Children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (ASD) typically exhibit a lack of social reciprocity skills. They often struggle to maintain conversations, especially with topics of little or no interest to them, and to create meaningful relationships. By giving compliments to others, children with ASD have a means by which to show…

Autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) are a lifelong developmental disability that affects the way a person communicates and relates to people around them. People with autistic spectrum disorders experience difficulties with social interaction, social communication and imagination--known as the "triad of impairments". The mainstream school environment…

We have witnessed important changes in the demographics of the deaf and hard of hearing student population receiving special education services during the past quarter century. The ethnic, intervention, and educational setting profiles are more diverse and dispersed. On top of the federal policy changes driving emerging intervention and continuing…

Curriculum-based measurement (CBM) is an approach for assessing the growth of students in basic skills that originated uniquely in special education. A substantial research literature has developed to demonstrate that CBM can be used effectively to gather student performance data to support a wide range of educational decisions. Those decisions…

Promoting access to the general curriculum for students with disabilities has emerged as a central theme of recent legislative and policy initiatives. Ensuring that students with severe disabilities benefit fully from the myriad learning and social opportunities available through the general curriculum remains an important challenge, particularly…

This book provides practical strategies and tools for assessing and teaching even the most hard to reach English language learners across the content areas. Syrja offers educators the latest information on working with ELLs (including using formative assessments) and provides a wealth of classroom-tested models and measures. These tools have…

This proceedings contains presentations grouped by five broad topics concerning disability services in rural areas. The keynote address, by Linda Tonsing-Gonzales, discusses the social services paradigm shift toward empowering the disabled and developing natural support systems. Broad topics and presentation topics are: (1) "negotiating access"…

This final report describes activities of the Early Integration Training Project (EITP), which provided multidisciplinary inservice training to child-care personnel in Ohio to facilitate the inclusion of young children (birth through age 5) with disabilities in typical community early childhood programs. The 3-year project has provided a 15-hour…

Three fact sheets provide parents and educators with basic information on Tourette Syndrome (TS). The first sheet is titled "Learning Problems and the TS Child" and is by Herman Davidovicz, a neuropsychologist. It notes the high frequency of attention deficit disorders and learning problems in children with TS and provides information…

A growing movement to place all students with disabilities in the regular classroom, a practice called inclusion, has met with resistance from regular education teachers who would be responsible for educating special needs students. In order for inclusion to be successful, educators have determined that regular education teachers will require…

This project, implemented collaboratively between a research/teaching university and a midwestern special education cooperative, gathered data from 517 regular education teachers regarding self-evaluation of skills for teaching students with disabilities, satisfaction with existing special education services, and attitudes toward an…

This manual provides educators with a process to integrate the life-long goals and specific needs of students with severe disabilities within the context of the regular education curriculum, through the development of individualized learner outcomes. The manual discusses the process of building inclusive learning opportunities for students with…

This review of the literature examines the balancing of social and academic needs of students with disabilities and typical students in the context of the trend toward integrating all students into general classrooms regardless of their learning, physical, or emotional characteristics. Issues in the debate over inclusive education are identified,…

This report describes a province-wide study in Alberta (Canada) to explore the integration of students with special needs. In Phase 1 (1991-92) of the study, a telephone survey of all superintendents was conducted to provide an overview of integration practices. In Phase 2 (1992), a mail survey of superintendents and their special education…

A model of integrated training within the context of Australia's vehicle industry certificate (VIC) was developed, tested, and evaluated through six different pilot programs in different enterprises across Australia's automotive industry. The pilot programs' primary objective was to provide access to and ensure successful participation in…