The recent reauthorization and regulations of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA 2004) encourage the use of school-wide interventions including response to intervention (RTI; Bradley, Danielson, & Doolittle, 2007). RTI refers to a multi-tiered system that addresses the academic needs of all students by using…

Universal design for transition (UDT) refers to an approach to instructional planning, delivery, and assessment that bridges the gap between teaching academic and functional/transition goals. It builds upon the principals of universal design for learning (UDL) assuring that instructional practices are designed to meet the needs of diverse learners…

In most western countries, the problems of effective university-controlled and largely university-based initial teacher education (ITE) have been apparent for many decades: whatever is achieved in the university, the teaching practices and attitudes that student-teachers usually learn to adopt are those currently dominant in the schools. So it is…

Research regarding the characteristics and applications of "errorless" learning methods (stimulus shaping, stimulus fading, and superimposition) indicates that such methods provide a means of designing instruction and materials to facilitate the acquisition of skills, with minimal or no errors, by "difficult to teach" students.…

Observation of 20 teachers from mainstreamed preschool programs found that teachers engaged in many roles (including instructor, monitor, coplayer, entertainer, observer, behavior manager, materials manager, caregiver, and unavailable) and switched roles frequently. A model is proposed for assessing teachers' roles when planning how to embed…

This article focuses on curriculum analysis, an aspect of direct instruction that is frequently neglected or obscured by an emphasis on classroom management and teacher performance. Explicit strategies that are used to teach higher cognitive skills and the importance of teacher training in the appropriate use of direct instruction are discussed.…

Presented are guidelines for designing and incorporating cooperative group learning strategies into teacher preparation courses. Guidelines include determining appropriate content, selecting a cooperative format, forming cooperative groups, teaching cooperative skills, providing feedback, and evaluating learning. The student satisfaction results…

Benchmarks and standards have become an important part of the teachers' instructional focus since the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. As educators they all recognize the importance of having high expectations of their students. Standards help schools articulate these expectations clearly to students, their parents, and the community. Yet, there…

This paper introduces a series on the topic and presents a science education framework for teaching students with disabilities. Curriculum and instructional perspectives are reviewed, and the "guided meaning" approach is recommended as an inquiry-based strategy. A thematic scheme for organizing and developing science programs is proposed.…

The development of teacher-made "program pyramids" is recommended to organize individualized educational sequences for special needs students. The process involves analysis of the student's strengths and weaknesses, identification of general program domains, specification of program subdomains, statement of long-range goals, development of…

This article examines constructivism in terms of the learner, the content, teacher-student interactions, motivation, and assessment; evaluates mathematics standards and their sensitivity to students with mild/moderate disabilities; and identifies 19 instructional components derived from constructivism, focusing on teacher behaviors, teacher…

This response to EC 607 382 raises concerns about the standards developed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. These include (1) the modest references to student diversity, (2) instructional methodology, and (3) the need for more research to validate the standards' curricular and instructional recommendations. (DB)

Surveys of 60 preschool teachers and in-depth interviews with 10 other teachers regarding assessment and instructional decision-making practices with handicapped children revealed that evaluation and monitoring procedures were not used systematically or regularly. Behavioral observations were the most widely used single source of information for…

This paper urges special educators to be wary of borrowing fashionable rhetoric of postmodernism to justify constructivism in the reform of instruction and curriculum without disentangling accompanying constructs and values. There are higher stakes for special education, particularly in national curriculum and testing reform, that accompany…

This book chapter provides a checklist of various considerations related to the development and evaluation of community-based instruction for children with disabilities. The checklist is designed to serve as an organizational framework for persons wishing to make systematic decisions regarding the establishment of a community-based instructional…