Volume XI Summer 2000 Issue #4

Resource Guide to special education

by Jim Green, M.Ed., and Judy Smith Davis, Ph.D.

Do some students appear "disabled" because of the way classrooms and tests are set up? The social construction of disability phrase refers to the fact that our cultural and social environment affects how we act. Think of a child who comes from a home where they don't ask a lot of direct questions. What might be that child's experience when they first attend school? Will the social environment of the classroom affect how the child acts? Could it also affect how the child's abilities are assessed? 

Before looking outside, give some thought to your own resources. Here's an example. The term "disability" in special education often depends on a comparison between a student's learning activities and the group average for performing those learning activities. If a student's performance is significantly below the group norm, he or she might be considered "disabled." Do you find that comparing an individual to others is typical of Native communities? What might be the meaning of "disability" in a traditional American Indian or Native American community?

BOOKS

Gattegno, Caleb (1971). What we owe children. New York: Avon Books. 
Gattegno was called the "best pedagogue in the world" by Jean Piaget. His work in literacy and language learning has been developed for over 30 languages around the world, while his innovative work in mathematics teaching is widely used, e.g.,Cuisinaire rods and Gattegno geoboards. Gattegno went to the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1983 to work with Lakota speakers on the Silent Way of teaching language. He later worked with Ojibwe speakers in Canada and Inupiaq speakers in Alaska. This book gives a good description of the radical transformation that occurs in the classroom when one knows how to subordinate teaching to learning. It enables a teacher or parent to expect very unusual results from the students-for example, that all students will perform very well, very early and on a much wider area than before. (An introductory example of how Gattegno's approach to reading and speaking might be used in tribal schools to help very young children easily learn to read their Native language and English at the same time can be found at: www.alliance2k.org/daklang1/daklang1.html)

Scollon, Ron, & Scollon, Suzanne B.K. (1994). Narrative, literacy and face in interethnic communication. In Roy O. Freedle (Ed.), series: Advances in discourse processes. Norwood: ABLEX Publishing Corporation. 
The book gives a close up look at communications patterns, including significant differences, between Athabaskan and English speakers in a northern Canadian community. The study gives very specific examples of many of the issues in current discussions of literacy and schooling, e.g., de-contextualization of discourse, the social construction of disability, etc. The book might be excellent reading for special education teachers or for anyone who has experienced the differences between Native and non-Native ways of communicating but who has never heard these differences discussed in such details.

Skrtic, Thomas M. (Ed.). (1995). Disability and democracy: Reconstructing [special] education for postmodernity. New York: Teachers College Press
This book is a collection of essays on the need to critically examine special education. The essays look at the four main assumptions of special education and examine these assumptions from a postmodern perspective. The four assumptions can be put into the following question form:
a) Are disabilities really pathological conditions that students have?
b) Is comparing abilities and diagnosing "problems" objective and useful?
c) Is special education a rationally conceived and coordinated system of services that benefits diagnosed students?
d) Does progress result from rational technological improvements in diagnostic and instructional practices?
Readers who also wonder about the answers to these questions could find the book interesting reading. 

Streissguth, Ann (1997). Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. A guide for families and communities. Baltimore: Paul H. Brooks Publishing. 
A very thorough handbook on FAS/FAE. Includes a section on Guidelines for Schools. 

ARTICLES AND REPORTS

Artiles, A.J., & Zamora-Duran, G. (1997). Disproportionate representation: A contentious and unresolved predicament. In A.J. Artiles & G. Zamora-Duran (Eds.), Reducing disproportionate representation of culturally diverse students in special and gifted education (pp. 1-6). Reston: The Council for Exceptional Children.
The paper "takes the perspective that teachers may engage in practices that contribute to disproportionate representation of special and gifted education programs of culturally and linguistically diverse students. Furthermore, current referral and assessment procedures exacerbate the problem. The goal is to provide solutions, or strategies, for practitioners to apply in their classrooms that can help reverse the trend of disproportionate representation."

Baca, Leonard, de Valenzuela, J.S., & Carcia, Shernaz (1996). A new approach to pre-referral intervention: The PEP model. Nashville, TN: Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, Alliance Project.
This paper shows that some disabilities, especially those diagnosed for students from a bilingual background, can be created by the educational system. The PEP Model suggests a way to get around this problem. Available from the Alliance Project: 800/831-6134 or email: alliance@vanderbilt.edu

Baca, Leonard, & de Valenzuela, J.S. (1996). Practical and theoretical considerations for assessment of culturally and linguistically diverse students. Nashville, TN: Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, Alliance Project.
This paper explores the "advocacy oriented" assessment procedure. The advocacy oriented process is based on the awareness that students may be "empowered" or "disabled" by the school system. It seeks to open up the assessment procedure to a much broader notion of culture and diversity and to go beyond the current medical and psychometric models, which assume that disabilities are an objective, knowable reality, and that society is basically homogeneous. Available from the Alliance Project:  800/831-6134 or email: alliance@vanderbilt.edu

Figueroa, Richard (1989). Psychological testing of linguistic-minority students: Knowledge gaps and regulations. Exceptional Children, 56 (2), 145-152.
This article suggests that bilingualism is like random chaos and is extremely difficult for conventional measurement to account for. As a result there are needless levels of error and misdiagnosis in the academic test scores of bilingual students. The lack of adequate regulations regarding the testing of bilingual pupils significantly adds to the already difficult problems facing school psychologists and the language-minority students they attempt to serve.

Garcia, G.E., & Pearson, P.D. (1994). Assessment and diversity. Review of Research in Education, 20, 337-391.
Several factors account for today's spotlight on assessment. One of these issues involves emerging theories of language, learning, and cognition (e.g., Gardner & Lave). They are replacing the concept of education as transmission of knowledge with the theory of learning as the result of "the process that occurs when learners construct meaningful interpretations of the data that they encounter in their transactions with the world and with other learners." This study examines the past, present, and future of assessment from a multicultural perspective. The authors point out that, while research on diversity issues in formal assessment is abundant, efficacy studies of authentic (performance) assessment are scarce because these approaches are new.

Ishii-Jordan, S.R. (1997). When behavior differences are not disorders. In A.J. Artiles & G. Zamora-Duran (Eds.). Reducing disproportionate representation of culturally diverse students in special and gifted education (pp. 27-46). Reston: The Council for Exceptional Children. 
This paper discusses factors that affect children with cultural and linguistic differences (CLD) who exhibit behaviors that are viewed as disordered. It reviews issues involved in defining behavioral disorders, assessing emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD), intervening with students, and preparing professionals to work with these students.

Ruiz, Nadeen T. (1995). The social construction of ability and disability: optimal and at-risk lessons in a bilingual special education classroom. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 28(8), 491-502.
This ethnographic study examines three typical bilingual classrooms. It shows how language and literacy in bilingual special education classrooms-the ways questions are asked and the type of interaction between teachers and students--are socially organized into various communicative or classroom events. The study suggests that typical ways of organizing classrooms (formal structure) result in certain bilingual students showing the lower range of their abilities rather than the higher range of their abilities. 

Skrtic, Thomas M. (1991). The special education paradox: Equity as the way to excellence. Harvard Educational Review, 61(2), 148-206.
Special Education is usually seen as providing a "safety net" for students with disabilities who might otherwise fall through the cracks of the school system. Skrtic suggests another explanation--that the special education system can be seen as a "safety valve" for schools that don't know how to adequately serve diverse students. Skrtic shows that there are two connected assumptions in American education that help to define special education: 1) Most K-12 administrators have been trained in a scientific management perspective, a perspective that teaches administrators to run a school as a rationally organized machine bureaucracy; 2) Failure in school is presupposed to be pathological. From these assumptions, Skrtic sees special education's removal/labeling of certain students as a means to maintain order in the rationalized school system. Naturally students from different cultural and language backgrounds will tend to be the ones who don't adapt to the rules and norms of the "rational" school system and so they will be over represented in special education classrooms.
U.S. Department of Education. (1998). To assure the free appropriate public education of all children with disabilities: 20th annual report to Congress on the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Washington, D.C. Available to download on the website, <www.ed.gov/offices/OSERS/OSEP/OSEP98AnlRpt>

CD-ROM

Teaching Alive! Education, diversity and excellence.
This CD comes from the Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence (CREDE) located at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The center's mission is to assist the nation's diverse students in achieving academic excellence. Students are identified by four risk factors for educational failure: limited English proficiency, poverty/economic disadvantage, race, and geographic location. 
The research (and the CD) operates on 8 key premises: 
1) All children can learn; 2) All children learn best when challenged by high standards; 3) English proficiency is a goal for all students; 4) Bilingual proficiency is desirable for all students; 5) Language and cultural diversity can be assets for teaching and learning; 6) Teaching and learning must be accommodated to individuals; 7) Risk factors can be mitigated by schools that teach the skills that schools require (that is, schools can't require students to be able to read and do mathematics and yet not be able to teach them these skills!); 8) Solutions to risk factors must be grounded in a valid general theory of developmental teaching and schooling processes.
It includes video examples of actual classrooms. The CD can be obtained through CREDE, University of California, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064. Call 408/459-3500, email crede@cats.ucsc.edu, website www.cal.org/crede

Educating culturally and linguistically diverse students: Professional Development Resource Series CD-ROMs
Although the CDs come out of the Bueno Center, the staff works with Native groups as well. For more information or to order contact the BUENO Center for Multicultural Education, University of Colorado School of Education, Campus Box 249, Boulder CO 80309-0249. Call 800/846-9539 or e-mail buenoctr@spot.colorado.edu

WEB SITES

ERIC Clearinghouse on Disabilities and Gifted Education 
1920 Association Drive
Reston, VA 22091
888/ CEC-SPED
703/ 264-9480
TTY: 703/264-1637
web site: http://www.ericec.org
 

NICHCY
National Information Center for Children and Youth with Disabilities
P.O. Box 1492
Washington, DC 20013-1492
Voice/TTY: 800/695-0285
Voice/TTY: 202/884-8200
email: nichcy@aed.org
web site: http://www.nichcy.org

Office of Special Education Programs
U.S. Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services
U.S. Department of Education
330 C Street SW, Room 3132
Washington, DC 20202-2641
202/724-4801
web site: http:/www.ed.gov/offices/OSERS

Alliance Project for Tribal Colleges
P.O. Box 340
Wilmot SD 57279
800/984-9406
web site: www.alliance2k.org
email: jim@dailypost.com

Kaleidoscope Channel.
Check your local television listings. This channel provides an immense amount of programming on individuals with disabilities. Their web page may be accessed at: http://www.ktv-i.com

Web Based Activities
1. Use the internet to search for the Annual Report to Congress on the implementation of IDEA, web site http://www.ed.gov/offices/OSERS/OSEP/OSEP98AnIRpt/ Compare the percentage of children in your state receiving special education services for learning disabilities and mental retardation with other states. 

2. Since the effectiveness of special education is controversial (i.e. funding, stereotypes, self-concept, self-fulfilling prophesy, and discrimination), have students investigate changes included in IDEA '97 from PL 101-476. Brainstorm what changes should occur in the next reauthorization of the law. The Council for Exceptional Children's home page is a good place to begin your search, www.cec.sped.org

3. Search the internet to locate the National Association of State Directors of Special Education (NASDE) web site www.nasdse.org . Use an article available from the NASDSE home page to help you identify points that should be discussed during an IEP meeting.

4. Use the internet to identify "Facts and Myths" about ADHD. Develop a list of pros and cons of different treatment approaches you identify. The CHADD website (Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) www.chadd.org can provide you with helpful information.
 

Judy Smith Davis is the Knowledge Production and Partnerships Director at the Alliance Project. Jim Green directs the Alliance Project for Tribal Colleges.