How does professional learning look and feel in high-poverty schools where every student makes at least one year's worth of progress every year? How do schools and leaders put all the varied components of professional learning together so that they support all students learning every day? What professional learning grounds and sustains educators…

The purpose of this study was to observe quality of life (QoL) and global evolution of persons with Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD) in three different groups. Individualized programs for PDD were compared to traditional programs for intellectual disabilities. Behavioural disorders were repeatedly evaluated using the Aberrant Behaviour…

The challenge of developing Individualized Education Program documents that are representative of a team decision making process and are in compliance with IDEA 2004 is well documented in the literature. One of the main objectives of IEPs is to serve as the foundation of a child's academic program. Inclusion of children with disabilities in the…

Appropriate assignment of accommodations is predicated on a clear distinction between target skills and access skills. In this study, we examine the agreement between test developer/researchers' and educators' classification of target and access skills as a possible explanatory mechanism for assigning accommodations. Findings indicate that…

This qualitative study situates parents' perceptions of their participation and role in special education planning in multiple contexts. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 33 diverse parents of children with disabilities. The findings reveal the existence of special education discourses and practices that are entrenched in a…

This article examines a critical question for the special education community: What should be the current meaning of "free appropriate public education" (FAPE) in light of not only the Supreme Court's landmark "Rowley" decision in 1982 but also developments in the 30 years since then? After synthesizing what the…

The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of cover, copy, and compare (CCC) on the spelling performance of three male middle school students. Two of the participants had learning disabilities and the third was health impaired. The study was conducted in a public school resource room in the Pacific Northwest. A multiple-baseline across…

The documentation of pupils in Swedish schools is extensive and a documentation culture has come to characterize the schools in recent years. In the context of decentralization and changing governance, focus has increasingly been directed towards assessment, follow-up and evaluation of pupils' learning and social development. This article examines…

Since 1995, all Swedish compulsory schools have had a legal obligation to establish individual educational plans (IEPs) for pupils with special educational needs. However, previous research shows that there are a number of issues associated with how these plans are used in schools' overall work and identifies a discrepancy between educational…

Introduction: The study reported in this article tracked the learning rate of 43 children with multiple disabilities and visual impairments who had limited to no verbal language across seven months of classroom-based intervention using a standardized set of tangible symbols. Methods: The participants were introduced to tangible symbols on a daily…

Federal legislation mandates that students with disabilities have access to the general education curriculum to the maximum extent possible. Coteaching provides a least restrictive environment for students with special needs in the general education classroom as it allows them access to content at their level while providing opportunities to…

In this Information Research Cadre, Teresa Blythe responds to the following research question: For those states that have residential schools for the Blind/VI and Deaf/HI students, have they developed policies and procedures for residential placement of these students? To develop this response Blythe conducted web research utilizing numerous…

Parental grief reactions have typically been examined in situations where parents have a child diagnosed with a major medical or mental health condition. This study used the grief and loss model as conceptualized by Kubler-Ross (1969), Lamb (1988), and Kubler-Ross and Kessler (2005) as a foundation in examining parental reactions when a child has…

Twenty middle school special education teachers from five states were interviewed in order to gain insight into their understanding of accommodation practices. Interview questions solicited information about teachers' understanding of test accommodations, the decision-making process they employed when choosing accommodations, and their reasons for…

This paper discusses how the process for IEP documentation was used in a training program for a group of young inexperienced teachers and teaching aides to effectively address the educational needs of children with diverse disabilities. Teachers at Kianh Centre in Vietnam received explicit instructions for writing effective functional individual…