At the 2016 TASH Conference in St. Louis, a research colloquium was held that focused on the state of selected life-span services for people with severe disabilities. Topics addressed by leading experts in the field included inclusion, teaching academic skills, family support, challenging behavior, supported employment, and voting. This article…

There were very few differences in student products submitted under two grading contingencies for four student trainees. In Strategy A the students received their final grade for the first product they submitted. In Strategy B the students were allowed to resubmit their work until "A"-level grading criterion was reached. (Author/CL)

The article extends the Individual Curriculum Sequence (ICS) model to small-group instruction with severely handicapped students and emphasizes unique teaching opportunities, including controlling motivational variables, facilitating observational learning, and enhancing generalization. A variety of examples of how data can be recorded for program…

The study explored what sources were responsible for exposing professionals to issues of euthanasia of handicapped infants, selective abortion of severely handicapped fetuses and the educability of profoundly retarded persons, and what sources professionals thought were most appropriate for the dissemination of information. The study consisted of…

This article presents guidelines for providing individuals with severe disabilities with a wide range of personal choices. It provides a rationale for teaching all individuals to participate in meaningful choice-making; describes basic types of choices; and suggests ways to generalize choice-making skills across settings, times, and people. (DB)

This article explores implications of people's interpretations of communicative efforts by people with severe disabilities. Recent initiatives to support and promote self-determination are critically assessed as possibly functioning to limit self-determination. Use of preference assessments and behavior supports is discussed as a key to…

Three special educators (Brown, McDonnell, and Billingsley) respond to a review in the same issue by Wolery and Schuster. The first urges a paradigm shift in researching these issues, the second urges more study on the complexities of providing individualized instruction in the regular classroom, and the third stresses the need to examine effects…

The Component Model of Functional Life Routines provides a systematic structure for the specification of behaviors relevant to student competence, thus providing guidelines for determining meaningful forms of participation in functional activities and meaningful assessment of progress in these activities for severely disabled students. (CB)

As people see a powerful technology and philosophical value system originally developed to promote the self-determination and inclusion of individuals students with severe disabilities applied to and having impact on the broader school population, they wonder what the outcomes will be. In this article, the authors reflect on two issues: (1) the…

This paper translates research findings on systematic preference assessment with individuals with nonsymbolic or limited symbolic communication skills into guidelines for planning such assessments to reduce the risk of missing or misinterpreting the person's preferences. It offers four questions for guiding the planning of preference assessments,…

Guidelines are presented for individualizing daily schedules or routines to reflect better the preferred lifestyles of persons with severe handicaps. Four dimensions that can be systematically manipulated to address challenging behavior are presented, including timing of routines, form of the activities, pattern of succession of activities, and…

This discussion of self-determination in young children with severe disabilities first offers a definition of self-determination and then looks at the early roots of self-determination from a developmental perspective. The article explores the relationship of (1) skills associated with self-determination and (2) practices, curriculum, and…

A survey of 123 special educators found that respondents did not feel adequately trained to work with individuals with profoundly handicapping conditions. For a variety of reasons, some teachers did not implement instructional techniques such as integration strategies, technological applications, and Piagetian procedures and such curricular areas…

This article discusses the importance of social validity and quality of life concerns in identifying meaningful outcomes for the education of students with severe and multiple disabilities. The article stresses the need for outcomes to result in participation in daily routines and in the student's having more meaningful control over personal…