Intended for persons concerned about public policies for exceptional children and those engaged in creating public policy, the book provides guidelines and examples of appropriate policies for exceptional children. Considered in Section I are the varying rights that advocacy groups have won for exceptional children in the legislatures, courts, and…

This competency test package was developed, based on the results of a needs assessment of postsecondary office occupations instructors in Texas, to test human relations competencies taught in audiovisual instructional modules. However, the tests, accompanied by performance objectives, are of a general nature and could be used to evaluate the…

Part of a training curriculum designed to prepare a multidisciplinary team of preservice/inservice personnel to deliver vocational and special education experiences for disabled individuals, this competency-based module focuses on model vocational special needs programs. Content includes rationale, objectives, prerequisites, evaluation procedures…

One in a series of issue papers commissioned by the Council of Administrators of Special Education (CASE), this document presents a comparison of contemporary evaluation approaches for special education programs. The first section describes the two approaches to be compared: (1) traditional scientific inquiry which emphasizes quantitative methods;…

This issue of "Forum," a journal designed to provide a marketplace of ideas for California community college faculty, contains six articles on current educational concerns. First, "Seeking a Working Vision: Community Colleges and the Mission Statement," by Richard A. Garcia, argues that community colleges must put joint…

Current screening and diagnostic practices for identifying young handicapped children in Minnesota were surveyed. Information was gathered on the populations served, the professionals and tools employed in screening and diagnosis, decision criteria, and the perception of gaps and duplications in services. The results indicated a heavy reliance on…

A core group of pre-kindergarten through fourth-grade teachers and staff at a private day school were given in-service training to meet the special education needs of students. Training aimed to prepare personnel to identify students with mild handicaps, refer more severely handicapped students for diagnosis, and teach students with special…

This report presents the results of a four-year effort to develop a valid and reliable inservice needs assessment instrument. (The instrument was designed to identify competencies that should be the focus of inservice training for vocational educators who teach or provide services to special needs learners.) Chapter I is an introduction. Chapter…

Psychological theories have long had a pronounced effect on the diagnosis and instruction of children with learning problems. Traditional theorists emphasized the centrality of global processes assumed to be common to most if not all cognitive tasks. These processes were quite distant from those involved in traditional academic activities, making…

These 64 performance-based instructional modules are for the home economics content area of food and nutrition. Each module is composed of an introduction for the student, a performance objective, a variety of learning activities (reading assignments, tasks, written assignments), content information, a student self-check, recommended references,…

The Texas Education Agency bulletin examines aspects of physical education for students with handicaps. Following a statement of philosophy, the guidelines address the following topics: assessment (characteristics of motor assessment instruments); the developmental program plan (program organization, descriptors and skills for essential elements);…

Many of the problems encountered by learning disabled high school students in the transition from secondary to postsecondary education settings can be minimized if planning for transition occurs at high school entry. Transition planning for the college bound learning disabled student needs to include the design of a relevant high school curriculum…

The study examined issues surrounding the conjoint diagnosis of learning disability (LD) and emotional disorder (ED) using a sample of 30 children (ages 6-12) drawn from referrals to a hospital-based outpatient treatment center. The sample was evaluated for LD using selected learning-based measures. Two separate scales were used to classify…

Predicated on the assumption that many of the problems exhibited by learning disabled children arise from difficulties they have in processing information, the program of research described in this paper was undertaken to (1) identify reading comprehension difficulties that are due to disorders in the reader, and (2) design and test effective…

For one school year, the classroom and playground social behaviors of normally developing and developmentally delayed children were analyzed for the occurrence of interactions across gender, across race and ethnicity, and across developmental condition. The potential impact of teachers' nonsexist language, and encouragement of interaction among…