There are large gaps in educational access and attainment between the rich and poor in the United States. In 2016, there was a 25 percentage-point gap in college enrollment rates for high school graduates in the top and bottom family income quartiles. Reflections on Connecting Research and Practice in College Access and Success Programs is the…

"The Changing Face of Special Educational Needs" shows teachers, SENCOs and students in teacher training how to respond to the rapidly changing context of special education. This highly practical and accessible text unlocks the often confusing field of special education provision in schools today by: (1) Summarising and clarifying new policy…

In recent years, the concept of teachers as researchers in both special and mainstream school settings has become part of our everyday language. Whilst many educational practitioners will see the need for research within their setting, many may not be familiar with the technical elements they believe are required. "Creating Meaningful Inquiry in…

Most efforts to understand and support self-determination have dealt solely with adolescents and adults, sometimes overlooking and excluding the foundations in early childhood that are required for successful emergence of self-determination. The purpose of this article is to share what is known about early self-determination and to suggest how…

This column introduces issues in research and practice concerned with assistive technology for students with disabilities including delays in transferring research findings into practice and ways to integrate what is known about research, effective practice, teacher professional development, and change. (Contains 14 references.) (DB)

Discussion of applying strategies of cooperative learning offers five principles and reflections of one teacher. The principles are: (1) teach what you preach; (2) accountability counts; (3) mediation versus aggravation; (4) publish or perish; and (5) create or satiate. Suggestions for evaluation include encouraging student feedback and moving…

This article discusses self-determination for young children and provides a framework for looking at self-determination across routines in a variety of early childhood settings. A self-monitoring set of questions is presented to help practitioners and families in examining contextual and multiple factors, specifically: (1) the child's current…

This article identifies and discusses key components of a research-based whole school approach to bullying prevention. Discussion focuses on ways to increase awareness and understanding, characteristics of targets (often students with special needs) and bullies, facts on bullying, and six bullying prevention practices, for example, train targets…

The primary goal of special educators must always be to optimize the instruction given to low-performing students. The amount of teacher-directed instruction that low-performing students receive is directly related to their achievement. To maximize the amount of teacher-directed instruction, small and large group instruction is recommended.…

This article describes a process that teachers can use to translate information in research studies into practical lesson plans. Examples are drawn from the self-determination literature to illustrate how to identify the objective of the study, setting and materials, content taught, teaching procedure, and method of evaluation. (Contains…

This paper responds to commentaries on an original article which proposed decreasing the training of applied behavior analysts as if they were going to be researchers, because most are not. The paper supports high quality research but opposes inculcating proresearcher, antipractitioner values in graduate education and recommends trying harder to…

A telephone survey of 90 advisors to self-advocacy groups identified a wide array of advisor activities and gained information on how advisors see their activities changing as groups develop. Results are interpreted in terms of theories of group development. Results suggest that, instead of rigid stages of group development, a more flexible model…

The review describes the advance organizer technique and reviews the empirical evidence on the effectiveness of advance organizers with both normal students and students classified as handicapped. Examples of advance organizers include the expository advance organizer, the comparative advance organizer, the graphic advance organizer, and…

This paper highlights research, development, and applications of technology in the areas of visual perception, facilitation of human communication, prosthetics and orthotics, and robotics and signal processing. Means by which the application of promising technological developments can be expedited are also discussed. (Author/DB)

This editorial notes the differences between the language of science and the language of special education practice; stresses the need for communication between these groups; notes the need for publications in both areas; and urges continued dialog among researchers, practitioners, and parents. (DB)