Exceptional Children

In recent years, there has been considerable discussion of positive procedures to reduce problem behaviors of persons with severe disabilities. One variable found in many of the situations in which these behaviors occur is instruction. The purpose of this paper is to review studies that have used instructional variables as nonaversive interventions for problem behaviors. Instructional variables that may decrease problem behavior include (a) student choice of task, (b) task variation, (c) pace of instruction, (d) interspersal of high-probability tasks, (e) partial- versus whole-task training, (f) decreasing task difficulty, and (g) a multielement package. Further research is needed in nonintrusive, naturally occurring, and positive methods for reducing problem behaviors in instructional settings.

Transition is a process that should empower students, families, and communities. This article integrates literature from counseling, rehabilitation, multicultural education, and special education to explain the importance of life-span considerations, including a focus on preschool and early school years, and the importance of the life-space factors of family, culture, and community. Principles of intervention for empowerment promote transition interventions that are maximally under the control of the student, promote independence and autonomy, are least intrusive, and are most natural for the chosen environment.

This study used path analysis to examine the effects of work-relatedfactors—including principal support, stress, role problems, job satisfaction, and commitment—on 542 Virginia special educators' expressions of intent to stay in teaching. Demographic variables—including teachers of students with emotional disabilities and race and gender of teachers—were treated as exogenous variables. Job satisfaction had a positive direct effect on intention to stay in teaching. Factors with small effects included professional commitment and perceived employability outside teaching. Principal support, stress, and role problems had direct effects on job satisfaction and commitment. Work-related variables should be included in strategies for retaining special educators.

This study investigated ethnic differences in (a) parent perceptions of their information needs and their sources of information, and (b) the nature of parent participation in early intervention and participation preferences. Interviews were conducted with 536 families with infants and toddlers who had developmental problems. Comparative analyses were conducted on white, Hispanic, and American Indian groups. Results suggested the need to provide more and better information to all parents and the importance of medical doctors as a source of information, individualizing the type and source of information to different ethnic groups, and identifying unique strategies to support the participation of parents from different ethnic groups.

This study examines the processes by which mothers communicate with their hearing and deaf preschool children during a problem-solving task. Mothers and children from three matched groups—hearing mother-hearing child, hearing mother-deaf child, and deaf mother-deaf child—were videotaped while the mother taught the child to assemble a wooden pyramid. Hearing mothers of deaf children were less likely to adapt their interactional strategies to meet their children's communicative needs and achieve intersubjectivity than were the other mothers. Findings support Vygotsky's dialectical notion of cognitive development.

This study evaluated the effectiveness of promoting relational thinking, using “elaborative interrogation” techniques, to facilitate the content acquisition of elementary school students with mild disabilities. Three conditions were used: control, experimenter-provided explanation, and student-generated explanation. Results indicated that both explanation groups significantly outperformed the control group on recall of facts, as well as explanations. Students coached in relational thinking statistically outperformed those in the control condition and descriptively outperformed students in the experimenter-provided explanation condition on immediate recall. Students in the student-generated explanation condition statistically outperformed both groups in delayed factual recall.

Interactive modeling is frequently used in teaching skills to children with developmental delay. This study compared the performance of 12 children (7 males, 5 females; 4–10 years of age) each trained in two tasks, one through interactive modeling (with or without verbal reinforcement) and the other through passive observation. Results showed that passive modeling produced better rated performance than interactive modeling and that verbal reinforcement was counterproductive. These findings suggest that current instructional strategies may need to be reconsidered for children with developmental delay.

Public Law 101–467, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990, specifies that students with disabilities, especially secondary-level students, should have an opportunity to participate in IEP conferences. This study investigated the effectiveness of strategy instruction designed to foster students' active participation in IEP conferences. High school students with learning disabilities and their parents participated in either strategy instruction or an orientation lecture/discussion. Results indicate that strategy-instructed students identified more goals and communicated more effectively during their conferences than did the contrast students.