This case study examines the life journey of a self-directed adult learner who has made remarkable achievements in overcoming a difficult educational beginning in early childhood, as well as personal trauma in adulthood. The subject has shown determination in seeking out his own opportunities to learn in spite of major drawbacks, chief of which…

The special education profession in the USA has witnessed a recent struggle between researchers who defend a positivistic approach to knowledge and practice and "postmodern" special educators who challenge that approach. An analysis based on a sociological theory of heresy provides insight into the social and professional dynamics operating in…

This paper describes early efforts underway at City College, New York, to introduce a disability studies content into an otherwise traditional special education programme. The paper draws on previously funded research projects that merged humanities-based disability studies in education, prior teaching experiences and excerpts from the writing of…

Background: Older people with intellectual disabilities (ID) are a growing population but their age-related needs are rarely considered and community services are still geared towards the younger age group. We aimed to examine the mental health and social care needs of this new service user group. Methods: We identified all adults with ID without…

While many states and territories in Australia were initially a little slow to develop a strong momentum towards inclusive educational practices, this has been addressed quite dramatically in the past ten years. Acknowledging that each jurisdiction in Australia has its own department of education and determines its own educational directions this…

How might a concern with children's spirituality "touch down" within the different spaces, discourses and performances within a school? This article is concerned with the affordances of children's rights discourse in relation to young people's participation, deliberation, and ethical work upon the self, within one primary school in…

The technology to produce high quality, digital videos is widely available, yet its use in teacher preparation remains largely overlooked. A digital video library was created to augment instruction in a special education methods course for preservice elementary education teachers. The videos illustrated effective strategies for working with…

As the number of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) learners with disabilities increases in the United States, many educators and policymakers purport that teacher education programs (TEPs) must incorporate multicultural education more substantively. However, we know very little about the impact of multicultural education on the thinking…

In conjunction with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1997 (IDEA; PL 105-17), the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 (NCLB; PL 107-110) calls for enhancements to existing assessment and accountability systems within specific timelines. The NCLB Act also stresses the importance of using reliable and valid data for decision making.…

In recent years, empowerment and resource orientation have become vital guidelines for many of the sciences. For the field of deaf education, it is also highly important to look carefully at these guidelines if we are to acquire a better understanding as regards both the situation of the parents involved and the development of the deaf and hard of…

As more and more students with behavioral disorders (BD) are included in general education classrooms, the use of paraprofessionals in one-on-one support roles has expanded. Unfortunately, the use of paraprofessionals to provide one-on-one assistance can result in social isolation for students with disabilities. This multiple-baseline…

In this article, I review five articles selected for this Special Issue of the "International Journal of Disability, Development and Education" on indigenous healing. I have considered the various traditions of indigenous healing, and I situate my analysis within the context of disability, development, and education. Such an analysis…

Training programmes for unemployed people are often designed to meet the identified vocational skill needs of businesses. We describe research across a number of projects in Leeds (United Kingdom) providing training to unemployed and marginalised adults. The focus was on those with multiple barriers to accessing and sustaining training and…

This study extended the limited research on the utility of tactile prompts and examined the effects of a treatment package on implementation of a token economy by instructional assistants in a classroom for students with disabilities. During baseline, we measured how accurately the assistants implemented a classroom token economy based on the…

Results from a qualitative inquiry investigating conceptualization of family quality of life are provided. Focus groups and individual interviews were comprised of 187 individuals that included family members (e.g., parents, siblings) of children with a disability, eight individuals with a disability, family members of children without a…