Experiences and Perceptions of EHS Staff with the IFSP Process: Implications for Practice and Policy

This study examined the experiences of Early Head Start (EHS) staff with the development of the Individualized Family Service Plans (IFSPs) for young children with developmental delays and their families in 40 EHS programs in six Midwestern states. Staff perspectives about challenges, needs, strategies and suggestions for the IFSP development were explored. Findings indicated that time and scheduling, paperwork, and collaboration with early intervention (EI) agencies were the major challenges to participation and involvement in the IFSP process. Recommendations for practice and policy were suggested.     

Evaluating construct validity and internal consistency of early childhood individualized family service plans

This study presents evidence regarding the construct validity and internal consistency of the IFSP Rating Scale (McWilliam & Jung, 2001), which was designed to rate individualized family service plans (IFSPs) on 12 indicators of family centered practice. Here, the Rasch measurement model is employed to investigate the scale's functioning and fit for both person and item diagnostics of 120 IFSPs that were previously analyzed with a classical test theory approach. Analyses demonstrated scores on the IFSP Rating Scale fit the model well, though additional items could improve the scale's reliability. Implications for applying the Rasch model to improve special education research and practice are discussed.     

美国个别化家庭服务计划概况及启示

个别化家庭服务计划是美国整个早期干预工作的基石。自1986年美国首次提出为0到3岁的特殊婴幼儿制定个别化家庭服务计划以来,个别化家庭服务计划在理论和实践方面都取得了巨大的发展,积累了丰富的经验和教训。文章通过回顾个别化家庭服务计划在美国法律中的发展历史,介绍个别化家庭服务计划的基本内涵、制定和实施过程以及在实践中存在的问题,以期在法律保障、干预团队建设以及服务提供方面为我国特殊儿童早期干预工作的开展提供借鉴。     

The individual family service plan: Unresolved problems

The federal requirement to develop an Individual Family Service Plan (IFSP) for all infants and toddlers with special needs has a major conceptual difficulty that has, to date, been inadequately addressed in the literature. That problem stems from the linkage of family service to family assessment. Many authorities, attracted to parental “empowerment” theory, advocate that parents should be the authors rather than (or as well as) the objects of assessment, and that professionals and parents should be partners in assessing needs and planning services. When there is disagreement, professionals should defer to parents, who are in the best position to assess their own needs. We question the wisdom of conducting assessments with, or on, families of targeted children. But, if there are to be assessments, we argue that families are better served, and mutual respect better preserved, by a traditional complementary relationship: The professional controls the evaluation process, determines the problems (with the input of the family), and makes recommendations, which parents are then free to reject.     

美国个别化家庭服务计划及对我国的启示

个别化家庭服务计划(Individualized Family Service Plan,简称IFSP)是在美国1986年《障碍者教育法修正案》(The Education of the Handicapped Act Amendments of 1986,PL99-457,1986)中提出来的。此计划旨在为0-3岁障碍婴幼儿提供早期干预服务,以促进婴幼儿的发展和成长。本文通过对IFSP的提出、法律规定及内容、实施要求等方面的介绍,为我国制订与实施障碍儿童早期干预服务提供法律制定、政府支持、人员培训、家长参与及转衔等方面的借鉴。     

Transition to formal schooling of children with disabilities: A systematic review

Since the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2006, the educational trajectories of children with disabilities have increasingly become the focus of public interest and the subject of empirical research. The transition to school has received special attention in this research. Yet a systematic overview of current research in this area is not available. The present article therefore offers a systematic review of the state of research on the transition to formal schooling of children with disabilities. The review is based on an understanding of educational transitions derived from ecological systems theory and a model of inclusive transition developed by the authors, which is used as a conceptual framework for the analysis. The evaluation of the studies included (N = 55) shows that various research methods are used, with interview and questionnaire surveys being the most prevalent. In terms of content, most studies focus on the subjective perspectives of parents, teachers, and external service providers involved in the transition to school. It becomes clear that the perspectives of these three groups are largely similar regarding perceived barriers and facilitators of successful transitions. Studies examining the perspectives of the children and their peers are sparse, however, as are studies that focus on the general social conditions and moderating processes in the transition. Finally, the results are discussed and perspectives for further research are derived.     

Orientations of prospective teachers toward students' family and community

Teacher educators need an awareness of orientations that prospective teachers (PSTs) hold about children's families and communities, so that they can support PSTs in developing positive perspectives and addressing deficit perspectives. Orientations expressed by 20 PSTs while in preK-8 mathematics methods courses are examined. Results from interviews indicate that PSTs recognize the importance of connecting with parents, understanding home and community practices, and building on these practices to support children's mathematical learning. They also, however, exhibit inconsistent perspectives, at times indicating a lack of understanding as to why some families appear to be less able to support students' academic efforts.     

Virtual learning environments: three implementation perspectives

Universities worldwide offer web‐based courses distributed by virtual learning environments (VLEs). A common theoretical framework for implementing VLEs is the pedagogical perspective of instructional design. In this paper, three perspectives of implementation from information systems implementation research and organization theory are presented: implementation as technology acceptance, implementation as diffusion of innovations and implementation as a learning process. These perspectives focus on the VLE as an information system within an organization, the university. The models reviewed offer an important complementary perspective to the pedagogical view of instructional design. The three implementation perspectives are compared and a conclusion is made concerning their implications of successful use and implementation of VLEs.     

Culture,Learning, and Development and the Natural World: The Influences of Situative Perspectives

The study of human learning and development from situative or sociocultural perspectives has had significant impacts on a wide range of scholarship largely driven by the theoretical and methodological focus on understanding the role of activity systems in cognition and development. This article first explores how situative perspectives have advanced fundamental knowledge about how culture and race impact learning and development and works to demonstrate how these understandings have enabled new insights into folk-biological cognition. Traditional cognitive, cross-cultural, and situative perspectives with respect to folkbiology are compared and contrasted to demonstrate how situative perspectives enabled more complete understandings of the complexities of biological cognition. These complexities are conceptualized as the conceptual and epistemological ecologies of activity systems. Implications for education are considered.     

Informing research (practices) through pedagogical theory: focus groups with adolescents

The focus of this article is how pedagogical theory and applied linguistic research informed the development of a multifaceted methodology designed to elicit middle school students’ perspectives on bilingualism and their language identities within the context of a one-way French Immersion programme in New Brunswick, Canada. The theoretical context of our research is language socialization theory which emphasizes how learners actively construct new identities for themselves, consciously or unconsciously, as they acquire and use language. This language socialization is embedded in particular socio-political and historical contexts, bringing fluidity to the meanings of bilingualism and to identity. Our discussion is about our methodological journey, how we drew upon the broader principles of constructivist learning, and specifically Universal Design for learning and Multiple Intelligences, within focus group research to access these perspectives and identities. Our methodology involved multiple opportunities to present, express and engage in the construction of knowledge, and to engage students in identifying and expressing meaning related to their identities and perspectives as learners of French. Our research demonstrated that, by drawing on pedagogical theory, focus groups can be transformative for participants, and they provide ways to circumvent challenges in conducting qualitative research with adolescents.     

Perspektivenübernahme als Kompetenz für den Geschichtsunterricht

This study addresses a competency of students’ historical thinking related to taking perspectives. We start by discussing socio-cognitive theories from psychology as well as approaches from history education that focus on this competency. We also present empirical findings concerning relationships between achievement, self-concept and interest in the subject of history and connect these findings with the competency to take historical perspectives. Our research questions target this relationship between indicators of achievement and motivation in the subject of history, the competency of historical perspective taking and students’ socio-cognitive ability to adopt social perspectives in their everyday lives. These questions are investigated using a cross-sectional design with 375 grammar school students in grades 7 and 10. Results indicate that in grade 7 the competency to take historical perspectives relates to students’ ability to coordinate social perspectives in their everyday lives. For 10th graders, however, the adoption of historical perspectives is closely related to subject-specific variables such as interest for history, self-concept, history grade and achievement in a test of historical knowledge. In the last section of this paper, we discuss challenges that arise when students’ competencies in a subject like history are assessed within the context of standard-based testing. Specifically, we raise the issues of reliability, validity, the context-specificity of measurements, the kinds of response formats used and the formulation of progression models of historical thinking.     

Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Evidence Relevant to Classroom Instruction with Manipulatives

The papers in this special issue focus on instructional strategies with manipulatives. Often described as “hands-on learning”, these strategies emphasize the use of physical and, more recently, virtual objects to represent target information and concepts. These strategies are frequently suggested as effective techniques for teaching across many domains of learning. This special issue presents contemporary theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence, regarding instructional manipulatives with a focus on application in classroom contexts. In this introduction, we present the primary topics of interest to the special issue and provide broad overviews of the contributors’ papers.     

Teacher careers and school improvement

A recent national curriculum guide for upper secondary schools in my home country, Iceland, requires secondary schools to work towards equality and five other overarching aims. This requirement raises questions about to what extent secondary schools have to change their curricula in order to approach these aims or work towards them in an adequate way. Textbooks on curriculum theory commonly invite their readers to choose between different perspectives that are presented as mutually exclusive. From one perspective, they tend to emphasize academic subjects, to the exclusion of perspectives that focus on improvement of society or individual development. There are, however, reasons to doubt that organizing a curriculum emphasizing general aims such as equality excludes using academic subjects as its principal building blocks. In this paper, I argue that if we take equality seriously as an aim of education, we should indeed emphasize academic school subjects, just as advocates of liberal education have done for a long time. Focusing on subjects and focusing on aims, such as equality, are therefore not mutually exclusive perspectives but two aspects that must coexist in any reasonable and sound pedagogy.     

Methodology for Examining the Reliability of Group Mean Difference Scores

This article treats various procedures for examining the reliability of group mean difference scores, with particular emphasis on procedures from univariate and multivariate generalizability theory. Attention is given to both traditional norm-referenced perspectives on reliability as well as criterion-referenced perspectives that focus on error-tolerance ratios and functions of them. The procedures discussed are illustrated using three cohorts of data for third- and fourth-grade students in Iowa who took the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills in recent years. For these data, estimates of reliability for norm-referenced decisions tend to be relatively low. By contrast, for criterion-referenced decisions, estimates of reliability-like coefficients based on error-tolerance ratios tend to be noticeably larger.     

How individualised are the Individualised Education Programmes (IEPs): an analysis of the contents and quality of the IEPs goals

The Individualised Education Programme (IEP) is a fundamental document that describes all educational responses to the additional support needs of students, setting up the guideline for their learning and developmental experiences. Specifically, the IEP goals represent the personal destination translated into desirable behaviours and skills that will enable students with additional support needs to meet their educational and functional needs. This paper analysis the quality of the 2497 IEP goals established for 135 Portuguese students with additional support needs and their fit to the students’ level of severity and educational level. The quality of IEP goals was measured using the Revised IFSP/IEP Goals and Objectives Rating Instrument and the content was categorised in reference to the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, version for Children and Youth. Findings showed that goals are generally poorly written, particularly in terms of their measurability and that their quality decreases as students’ progress in education. Results also showed that IEP goals for students with a highly individualised curriculum do not attend to their needs of more functional contents. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for teacher training.     

Peer-led focus groups as ‘dialogic spaces’ for exploring young people’s evolving values

ABSTRACT

Although peer-led focus groups are widely used in research with children and young people, surprisingly little has been written that evaluates their methodological appropriateness. Drawing on data from 10 peer-led focus group sessions across 5 international schools, this article demonstrates how focus group discussions around moral and social values, which become more meaningful though the self-reflection provoked in encounters with different experiences and perspectives, can be advantageous for research. Peer-moderators, as both participants and facilitators, run focus groups that open dialogic spaces for exploratory talk that avoids the self-censure and deference that can emerge in the presence of an adult moderator. This is particularly important when participants are structurally disadvantaged and lack similar spaces for collaborative inquiry into their shared experiences. Video capture allows researchers in-depth access to these focus groups after the event, revealing evidentially and pedagogically rich dialogues.     

Reconsidering group cognition: From conceptual confusion to a boundary area between cognitive and socio-cultural perspectives?

Various strands of research in educational, social and organizational psychology focus on structures of collectively created meaning that emerge in and coordinate activities of groups. Despite expanding, this field still lacks conceptual clarity, enhanced by the multitude of terms used, such as common ground, shared understanding, collective mind, team mental models, and distributed cognition.We conducted a review of the conceptual frameworks being used in empirical studies, focusing on the premises of the conceptualizations. Therefore, we connected these conceptualizations to either cognitive or socio-cultural perspectives on the social nature of cognition. Some studies are identified as representing initial ways of boundary crossing between these perspectives. To conclude, we explore ways for boundary crossing and cross-fertilization in future research.     

Using Focus Groups to Supplement the Assessment of Technical Communication Texts, Programs, and Courses

In this article, we recommend a research methodology, focus groups, that we have found useful in supplementing other, more commonly used measures of qualitative and quantitative assessment. We explain why focus groups are particularly well suited for assessment, how we have used them in our research to examine teacher and practitioner perspectives of effective technical writing, and how others might use them for evaluating texts, programs, or courses.     

Rethinking family (dis)engagement with augmentative & alternative communication

Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) is a core component of special education for many children with learning disabilities and/or autism who have minimal or no speech. Much literature focuses on implementation of AAC in the classroom or therapy setting, but less is known about how AAC is used in the family home. Few studies are authored by an AAC parent/researcher with reflection on positionality, power and the advantages conferred by ‘insider’ status. This paper addresses this gap by exploring the perspectives of five families of minimally verbal children on the place of AAC in their child’s home communication. Semi-structured family interviews were transcribed and subjected to Thematic Analysis. Formal AAC practices such as Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) and Makaton were found to play a limited role in the children’s home communication. Findings indicate three possible explanations: the emotional and relationship-building dimensions of family communication; the competing priorities of family life with a disabled child; and the child’s existing multimodal communication strategies including the use of household objects. These findings offer a preliminary starting point for understanding the emic perspectives of AAC families and reasons for their convergence/divergence with professional attitudes to AAC, and warrant further investigation in larger-scale studies.     

ASL and the family system.

This paper examines some of the sociological implications of poor interaction on families in which one of the members is deaf. When a family systems perspective is used, once a child is diagnosed as deaf the family is no longer considered "hearing"; the parents may be hearing, the other children may be, but the family system becomes "hearing and deaf." By viewing this as a hearing/deaf problem, it becomes clear that no adequate solution can be found without the participation of deaf adults and the benefit of their perspectives and insights. We suggest that attention be directed toward neutralizing the effects of the stigma associated with deafness so that American Sign Language can become a pivotal tool for facilitating functional symbolic interaction in hearing/deaf families.