While most students receiving special education services in school are educated with the same general curriculum (i.e., instructional materials) as their peers without disabilities, students with extensive support needs and significant cognitive disabilities may qualify to receive instruction with alternate curricular materials aligned with…

Paraeducators often work with special education teachers and school teams to support students with disabilities who have complex communication needs (CCN), including students who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) such as speech-generating devices. This study involved surveying 258 paraeducators working with students with…

This study examines the limitations and ableist assumptions embedded in quantitative survey instruments used to gather data on postsecondary students with disabilities. Specifically, three National Center for Educational Statistics postsecondary surveys were examined as data sources. Employing a critical disability studies lens and discourse…

Purpose: This study examines existing automatic screening methods for developmental language disorder (DLD), a neurodevelopmental language deficit without known biomedical etiologies, focusing on languages, data sets, extracted features, performance metrics, and classification methods. Additionally, it summarizes the strengths and weaknesses of…

Higher education institutions rely on staff working in a variety of roles to perform their core functions, including custodians, librarians, food service workers, career counselors, and residence hall directors. Research within and beyond the field of higher education offers multiple approaches leaders can consider to improve their workplace…

Introduction: The aim of this study was to examine factors associated with length of stay within a psychiatric hospital for patients with intellectual disabilities who have a forensic history. Methods: Data about 111 patients were gathered retrospectively from historical records for the period of February 2011 to March 2021. Negative binomial…

Background: Scant attention has been paid to the quality of working life of social care workers in Ireland. This study sought to characterise both the quality of working life and the well-being of social care workers in the disability sector. Method: A cross-sectional survey of social care workers (n = 307) was conducted. Measures of work-related…

Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) has recently adopted a new position statement focused on preventing and responding to maltreatment of children with disabilities. This significant initiative builds on previous efforts, including the CEC Policy on the Prevention of and Response to Maltreatment, and aims to provide actionable steps for…

Background: We aimed to identify key factors in implementing and adhering to positive behaviour support (PBS), provided by frontline staff, targeting challenging behaviours of people with intellectual disabilities living in residential group homes. Method: Using semi-structured interviews with 12 frontline staff members, we collected perspectives…

Background: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a common injury in children. Though research on youth TBI has largely focused on high school students, this study describes selected school outcomes after TBI in the past 12 months among children aged 5-17 years. Methods: Data from parent-proxy respondents from the pilot administration of the National…

Introduction: Over 1 billion people worldwide have disabilities, necessitating their inclusion in health systems and workplaces. Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing accessibility and digital inclusion for these individuals, improving everyday tasks and enabling autonomous mobility. AI can be applied to visually impaired, reduced…

Background: Sleep deprivation can decrease parental well-being and degrade mental and physical health in parents of children with chronic illness. The aim of this study was to explore the associations of sleep quality, psychological stress perception, and evening salivary cortisol concentration with self-esteem, optimism and happiness in parents…

Background: After decades of planning, nurses played a pivotal role in achieving the closure of large residential institutions for people with intellectual disability by 2018. This paper describes the experiences of nurses facilitating the closure of these institutions in New South Wales and Victoria, Australia. Method: An interview-based,…

A growing literature suggests that there is cross-cultural variation in levels of autism-related stigma, which may partially be explained by differences in cultural orientation or autism-related knowledge between countries. This literature has relied heavily on self-report measures of explicit attitudes towards autism; little research has examined…

Students identified with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBDs) often have difficulty with social adjustment and academic achievement, engaging in problem behaviors such as defiance, rule-breaking, and truancy, yet one particularly challenging behavior is aggression. Researchers assert that verbal aggression (VA) is the most frequent form of…