Itinerant special educators can be much more than "tutors" for young children with special needs. They can transform whole classrooms and help inclusion flourish--if they have the clear guidelines and best practices they need to make the most of their critical roles. This is the book that every itinerant early childhood special educator has been…

A school improvement program that provided support to poor-performing schools on the basis of needs identified in a school improvement plan was implemented in 72 government schools in Jamaica, from 1998 to 2005. In this independent evaluation of the program, we use propensity score matching to create, post hoc, a control group of schools that were…

Resource teacher systems serving learning disabled children are discussed in terms of the varying dimensions of type of service (direct versus indirect), diagnostic/prescriptive orientation (ability versus skill), and delivery (resident versus itinerant). Individual resource programs are thought to vary on the dimensions due to intransigent…

This study was designed to establish the efficacy of Teaching SMART (Teaching Science, Mathematics and Relevant Technologies); a science professional development program for teachers with students in grades 3 through 5. Teaching SMART promotes scientific inquiry and emphasizes the importance of equity, empowerment, exploration, and fun in the…

The paper charts the development of a gifted program for secondary students in Pointe Claire, Quebec. The program featured an unstructured learning environment maximizing student choices, a resource teacher and facility, and learning experiences outside of school. Selection criteria are explained and a sample behavior rating scale is appended.…

Analysis of factors involved in the interaction between resource and regular teachers revealed that the only significant relationship found was between regular teachers' perceptions of the resource room teachers' interpersonal behavior and the regular teachers' perceptions of the quality of resource room support services. (CL)

Seven papers in this special issue address the topic of consultation models for behaviorally disordered students and their teachers. Among subtopics discussed are development and evaluation of consultation programs, accountability, and teacher training for the consulting role. (CL)

Sprague High School's program to train career education resource teachers was designed to recruit and prepare approximately 15 individuals from business, industry, and the professions who would provide exploratory career experiences and information to students. A four-page outline covers the program's objectives, procedures, a third party…

Discusses the problems of hiring substitutes and Ellington High School's (Connecticut) plan to deal with the problem: relieve teachers of supervisory duties, assign them to resource rooms organized around a particular academic discipline, and utilize these teachers as substitutes in their area of discipline when the need arises. (LC)

Described in the practicum report is the design, implementation, and evaluation of the first comprehensive high school program for five hearing impaired adolescents in Southeastern Massachusetts. Sections focus on the following topics: the Southeastern region's need for a high school hearing impaired program, the impact of the state invitation to…

Evaluated was the program, which followed the resource room model, to provide supplementary individual and small group instruction to 360 mainstreamed children (in grades k-6) diagnosed as neurologically impaired. Aside from providing direct instructional services, program teachers consulted with regular class teachers about problems for students…

Criticized are conventional special education approaches which are said to diagnose, label, and exclude handicapped children from educational services; and described is the diagnostic prescriptive teacher model developed at George Washington University in Washington,D.C. (DB)

THE OBJECTIVES OF THE RESOURCE TEACHER PROGRAM WERE TO EXTEND THE LEARNING OF THE EDUCATIONALLY ABLE AND GIFTED, AS WELL AS THOSE CHILDREN HAVING SPECIAL INTERESTS AND ABILITIES, TO EXTEND THE USE OF RESOURCE MATERIALS IN THE LIBRARY FOR ALL CHILDREN, AND TO WORK TOWARD THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE INSTRUCTIONAL PROGRAM. FOR THE USE OF THE RESOURCE…

The monograph presents 15 papers on the provision of special education services within the regular classroom. Common areas of concern of many of the authors include the following: the separation of the regular and special education systems is not educationally sound; traditional ways of labeling handicapped children are of limited educational…

This article reports on the inspection of one British school by the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED). Emphasis is on positive aspects of the inspection of the school's Learning Support Department serving students with special educational needs, evidences of school effectiveness, and the support of effective practice with policy. (DB)