Reflections on “teaching a generalized response to the lure of strangers to adults with severe handicaps”

The research to practice debate persists, reflecting continued concerns that teachers in classrooms often ignore or give lesser priority to empirically based effective interventions in favor of other interventions that are less effective or adopted on the basis of popularity, intuitive appeal, or by rhetorical influence. A key distinction related to the selection of effective classroom interventions resides in the teacher's ability to discriminate between effective and ineffective classroom practices. In this article, I discuss discriminative ability and disability in terms of some etiological macrosystem influences (empirical evidence vs. bandwagons, beliefs) and possible sequelae in practice that determine likely outcomes for teaching children and youth with disabilities.