The report describes the Western Illinois University 0-6 Interdisciplinary Early Childhood Handicapped Personnel Training Project (WIU 0-6 Project)--a model project designed to demonstrate innovative methods to fill personnel needs for early childhood handicapped programs. The project is a 2 semester program to train professional educators in the competencies that will enable them to work with handicapped children from birth to 6 years of age in a variety of service delivery settings, and employs faculty from five academic fields important to the education of young handicapped children: special education, elementary education, home economics, physical education, and psychology. Three issues are addressed by the program: state personnel needs, teacher preparation needs, and handicapped children's needs. Participation based, the program provides the opportunity for the immediate testing and validation of theoretical constructs. Preliminary data indicate that the described model is providing project graduates the necessary skills to be effective teachers of young handicapped children. (DLS)