Background: Public stigma, or negative community-held beliefs, about children with disabilities (CWDs) often leads to negative outcomes for CWD and their families. This study considers the effectiveness of four community-level interventions to reduce public stigma in two Lusaka, Zambia communities. Methods: This feasibility study describes four…

Science teacher education has long sought to educate new science teachers to more fully understand "Science-for-all" and prepare them to effectively navigate diverse contexts. To adopt this "Science-for-all" mantra, we need to address what the labeling (i.e., categorical labeling and/or mislabeling) of students with…

In this chapter, I expand on ideas about assessment originally put forward by Federico Waitoller and I in recent articles about a curriculum design that cross-pollinates elements of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP) and Universal Design for Learning (UDL). The purpose of our original work was to address the intersection of racism and ableism in…

It is well known that there is a critical shortage of direct support professionals (DSPs) who support people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to live in the community. While the work is high-skilled and varied in nature, wages remain low. COVID-19 had unprecedented adverse effects on DSPs, the people they support, organizations,…

Ohio's public schools provide special education services to children with disabilities as early as preschool. Every year, the Ohio Department of Education reports the number of preschool children who received state-funded special education services during the previous year. The 2019-2020 school year had an overall increase of 906 (4.03 percent)…

Parental involvement has been illustrated as an important role in students' education and academic achievement in general. But it has been recognized as an intense role for parents of students who have been diagnosed with learning disabilities. This involvement appears to decrease as the child's age increases. Previous studies provided evidence of…

The current study sought to understand the phenomena of educational programming and academic self-efficacy. The conceptual framework for this study was based on social cognitive theories of academic self-efficacy and motivation. This qualitative study used interpretive phenomenological analysis to gain a broader understanding of experiences of…

This study investigated the perceptions of teachers and parents about the concept and implementation of home-school collaboration as a best practice to improve family engagement in the education of children with learning disabilities (LDs). While there is some research on home-school collaboration in the United States and other nations, there is…

Creating and implementing high-quality Individualized Education Program (IEP) goals for students with significant cognitive disabilities is critical to ensure their success in school. To do so, the teacher's confidence level in writing IEP goals for those students must be high. This requires the ability to use research-based methods and techniques…

This article examines the work of creating collaborative learning partnerships that fully include students with intellectual disabilities. The article reviews the scholarship of partnership as a starting point in discussing learning environments that support students with significant intellectual disabilities--a group that has only recently been…

This study evaluated how students enrolled in a comprehensive post-secondary transition program learned how to use text-to-speech (TTS) software to read higher-level written text. Using a pre- and post-test research design, researchers examined whether direct instruction effectively taught students to use a TTS program. We used third and…

The research presented in this article analyses 242 written responses to interview questions conducted with families who live in the United States to explore parental perceptions of disabilities. The data were analyzed through a case study methodology and discourse analysis. Findings from this study illustrate how parents drew upon both medical…

Since 2007, when the Massachusetts Inclusive Concurrent Enrollment Initiative (MAICEI) was launched, college students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) have been involved in advocacy efforts to promote inclusive postsecondary education. These efforts include informing legislators, higher education personnel, school…

Accusations pertaining to insufficient accountability for private schools that provide alternative educational options for special education students have led to opposition to those same schools. The opposition results in part from the schools' acceptance of state funded vouchers and scholarships. In Florida, state vouchers provide funds which…

This study explored the health experiences and health promotion needs of college students with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (IDD) through individual interviews with current college seniors (n = 5) and recent college graduates (n = 3) with IDD, and support staff (n = 9) within a Southeastern university's inclusive postsecondary…