Individuals with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD) rely on direct support professionals (DSPs) to communicate with them and plan meaningful activities of daily living (ADL) for them. This qualitative descriptive study explored how DSPs providing ongoing care who work directly with individuals with PIMD describe the use of…

The capacity for all students to meaningfully access the curriculum is a central tenant of inclusion. Investigation into curriculum provision for students with severe intellectual disabilities or profound and multiple learning difficulties (S/PMLD) receives little consideration in the literature; however, it has increasing relevance in designing…

A recommended practice in the field of severe disabilities is involving students in their specialized health care procedures; however, little is known about how this practice is occurring in schools. The purpose of this qualitative multiple-case study was to understand how secondary-age students with severe disabilities are involved in their…

The aim of the article is to provide new insights into the lives of severely intellectually disabled children who are living in Norwegian small group homes. The research question is designed to address how these children, who have limited verbal language, initiate communication in order to participate in everyday life in an institutional setting.…

A multiple baseline with probe across participants design was used to investigate the effects of an oral narrative intervention on early developing personal narratives of four children aged 6 and 7 with autism spectrum disorder and severe language disorder. The individual intervention targeted the narrative macrostructure elements of…

Teacher preparation for inclusive education of students with significant disabilities requires an understanding of the requisite skills and dispositions to be taught during the teacher preparation period. Given the relative scarcity of inclusive placements for this population, as well as limited research-based teacher preparation practices to…

The purpose of this study was to explore what Early Childhood Education (ECE) preservice teachers thought about inclusion and what factors influenced their attitude development toward inclusion, based on written reflections collected from 90 undergraduate ECE preservice teachers. Overall, the majority of the preservice teachers believed that…

Inclusive education for students with severe disabilities has and continues to spark intense debate. To what extent should students with severe disabilities be educated in nonsegregated environments, particularly the general education environment? For some, there is no question, but history indicates many do not agree. Agran and colleagues provide…

Applied behavior analysis (ABA) is a widely studied and often used approach to working with human behavior. However, there are numerous myths surrounding what ABA is, who is it for, and how it is implemented. The purpose of this article is to identify, explain origins of, and dispel seven common myths about ABA.

Extensive research illustrates the positive effects of inclusive education for all students, including those with severe disabilities. These positive effects can only occur if students with severe disabilities are successfully included in academic, behavioral, and social activities throughout the day. An inclusive model that can facilitate the…

Inclusive education is now advocated as best practice in schools. However, the extent to which adolescents with severe disabilities access the abundant social and academic experiences available in general education classes remains uncertain. We conducted multiple observations of 146 U.S. high school students with severe disabilities (including…

Social-emotional learning (SEL) has received growing attention in recent decades. Although much is known about the benefits of integrating SEL in educational settings, knowledge about teachers' SEL learning is limited, particularly among special-education teachers from diverse backgrounds. The study's goals were: (1) to conceptualise the SEL…

A review of the literature was conducted to collect information on students with severe disabilities and their capacity to gain literacy skills. Extensive research showed that students with severe disabilities progressed in reading when immersed in systematic literacy instruction encompassing both decoding and phonemic awareness. The Sussex…

Most approaches for teaching reading involve students reading aloud and receiving feedback. These approaches are not feasible for nonspeaking students, and teachers need alternative strategies that do not require speech. To provide guidance about effective strategies, we conducted a systematic review of 51 experimental studies within 36 journal…

This paper considers teacher education for teachers of learners with severe to profound disabilities (SPD) in South Africa, in both formal and non-formal learning programmes within a disability studies in education framework. Qualitative data were collected from a range of education stakeholders including non-governmental (NGOs) and disabled…