Education and Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities

Much of what is written here will be threatening and the source of discomfort for many readers. Such discomfort is understandable. Change is inevitable, but never easy. The changes embodied in the “regular education initiative” are, in fact, the culmination of nearly one hundred years of development of special education in the United States. Most of that historical change and development has been incremental. The next steps involve reconceptualization and modification of some of the basic values and assumptions underlying the special education system as we know it. While this is difficult, it is as necessary as the previous evolutionary changes. The change which is coming can be either an albatross or an opportunity for individual special educators. It can either burden us more or free us from some of our unnecessary strictures. Whichever is the case. the change is coming, and in my view the regular education initiative is but one of many indications of the type ofeducational reform which. will lead us into the 21st century in American public education. I sincerely hope that many current “special educators” will be leaders in the empowerment phase of educational reform, and will be willing and eager participants in the redefinition of the services we provide to students. Implicit in this is the hope that many special educators will, in several years if not sooner, consider themselves to be committed and contributing members of the general education community.

My comments suggest six changes in early intervention services including:

1. Consistent with the legislation, we are moving into an era of serving families rather than parents. Families define themselves in unique and idiosyncratic ways and one of our first tasks is to find from the perspective of each unit who they consider to be the members of their “ family.

2. We are moving from the concept of parent involvement to the concept of family support. Family support means providing assistance to families in meeting their needs and maximizing their strengths. It does not mean a sidefocus on insuring the greatest degree of parent involvement in program activities.

3. We should develop a life span, future-oriented perspective of comprehensive support. We need to consider the criteria of ultimate functioning for families which means looking at the important and relevant skills they will need to help insure that they are able to meet the goals of early intervention, which include the prevention of institutionalization and thus the participation of the child and family in integrated community settings; and enhancing the development of the child to live, work, socialize, and recreate competently as an adult. We need to see early childhood as the launching pad to life within the family and community, and we need to build through family support the kind of foundation that will withstand the test of time.

4. We need to develop procedures for assessment that enable families to identify strengths and needs related to these comprehensive, future-oriented skills. These assessment procedures must be theoretically and empirically grounded on conceptualizations offamily success. We need to know both what is important to families and the degree of satisfaction that they have in their ability to meet priority objectives. Such an assessment can serve as a formative and summative evaluation tool in helping us assess continually the progress we are making in providing support to families to meet more of their needs and to maximize more of their strengths.

5. We need to stop compartmentalizing or segmenting child and family services and intertwine them in a way that is holistic. Family support is not just an activity but it should permeate every contact that professionals have with children and families. 6. Every staff member needs to be a specialist in responding to the strengths and needs of families. This is so because every contact with a child or a family should emanate from this conceptual approach and should be aimed at meeting specified family objectives. Thus, there are major implications for preservice and inservice training to ensure the synthesis of skills in working with children and families. Let's anticipate future challenges in creating new models for family-professional partnerships with this admonition in mind: “You can't steal second with your foot on first.” I am confident that, as a mental retardation field, we are capable of stealing second with both speed and savvy.

The intent of this paper was to provide a theoretical foundation (SET) as to the reason that regular educators do not feel capable or prepared to cope with the requirements of PL 94-142 and the Regular Education Initiative. In addition, a model of Self-Efficacy was presented as the foundation for major changes in teacher preparation programs and in state education agencies certification process. The suggested changes will ob-viously require collaboration between regu-lar education and special education teacher trainers, and re-allocation of natural re-sources, increased allocation of financial re-sources to teacher training programs and to state and local education agencies. The pro-posed changes may seem to be radical and expensive, but can also be viewed as an ap-propriate response to the realistic problems that have developed as a result of the passage of PL 94-142 and the emphasis of the Regu-lar Education Initiative. If we believe that the intent of both of these major factors is to provide our handicapped youth a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment, then we must be prepared to train our teachers for this task and in addi-tion, we should be willing to allocate funds to pay these teachers for making a commitment to the educational and emotional develop-ment of our youth and nation.

The special education profession has a very special opportunity to increase effective services to the youngest children with severe handicaps in our care. Considerations of flexible service delivery options, practices to promote health and responsiveness, and curriculum approaches that respect the importance of infant-caregiver interactions will improve the quality of life to very young children with severe handicaps and their families.