Abstract
In 1966, with courage and foresight, Lester Mann published the Journal of Special Education (JSE). At that time, the primary organ for information about people with disabilities was the Journal of Exceptional Children, which was published for members of the Council for Exceptional Children. At that time, many people with disabilities were being cared for in institutions, most children with disabilities were not receiving an appropriate education, almost none were being educated in the same classrooms as their natural neighbors and peers, and not much was known about special education. For more than 20 years, writings in the journal “both amused and enlightened” and when Pro-Ed acquired and started publishing JSE, it was regarded as “the premier research periodical in the area of special education” (Hammill, 1987).
Over the years, the JSE content has reflected and remained true to three broad research themes:
Revealing trends, issues, and evidence to support improvement of the lives of individuals with disabilities as well as those classified with gifts and talents;
Challenging contemporary wisdom with original research directed at changing ineffective or unproven practices;
Reviewing practices and identifying and projecting directions and solutions for change to improve special education services.
This issue begins JSE’s Golden Anniversary volume and as the current field-based editorial team, we are both humbled and honored by the opportunity to pay homage and connect to our past; and, in the effort, we were constantly reminded of the old adage “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
Moving Forward by Looking Back
To celebrate the accomplishment and message represented in what came before, we will reprint at least one previously published article in each issue of Volume 50. In each issue, we will introduce the historical article by a “divagation” or brief commentary that will include an annotated bibliography for four to five other notable historical works. We selected work from four time periods that coincide with initial passage of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) as P.L. 94-142 and its historical changes: 1966–1974 (Pre-IDEA), 1975–1989 (P.L. 94-142), 1990–1997 (IDEA Reauthorizations), and 1998–2016 (IDEA Reauthorized).
In this inaugural issue of the anniversary volume, we have reprinted a historical piece by David P. Weikart that frames potential promises of preschool programs that remain relevant and largely unfulfilled today. Other pieces of interest published between 1966 and 1974 include the following:
Irvin, P. (1966). Jean Marc Gaspard Itard—A biographical sketch. Journal of Special Education, 1, 1.
Itard was a physician and early educator who believed that people with disabilities should be treated humanely and that they could be rehabilitated. His work with Victor (the “Wild Boy of Aveyron”) was widely celebrated in the early days of special education and dramatized in a 1970 film (The Wild Child) directed by François Truffaut. His was the first among many biographical sketches of prominent and pioneering physicians, psychologists, and educators to be shared in the early issues of JSE.
Hammill, D. D., Colrusso, R. P., & Wiederholt, J. L. (1970). Diagnostic value of the Frostig Test: A factor analytic approach. Journal of Special Education, 4, 279–282.
There was a grand focus in early special education on remediating “process disorders” believed to be the cause for the failure of many children to perform well in school, and prominent among them was The Frostig Program for the Development of Visual Perception (DTVP). In this early research, Dr. Hammill (current JSE owner and publisher through the Hammill Institute) and two of his graduate students called into question the then contemporary belief that the DTVP validly and reliably measured subskills that should be “trained” to bring about improvements in academic skills such as reading. This and other early failures to support the fractionating and training of auditory and visual processing abilities were important in shifting the focus from teaching skills related to reading to teaching skills representative of reading (e.g., hearing and manipulating the sounds in spoken words, using relationships between letters and letter-sound correspondences to read or spell words) in efforts to improve reading and other academic skills.
Tringo, J. L. (1970). Hierarchy of preference toward disability groups. Journal of Special Education, 4, 295–306.
Acknowledging that a “person with a disability may be well prepared to perform a job and to cope with normal life situations, yet be unable to find employment because of prospective employers’ attitudes…” toward them or they may have difficulty in interpersonal relationships because people are reacting to their beliefs and attitudes toward the disability rather than to the person themself (p. 295), John Tringo was among the first to systematically investigate key aspects of attitudes toward people with disabilities. In this work, he documented that (a) a hierarchy of preference for disabilities exists, (b) demographic variables relate to social distance expressed for disability groups, (c) men express less acceptance toward disabilities than women, and (d) attitudes toward disabilities can be improved with education.
Wiederholt, J. (1974). Influencing change in special education. Journal of Special Education, 8, 25–31.
Writing about how to prepare teachers and other professionals has a long history in the field of special education. In well-reasoned scholarship as part of a JSE Symposium, Dr. Wiederholt’s response focused on the adequacy of teacher-preparation programs, problems, and alternative views of change, remains relevant today.
And the Beat Goes On
In addition to the featured piece (Weikart, 1966), and annotated bibliographies (e.g., Irvin, 1966; Tringo, 1970; Wiederholt, 1974), we have included current or contemporary pieces that have been successful in the editorial process to round out the issue. Interestingly enough, one of those pieces (Westerveld, Trembath, Shellshear, & Paynter, 2016) focused on the topic of preschool children, in their case, preschool children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and emergent literacy skills. Whereas Weikart focused on the promise of preschool programs, effective adoption of intervention strategies prior to disadvantaged children starting school, Westerveld et al. have focused on specifically honed skills, emergent literacy, as the field continues to implement and further refine our thinking about the importance of preschool education.
Other contemporary pieces, the focus on refining multilevel models for single-case studies (Baek, Petit-Bois, Van den Noortgate, Beretvas, & Ferron, 2016), practitioner perspectives on implementing evidence-based practices (Hudson et al., 2016), and an analysis of language interventions for children with ASD (Lane, Lieberman-Betz, & Gast, 2016) link directly to topics that are currently at the forefront of our discussions in special education. We hope that you enjoy the issue and the remaining ones as we celebrate the 50th Anniversary of The Journal of Special Education.