Education and Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities

The ability of individuals with disabilities to make choices and become self-determining has become a major focus of services, research, and policy in the field of disability. One aspect of policy which has been largely overlooked in issues of choice and self-determination is the physical environment. In this article we examine policy underscoring the importance of choice and self-determination in the lives of children with disabilities, particularly pertaining to the physical environment. We examine the research as it relates to self-determination in the physical environment for children. Four pieces of legislation are examined to identify the opportunities that are created through the legislation for choice and self-determination for children with disabilities. The four pieces of legislation examined include: the Americans with Disabilities Act; Individuals with Disabilities Education Act; Fair Housing Amendments Act; and Rehabilitation Act. These laws increase the likelihood that children with disabilities will attain quality of life through greater freedom and choices in their home, school and community environments.

A mail survey of elementary teachers in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was conducted to identify their perceptions of the supports that were available to them and were needed by them for inclusion and to determine whether differences existed in those perceptions based on the type of teacher (general and special education), grade level, and their self-ratings of the success of their inclusion experiences. The participants were teachers who had experience including children with disabilities in general education classrooms. Of the 175 mailed questionnaires, 158 (90.3%) were returned and coded. Several conclusions were apparent: (a) special and general educators reported similar levels of need for resources, but special educators reported greater availability of resources than general educators; (b) grade 2—3 teachers reported greater discrepancies between perceived needs and availability of resources than did teachers of other grade levels; (c) a high percentage of respondents reported a need for training and a low percentage reported having training; (d) minimal discrepancies occurred between the need and availability for support personnel-indicating these teachers perceived having access to the personnel they perceived needing; and (e) lower discrepancies between perceived needs and availability of resources occurred for teachers who self-rated their inclusion experiences as successful.

Current federal mandates regarding the provision of transition services to students with disabilities have heightened the awareness of professionals regarding students' future outcomes. Families are an integral part of the transition planning process. Yet, little is known about parents' expectations for their adolescent children. The purpose of this study was to identify the expectations mothers have for their adolescent children in the areas of future living arrangements, employment | education goals, and social relationships. The researchers also wanted to know if there were differences in the expectations of mothers of adolescents with severe disabilities and mothers of non-labeled adolescents. Forty mothers were interviewed and the data was analyzed using qualitative methodology. Findings show that both groups of mothers had similar expectations for their children, that is, independence. Mothers of adolescents with disabilities, however, did report the need of their children for support in order to achieve independence from their families. Implications and issues related to mothers' responses are discussed.

Best practice in communication interventions for students with a severe intellectual disability has tended to focus on the identification of skills that students can be taught to perform and so be perceived as participating in communicative exchanges. For example instruction has often focused on the use of augmentative communication systems, whereby students are trained to point to pictures, object representations or to sign to indicate needs and wants in the absence of speech. Furthermore, with a focus on outcomes in education being related to functional independence in adult life, skills considered necessary for communication have frequently been those identified as components within the skill sequences of functional daily activities typically taught using behavioural instructional principles. For students with a severe intellectual disability, this may be too narrow a view of communication. This paper proposes that best practice needs to focus more specifically on the quality of social interactions with students throughout the day by placing more emphasis on the role of communication partners in providing an interactive environment that increases communication opportunities and processes.

This investigation used a 4 second constant time delay (CTD) procedure to teach lifetime sport skills to adolescents with severe to profound intellectual disabilities. The CTD procedure employed verbal description plus physical assistance as the controlling prompt. The effectiveness of the CTD procedure was evaluated with a single-subject multiple probe design across three skills and replicated across four subjects. Results indicated that the CTD procedure was effective in teaching all subjects to perform one step bowling, overhand throwing, and short distance putting. These learned skills were maintained with at least 84.5% accuracy over 42 days after terminating the CTD instruction. When efficiency data were analyzed, a mean of 16 sessions, a mean of 187 trials, and a mean of 258 minutes in teaching one skill to reach the instructional criterion were found across subjects while a mean percentage of errors of 8.3% was obtained across subjects and skills.

Adolescents with moderate mental disabilities were taught by peers to read key words from the actual labels of cooking products using a constant time delay procedure. Definitions of the identified key words were presented as incidental information in the feedback statements. To facilitate generalization, students were taught by a variety of peers to read the labels on two brands per product (instant hot chocolate, muffin mix, and microwave popcorn). Generalization probes were conducted by the classroom teacher using a novel product brand during a cooking activity. Students mastered the reading of target key words in a relatively short amount of time with minimal errors, acquired some incidental learning of cooking definitions, and were able to generalize the skill across novel materials, persons, and settings.

This study utilized a video-taped presentation of the Test of Emotional Perception (Negri-Shoultz. & Donnellan, 1989) to evaluate the social competency skills of emotion recognition, affective perspective-taking, and empathy expression of institutionalized adults with mild or moderate mental retardation. Analyses of resultant data compared the performance of individuals identified as having chronic interpersonal behavior problems with peers who presented no clinical sign of behavior disorders. Additionally, the obtained data were compared with outcomes predicted by staff members. Results suggest that the responses of persons with moderate mental retardation to the tasks of discriminating emotions and expressing empathy was poor in contrast to those with mild retardation. Furthermore, individuals with mild mental retardation and no chronic challenging behaviors scored significantly better than individuals with mild mental retardation and chronic challenging behaviors of all interpersonal nature. There was, however, no significant difference between the scores of individuals with moderate levels of retardation with and without challenging behavior. Results related to staff estimates showed continual overestimation of participant skills. These results and their implications for practice are discussed.