The Therapeutic Preschool Program serves 3- and 4-year-old children of average intelligence who are diagnosed as having emotional and/or behavioral problems. The primary goal of the program is to provide a framework for teaching the social, emotional, and cognitive skills necessary for eventually mainstreaming the children into a regular education…

This booklet provides sample strategies to ameliorate service delivery problems commonly encountered by rural special educators. Strategies to increase acceptance of disabled students by nondisabled peers include buddy systems and class activities that promote personal interaction, simulation activities, and social and personal skills development.…

This document begins with a paper titled "Accommodating for Greater Student Variance in Local Schools" by Jacqueline Thousand and Richard Villa, which identifies the fundamental characteristics of successful heterogeneous public schools and describes specific examples of educational and organizational practices that enable schools to accommodate…

Transition practices that are used when students move from early childhood special education classes into kindergarten were studied. The study was designed to identify important practices that should be incorporated into the transition process and barriers that interfere with implementation of transition. Early childhood special education…

Assessment in Adapted Physical Education is no longer the exception, but the rule under the guidelines of Public Law 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act. Regular physical educators are currently becoming involved in assessment processes and joining school multidisciplinary teams for total profile development of school aged…

Initiations of prosocial actions by mainstreamed handicapped and normal preschool children were studied to discover (1) which preschool activity setting was more conducive to prosocial interactions; (2) which specific prosocial bids were more likely to occur in various settings; (3) whether frequency of prosocial behaviors was related to…

The paper describes three strategies featuring a microcomputer to promote the integration and acceptance of students with disabilities among their nondisabled peers. The first strategy is a cross-age tutoring program in which disabled, learning disabled, emotionally disabled, or mildly retarded students demonstrate computer use to nondisabled…

School policy which emphasizes the placement of handicapped children in the regular classroom has received acclaim both as a step toward equity and as an attempt to improve the academic learning and social adjustment of handicapped students. Although new teachers entering the system are better prepared than ever before to face the difficulties…

The document, one of 11 in a series developed by the Hawaii Integration Project, focuses on the social studies topic of understanding prejudice. The curriculum is designed for grades 4-6 and includes in its first unit an exploration of the dynamics of groups and group membership. In the three lessons students experience the feelings of acceptance…

This report, one of a series of case studies on mainstreaming efforts, describes a self-contained class for nine severely mentally and multiply handicapped 16- to 21-year-olds in an urban middle school. Following a description of the physical and social environment is a review of the history of the program begun in 1978-79. The author observes…

Intensive observation of the helping interactions of 40 children in the third through fifth grades of five Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area schools was conducted for the purpose of assessing the impact of familiarity on the success of children's help-seeking from peers. The amount of visual regard that children received from peers was also assessed.…

The paper recommends that young children with disabilities be placed in preschool classes with normally developing children whenever possible. Significant benefits are cited in the areas of social, emotional, and communication development when children with handicapping conditions are educated in settings with their nonhandicapped peers. Four…

California state law A.B. 2666 requires local educational agencies to provide special education to all children with exceptional needs between the ages of 3 and 5 years. The law aims to reduce the potential impact of handicapping conditions; produce substantial gains in physical development, cognitive development, language and speech development,…

The report documents evaluation by the Office of Educational Assessment of first year (1983-84) implementation by the New York City school system of the Least Restrictive Placement Personnel Training Program. Program goals were to develop and field-test training materials for a population of approximately 700 special and general education…