Interventions in special education are results of advocacy, legislation, litigation, research, and trends. Since interventions come in many forms, they represent multidimensional viewpoints and perspectives and need to be handled with professional care, integrity, fidelity. This book highlights the fact there are skill-sets needed to work with divergent disability categories. The chapters begin with introducing readers to contextual bases of interventions for learners with disabilities and end with futuristic perspectives that go beyond tradition. Other chapters focus on students with learning disabilities, emotional and behavioral disorders, and intellectual disabilities. Additional chapters focus on students who are deaf and hard of hearing, and students with visual impairments, autism, severe disabilities, traumatic brain injury, speech and language impairments, and physical and other health impairments.
This volume presents the voices of leaders in the field of special education and addresses critical issues related to identification, assessment, labeling, placement, and instruction. Furthermore, it responds to what makes special education “special.” Not only does this volume present historical contexts, it also authenticates the legitimacy of helping all learners to maximize their fullest potential, the real essence of special education. To a large extent, this book will be an excellent resource for undergraduate and graduate students, regular educators, special educators, educator preparation professionals, researchers, scholars, and practitioners.
Festus E. Obiakor, Ph.D, is the Chief Executive Manager, Sunny Educational Consulting, Shorewood, Wisconsin. He has served as Department Head and Professor, Valdosta State University, Valdosta, Georgia and The City College of New York, New York. A teacher, scholar, leader, and consultant, he has served as Distinguished Visiting Professor at a variety of universities. He is the author of more than 150 publications, including books, articles, and commentaries; and he has presented papers at many national and international conferences. Festus serves on the editorial boards of reputable nationally and internationally refereed journals, including Multicultural Learning and Teaching (MLT) in which he serves as Executive Editor. He is a leader who has been involved in many landmark scholarly works in the fields of general and special education, with particular focus on African American and other culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) learners and he continues to prescribe multidimensional methods of assessment, teaching, and intervention for these individuals. Based on this premise, Festus created the Comprehensive Support Model (CSM), an intervention model that values the collaborative, consultative, and cooperative energies of students, families, teachers/service providers, communities, and government agencies.
Jeffrey P. Bakken, Ph.D, is the Associate Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate School at Bradley University. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Elementary Education from the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse, and graduate degrees in the area of Special Education-Learning Disabilities from Purdue University. His areas of interest include: response to intervention, collaboration, teacher effectiveness, assessment, learning strategies, technology, Smart Classrooms, Smart Universities and Smart Pedagogy. He has written more than 170 academic publications that include books, chapters, journal articles, proceedings at international conferences, audio tapes, encyclopedia articles, and has made 235 presentations at International/National and Regional/State conferences.
