equal. In this systematic review, sixteen articles were examined to determine the methods for assessing reading comprehension, self-regulation, reading motivation/attitudes, and social validity. In addition, the Council for Exceptional Children’s Standards for Evidence-Based Practices in Special Education were applied to all included studies. Limitations and recommendation for future researchers are presented and disussed.

Looking Behind Virtual Lenses: Field Experience, Modeling, Coaching, Feedback, Supervision, and Partnerships

Small special education programs (SSEPs) are composed of limited faculty tasked with educating interns dispersed across large geographical areas (Reid, 1994). These needs underscore a call for more flexible educational program options. Moreover, Kebritchi et al. (2017) found professors in higher education institutions sought a variety of instructional methods to critically respond to barriers experienced by SEPPs. The purpose of this article is to highlight virtual methods utilized by SSEPs for field experiences, modeling,coaching, feedback, supervision, and partnerships to leverage faculty expertise effectively and efficiently, to expand recruitment in programs, and to support teacher retention efforts. Using the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) and Collaboration for Effective Educator Development, Accountability, and Reform (CEEDAR) High Leverage Practices (HLPs) of Instruction, Collaboration, and Assessment (McLeskey et al., 2017), this article will look behind the virtual lens to uncover how SSEPs faculty can support interns using a developmental and scaffolded approach.

A 30-Year Systematic Review of Self-Monitoring as a Strategy to Improve Teacher Performance

Self-monitoring encompasses observation of one’s own behavior that can be used by teachers to improve their performance in the classroom. In this systematic review, we searched three databases to discover published research using teachers as participants implementing self-monitoring procedures in a school setting from January 1990 through October 2021. We identified 24 studies that met the criteria. These studies were analyzed with a focus on participants, dependent and independent variables, type of self-monitoring used, and outcomes. The studies were further analyzed using the Council for Exceptional Children’s Quality Indicators for Research in Special Education (Cook et al., 2014). We found 23 of 24 studies indicated positive results, with some including self-monitoring as part of an intervention package. However, only eight of the 24 studies met all the quality indicators. Future research should focus on providing quality studies to continue to evaluate the effectiveness of self-monitoring for improving teacher performance.

A Meta-Analysis of Mathematical Interventions for Increasing the Word Problem Solving Performance of Upper Elementary and Secondary Students with Mathematics Difficulties

This meta-analysis synthesized the findings of experimental and quasi-experimental studies to determine the efficacy of math interventions for enhancing the word problem-solving accuracy of students with mathematics difficulties in Grades 4 to 12. Further, we identified intervention and design characteristics that moderate the effectiveness of interventions. We appraised study quality using Council for Exceptional Children (CEC's) evidence standards. We also used random-effects meta-regression models with robust variance estimation (RVE) to compute the overall weighted treatment effect and investigate the moderating impact of 15 variables. Results from 36 intervention studies published between 1989 and 2020 reveal a relatively large and positive mean effect size (g = 0.71; SE = 0.11, 95% CI [0.49, 0.92]) across 88 outcomes, suggesting the examined interventions were effective. The moderator analyses' findings showed the treatment efficacy varied as a function of five intervention characteristics, including intervention model, interventionist, grade level, math topic, and intervention duration. None of the design features we examined led to significant moderator effects. We discuss findings and limitations and provide directions for future research and practice.

Practice with Feedback Makes Permanent: eCoaching Through Online Bug-in-Ear During Clinical Experiences

Federal mandates (e.g., Every Student Succeeds Act [ESSA], 2015) require special educators to use evidence-based practices (EBP) when working with K-12 students. However, for this expectation to become a reality, teacher educators must make changes in educator preparation program (EPP) curriculum, policy, coursework, and clinical experiences (Kolb et al., 2018). The need for changesin EPP clinical experiences has been underscored by the Council for Exceptional Children’s (CEC’s) shift from knowledge to practice-based standards for special educators (CEC, 2020). Real-time performance feedback (PF) delivered via online bug-in-ear (BIE) technology is an EBP (Sinclair, 2020) for coaching and supervising during early, mid, and late clinical experiences. In this article,we offer a rationale for making widespread, digital-age changes to coaching and supervising, through online BIE; provide an overview of relevant research; and offer guidance and recommendations for successful online BIE integration during EPP clinical experiences.

Until We Begin Listening, There Can Be Little Hope for Understanding One Another: An Interview With Dr. Philip C. Chinn

Dr. Philip C. Chinn is professor emeritus in the Division of Special Education and Counseling, California State University, Los Angeles. He taught at the University of Utah and University of North Texas, and served for 6 years directing the office of Multicultural and Ethnic Concerns at the Council for Exceptional Children. He was department head at Texas A&M University, Commerce, and a division chair at California State University, LA. Dr. Chinn served as vice-president of the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) and co-editor of the organization’s official journal, Multicultural Perspectives. He was appointed to the California State Commission for Special Education and served on the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) Board of Examiners. Dr. Chinn is the co-author of two textbooks in special education and has written several textbook chapters and journal articles. The 11th edition of his co-authored Multicultural Education in a Pluralistic Society (Pearson) was released in 2021.

Review of the Evidence Base for Peer Network Interventions for Students With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

A systematic literature review was conducted to examine the evidence for peer network interventions for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Fifteen studies were identified and evaluated for methodological rigor using the quality indicators published by the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) and by examining the risk of bias. Relying only on the guidelines from the CEC, peer network interventions are an evidence-based practice for increasing the communication and interaction of students with IDD with their peers without disabilities. However, risk of bias assessment revealed several methodological issues, outcome measurement was generally restricted to being context-bound rather than generalized, and there is a need for further research at the middle school level, with students with intellectual disability who do not have an autism diagnosis, and with students who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). Implications are provided about training and supporting school personnel to implement peer network interventions.

What teachers know about teaching reading to students with developmental disabilities: A survey of special educators

Despite the fact that there is a growing body of knowledge about how to effectively teach reading to students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), little is known about how teachers of these students are being trained in early literacy skills and implementing these practices in the classroom. As knowledge of the capacity of these student's ability to read grows, we need to know whether teachers' beliefs about their potential reading ability are changing as well. Teacher members of the Division on Autism and Developmental Disabilities, a subdivision of Council for Exceptional Children, were sent a survey that asked questions regarding training, instruction practices, and beliefs around literacy instruction. Results indicated teachers are receiving training in literacy instruction that is not always consistent with what they are implementing in the classroom. Additional results, implications, and recommendations are provided.

The Council for Exceptional Children, Division of Emotional and Behavioral Health’s Position Statement on Solitary Confinement

This document, from the Council for Exceptional Children, Division of Emotional and Behavioral Health (DEBH), provides clear and compelling support for the abolishment of solitary confinement with incarcerated youth and young adults in juvenile and adult correctional facilities. This is the first position statement from DEBH on the topic, and the information includes (a) a definition of solitary confinement, (b) discussion of its use, (c) an explanation of the impacts of solitary confinement on youth, (d) identification of systemic issues that perpetuate the use of solitary confinement, (e) an examination of U.S. laws concerning the use of solitary confinement, (f) a declaration of principles, and (g) recommendations for policy and practice.