Childhood Special Education Research Articles

Addressing the Unique Needs of Arab American Children with Disabilities

Arab American children with disabilities have been largely neglected in literature pertaining to racial and ethnic minorities in special education in the United States. Few policy makers, human service practitioners, and researchers in this country are likely aware of the tens of thousands of Arab American children with disabilities. This paper offers guidelines for addressing the unique needs of Arab American children with disabilities. These guidelines address: awareness of Arab culture, outreach programs for Arab American families having children with disabilities, assessment of Arab American children, Arab American parent involvement in their children’s education, Arab American children’s English language proficiency, overrepresentation of Arab American children in special education, and conducting further empirical research on Arab American children with disabilities. The paper also provides preliminary evidence to support further exploration of the numbers, characteristics, and experiences of Arab American children with disabilities. The issues and discussions in this paper are of particular relevance as special education and related service providers in the United States continue to explore more culturally appropriate interventions and supports for minority children with disabilities and their families.

Developmental links between disobedient behavior and social classroom relationships in boys with psychiatric disorders in special education.

In mainstream education, positive relationships with teachers and peers have been found to positively influence children's behavioral development. However, high levels of classroom behavior problems may hinder the formation of such positive relationships. Therefore, findings from mainstream education cannot be generalized to special education. The present study investigated the developmental links between disobedience and positive as well as negative relationships with teachers and peers among boys in restrictive special educational settings. At three assessment waves across one school year, teacher-reports of teacher-child closeness and conflict, and peer-reports of peer acceptance, rejection and disobedience were collected among 340 boys (mean age = 10.1years, SD = 1.58, range = 5-13) with psychiatric disorders receiving special education. Autoregressive cross-lagged models were fitted to explore the nature of these developmental links. The impact of boys' age was examined using multiple group analyses. Findings supported the importance of teacher-child conflict, but not closeness, and positive and negative peer relationships for the development of boys' disobedience, with a stronger effect of negative than positive relationships. However, teacher-child and peer relationships were not longitudinally related and the effect of boys' age was minimal. This study extends prior research by suggesting that, despite differences in educational setting and severity of behavior problems between children in mainstream and special education, reducing negative classroom interactional patterns is most important in preventing the development of problematic classroom behavior in boys with severe social-emotional and behavioral difficulties.

Taiwan's National Policies for Children in Special Education: Comparison with UNCRPD, Core Concepts, and the American IDEA

The goals for special education policy in Taiwan are to enable students with disabilities to develop their capacities to the fullest, have equal opportunity to access an effective education, live independently, fully participate in their communities, and become economically as self-sufficient as possible, thereby contributing to their communities in various ways. The authors compare these policies to three conceptual models, one international and two national, and ask: (1) to what extent do these policies have congruence with the recently promulgated United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) (a document that declares rights in an arguably culturally neutral way)? (2) to what extent are they congruent with the core concepts of U.S. disability policy? and (3) to what extent do these goals, adopted by a democratic government that is significantly different in culture from the United States, reflect U.S. policy as set out in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)? The authors also ask: To what extent might Taiwan policy be improved as a consequence of a comparison of it with U.S. and United Nations policy? In reflection, the authors conclude that in general, Taiwan's national special education policy coheres with IDEA, the core concepts, and UNCRPD. The differences between Taiwan's policy and those of IDEA and the core concepts occur mainly because of Taiwan's traditional values and beliefs toward disability. The authors propose more sophisticated elaborations of Taiwan's policies related to family participation, rights of privacy, and appropriate evaluation procedures.

Perceptions of self, significant others, and teacher-child relationships in indiscriminately friendly children.

Despite increasing research on indiscriminate friendliness in children, almost no research exists on social-cognitive deficits that are supposed to underlie indiscriminately friendly behavior. In this study, we compared indiscriminately friendly children with controls regarding their perceptions of self, reliability trust in significant others, and perceptions of the teacher-child relationship. Children's perceptions were compared in two samples: a sample of 33 likely cases for disinhibited reactive attachment disorder (RAD) from special education for children with emotional and behavioral disorders (75.76% boys, Mage=8.52, 96.9% Caucasian, 33.3% and 45.5% of their mothers completed primary or secondary education, respectively) was matched on sex, age, and socio-economic status with a sample of 33 controls from general education. Children participated individually in several interviews assessing global and social self-concept, reliability trust in significant others, teacher-child relationship perceptions, and vocabulary. Parents and teachers completed a screening questionnaire for RAD and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Likely disinhibited RAD-cases showed more indiscriminate friendliness and more problem behavior in general according to their parents and teachers than controls. Furthermore, likely RAD-cases reported a more positive global self-concept, more reliability trust in significant others, and more dependency in the teacher-child relationship than controls. The results are in line with clinical observations of indiscriminately friendly children and findings in clinical samples of maltreated or attachment disrupted children but contrast hypotheses from developmental attachment research. Further research is needed to explain the more positive perceptions of indiscriminately friendly children.

통합교육을 위한 초등학교 특수학급영역 설계방향에 관한 연구 - 특수학급 아동의 장소성을 중심으로 -

Elementary School is a special facility where sense of place plays critical role for the development of children. Children in special education call for special attention as they hold inferior status compared to the children in regular class especially under the inclusive education policy. Eight cases of special education class area are analyzed in terms of social space, personal space and favorite place which is known to be basic factor for the development. As a result outdoor space found to be designed inappropriate even when designed accessible to the special education class as it could not meet the developmental needs of children in special education. Special education class area inside the building is also found to be too exclusive to allow social mix with children in regular class disregarding the intention of inclusive education. Location of these class should be strategic as it is critical to be linked with regular classroom efficiently still allowing psychological buffer as the children in special education tend to form restorative space inside the special education classroom showing the possibility of creating sense of place there.

Comparing Apples and Oranges

The assessment of young children in early childhood special education is a central area of educational practice. The results of child assessments often have significant implications for young children, their families, and the programs that serve them, including eligibility for special education services, instructional planning, and documentation of child outcomes. The array of early childhood assessment types and purposes can be challenging to disentangle at the practitioner and policy level. At this time, different types of assessment tools (e.g., norm-referenced and criterion-referenced) are being used to document the development and learning of children and little attention has been paid to the parallel information produced from different assessment types. The purpose of this study is to compare the assessment results from two types of developmental instruments commonly used ( Assessment, Evaluation, and Programming System Second Edition [AEPS 2nd ed.] and Battelle Developmental Inventory II [BDI-2]) to determine their congruence in determining a child’s developmental status (e.g., “on track” or delayed). Results indicate substantive difference between the two measures highlighting the potential for mismeasurement and misinterpretation of child assessment data. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

Overcoming Deliberate Indifference: Reconsidering Effective Legal Protections for Bullied Special Education Students

Ten years ago, in response to an epidemic of bullying and harassment of special education students in our nation’s schools, I put forward two new legal proposals based on legal protections that these students uniquely have under the Individual with Disabilities in Education (IDEA). Although these proposals have gained some traction in the ensuing time period, most courts continue to analyze these cases under the same series of largely ineffectual constitutional and statutory laws. What many of these laws have in common with my previous proposals is reliance on a deliberate indifference standard, which requires schools and responsible school officials to essentially ignore the bullying behavior before being held legally accountable for their actions. Not surprisingly, there has been a remarkable lack of case success in even the most severe instances of special education student bullying.To provide meaningful legal protections for bullied special education children, this article seeks to overcome the deliberate indifference standard by relying on a combination of reasonable accommodation principles under federal disability law and legal protections that children with disabilities already have under IDEA. More specifically, this article argues for adoption of the gross mismanagement standard under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and an expansion of existing state anti-bullying laws to provide special education children with various forms of private rights of action to combat the most severe forms of bullying. These new legal proposals will add to the arsenal that bullied special education children have at their disposal to fight back against both their tormentors and their institutional and individual enablers.

The Implementation of Life Space Crisis Intervention in Residential Care and Special Education for Children and Adolescents with EBD: An Effect Study

When working with children and adolescents with emotional and behavioural disorders, conflicts are a part of daily life. At present, a variety of conflict resolution or conflict management programs, that can be divided into three categories, are described in the literature. A first category contains programs that focus on training for children and adolescents, and are often curriculum-based. The second category focuses on training for parents, and the third category contains programs that focus on training for professionals. The presents study was designed to evaluated the effectiveness of Life Space Crisis Intervention (LSCI), a therapeutic and verbal strategy developed by Long that fits into this third category of conflict management programs. Throughout a four-year project, al staff in a Flemish centre offering residential care and special education were trained in LSCI. On a yearly basis, data with regard to time in program, academic achievement, behavioural problems and anxiety problems were collected. The results show an increase in time spent in program and in academic achievement, and a decrease in youths' anxiety, indicating that the implementation of LSCI contributes constructively to the treatment of children and adolescents with EBD.

Development of Smart Contents to Increase Social Skills for Children in Special Education

Development of Smart Contents to Increase Social Skills for Children in Special Education

Teaching Play Skills to Children with Autism Using Visually Structured Tasks

As an early childhood special educa tor, Ms. Pool is proud of her elemen tary school’s commitment to providing special education programs to stu dents with disabilities in inclusive set tings. She is especially excited about Ms. Carter’s first grade classroom, in which Keith, a 7-year-old boy diag nosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), has been placed for the past 2 months. However, the two teachers have

An institutional ethnography inquiry of health care work in special education: a research protocol.

Special education for children with chronic health conditions or disabilities requires the integration of health care work with education. This phenomenon occurs in an understudied and challenging context for integrated care despite policies and protocols that outline work processes in this context. We are interested in an approach to inquiry that will allow us to address gaps in current literature and practices in integrated care, and move towards informing policy. Institutional ethnography is an approach to inquiry that maps the actualities of what individuals do at an everyday local level, while examining this work activity in relation to the sociopolitical context. It has been used to change policy and local practice by highlighting disjunctures between policy and actuality. We are adopting institutional ethnography and its three common methods of data collection: document collection, interviews, and observation/shadowing. Informants to this inquiry are chosen from school-based teams, family-centred units and constellations of clinical professionals. We are following work processes, verbally and visually mapping what is done and by whom. It is important to note that work includes 'unofficial' work, including the work of families and others who may not be assigned an official work role in a policy or protocol. The mediating role of texts in work processes is also being mapped in order to link the local work to the high-level social coordinators. To begin, analysis focuses on local, or micro-level, work processes; next, analysis identifies and explains the macro-level coordination of the local work (i.e. social and political structures). A primary outcome of this study will be the creation of verbal and visual maps that demonstrate the social organisation of work processes occurring in the health care-special education interface. These maps will make invisible work visible, highlight disjunctures between policy and practice and identify opportunities for change. They will be useful for critical knowledge translation purposes, providing parents and professionals with an awareness of how their individual work fits in to the larger picture of integrating health care work in special education.

Serving Educational Pie: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Collaborating with Families

One of the things educators often bemoan is the lack of parental involvement with their students' education. Too often, parent involvement is limited to those situations in which interactions revolve around unpleasant issues such as discipline or other conflicts. Many parents want to become more involved but may lack knowledge or opportunity for more positive engagements. When parents intentionally seek to increase their understanding of their child's academic, developmental, or social needs, it can be a great benefit to the child. Both special education and general education personnel possess a wide range of professional specialties that can positively affect the educational process for all students. When professionals with specialties in various areas collaborate to offer a program that whets the appetites of parents for additional information to assist their children, it gives parents an opportunity they might not find elsewhere. Parents of children with special needs are often riddled with confusion concerning their child's diagnoses and special needs. This heightens their sense of fear, and they may have conflicting feelings about working with school personnel. They may feel suspicious, yet hopeful, that school personnel will be caring people who will meet their child's needs. These things can often make parents appear adversarial toward the very officials who are charged with the responsibility of meeting their child's educational needs and can make building a working relationship difficult. The vast majority of special education children have learning disabilities causing perplexing difficulties for parents in helping their children learn. In addition, some children with special needs, particularly those served in life skills and early childhood intervention programs, have complex medical issues, and their parents have often had a difficult or even heartbreaking journey before encountering school personnel or academic issues. Therefore, anything schools can do to proactively extend an arm of understanding with intentions to engage parents in the educational process may contribute to laying a trusting foundation for future encounters between parents and school personnel (Serres & Nelson, 2011).

Disability in the Context of Blackness: Is It a Manifestation of Past Sins or a Blessing in Disguise?

This article conceptually examines constructions of disability within 3 philosophical models including the implications of these constructions on the author's experiences of negotiating and mediating familial and educational contexts as a deaf African American female. Following the introduction, the first section entitled The Religious Model: Blackness and Disability as Manifestations of Past Sins highlights biblical representations of people with disabilities within the historical, social, and cultural contexts of blackness. The second section entitled The Medical Model and the Overrepresentation of African Americans in Special Education is a continuation of her experiences as a deaf African American female but within educational contexts. The author discusses the influence of the Medical Model on the over-diagnosis of Black children in special education. The third section entitled The Social Model and Intercontextuality provides an examination of possibilities offered by the Social Model for African Americans with disabilities particular in regards to intersectionality and contextuality. The concluding section entitled Spirituality as Leadership: Disability as a Blessing in Disguise includes an examination of spirituality as an epistemological, subjective, and “in-motional” space through and in which contradictions, exaltations, and complexities of being an African American person with a disability is navigated, embraced, rejected, and redefined.

Disproportionality and Acting-Out Behaviors Among African American Children in Special Education

African American children are more likely to be diagnosed with behavioral disorders and are overrepresented in special education. This may be due to misdiagnosis. If diagnoses are accurate, prevention and intervention efforts should be targeted to improve African American children’s behavior and long-term outcomes. This study aimed to see if teachers, mothers, and African American children in special education rate children’s externalizing behaviors differently and to understand what factors impact the externalizing behaviors of African American children in special education. A secondary data analysis of African American children in special education (n = 126) found that teachers’ scores were similar to mothers’ scores of externalizing behaviors and that mothers’ ratings of their children’s acting-out behaviors were significantly higher than children’s self-report. African American boys are more likely to experience acting-out behaviors than girls. Children’s environment, efficacy beliefs, and the Nurse-Family Partnership intervention were not significantly associated with their acting-out behaviors.

‘Looking Back, Looking Forward’: An Interview with Emeritus Professor Ted Glynn on his Involvement in Special Education

In interview with Dr Peter Stanley, Professor Glynn reflects on how he became involved in special education, and on his work with the Pause Prompt Praise reading strategy, the Mangere Guidance and Learning Unit (which gave rise to Guidance and Learning Units nationally), and Glenburn Residential Centre, which was an innovative study of child behaviour management across multiple settings. Professor Glynn also talks about his time training psychologists on both the Auckland and Otago Diploma in Educational Psychology programmes and about his involvement in training Resource Teachers of Learning and Behaviour. Glynn advocates for inclusion, and for regular class teachers to be principally responsible for working with students with special needs. He also contends that much greater attention should be given to the cultural experiences of children in special and mainstream education.

The relationship between environment, efficacy beliefs, and academic achievement of low-income African American children in special education.

African American students are overrepresented in special education. Ecological systems theory, social cognitive theory, and a literature review demonstrate that children's environments, particularly school, and self-efficacy impact the educational outcomes of African American children. Interventions have aimed to improve children's environmental resources and efficacy. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of environment, efficacy beliefs, and the Nurse-Family Partnership intervention on the educational achievements of African American children in special education. A secondary data analysis of 126 African American children in special education found that self-efficacy and the number of hours spent in special education were associated with their academic achievement.

Are Special Education Students Happy?

This study compared the subjective and school-related happiness of 75 11- to 16-year-old special education students to 77 age- and gender-matched mainstream students using two quantitative measures. Additionally, the respondents chose from a list of 12 putative happy makers what they felt increased their happiness. Ten special education students also described their opinions on happiness qualitatively. In both quantitative measures, the special education students reported lower happiness than did their counterparts. Girls reported lower happiness than did boys in subjective happiness. Both educational groups valued money, success in school and leisure time. The most frequent choice of special education students was to have more friends. This paper discusses reasons for the relative unhappiness of special education children.

Differential ratings of and maternal impact on anxiety and depression among African American children in special education

Abstract African American children are overrepresented in special education based on diagnoses of internalizing behaviors, such as anxiety and depression. Differential ratings of depression and anxiety between self-report and children's mothers and teachers have caused skepticism around the accuracy of teachers' ratings of signs and symptoms of anxiety and depression among African American children. If African American children are truly suffering from disproportionate rates of anxiety and depression, prevention and intervention efforts should be targeted to improve their mental health. According to the ecological systems theory and the social cognitive theory, children's mental health development is impacted by their environments and efficacy beliefs. This study aimed to see if teachers, mothers, and African American children in special education rate internalizing behaviors of children differently and to understand what factors impact these behaviors among African American children in special education. A secondary data analysis of a sample of 126 African American children in special education found that children's self-report of internalizing behaviors was significantly higher than mothers' and teachers' ratings of African American children's internalizing behaviors. Higher reports of mothers' mastery were associated with fewer internalizing behaviors of African American children in special education. In addition, African American girls were more likely to experience anxiety and depression than boys. There was not a statistically significant relationship between children's environment, receipt of the Nurse–Family Partnership intervention, and their internalizing behaviors.

SOS: A Screening Instrument to Identify Children with Handwriting Impairments

ABSTRACTPoor handwriting has been shown to be associated with developmental disorders such as Developmental Coordination Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, autism, and learning disorders. Handwriting difficulties could lead to academic underachievement and poor self-esteem. Therapeutic intervention has been shown to be effective in treating children with poor handwriting, making early identification critical. The SOS test (Systematic Screening for Handwriting Difficulties) has been developed for this purpose. A child copies a sample of writing within 5 min. Handwriting quality is evaluated using six criteria and writing speed is measured. The Dutch SOS test was administered to 860 Flemish children (7–12 years). Inter- and intrarater reliability was excellent. Test–retest reliability was moderate. A correlation coefficient of 0.70 between SOS and “Concise Assessment Methods of Children Handwriting” test (Dutch version) confirmed convergent validity. The SOS allowed discrimination between typically developing children and children in special education, males and females, and different age groups.

Disability and the Education System

Education is important for all children, but even more so for children with disabilities, whose social and economic opportunities may be limited. In this article, Laudan Aron and Pamela Loprest assess how well the nation's education system is serving students with disabilities. Aron and Loprest trace the evolution of the special education system in the United States from its origins in the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century. They note the dual character of federal legislation, which both guarantees eligible children with disabilities the right to a "free, appropriate public education in the least restrictive setting" and establishes a federal funding program to help meet this goal. They then review the types of services and accommodations these children receive from infancy through young adulthood. The special education system has given children with disabilities much greater access to public education, established an infrastructure for educating them, helped with the earlier identification of disabilities, and promoted greater inclusion of these children alongside their nondisabled peers. Despite these advances, many problems remain, including the over- and underidentification of certain subgroups of students, delays in identifying and serving students, and bureaucratic, regulatory, and financial barriers that complicate the program for everyone involved. More important, the authors show that special education students still lag behind their nondisabled peers in educational achievements, are often held to lower expectations, are less likely to take the full academic curriculum in high school, and are more likely to drop out of school. Only limited evidence is available on the effectiveness of specific special education services or on how to improve student achievement for this important subgroup of students. Improving the system will require better ways of understanding and measuring both ends of the special education continuum, namely, what services special education children need and receive, and what academic outcomes these students achieve. Without stronger evidence linking these two aspects of the system, Aron and Loprest argue, researchers will be unable to gauge the efficacy of the services now being delivered or to formulate effective reforms to the system as a whole.