Mary Lynne Calhoun

Parents of Babies with Severe Handicaps: Concerns About Early Intervention

Early intervention services offer benefits to babies with severe handicaps, to their parents, and to society; yet because of the special demands of adjusting to the birth of a handicapped baby, parents may have difficulty in recognizing these benefits. Using qualitative research methods, this study investigated the concerns of parents as they explored early intervention services for their young children. Interviews with 15 parents of babies with severe handicaps revealed these categories of concern: accepting a place in an early intervention program underscores the seriousness of a childs handicap; the decision to enroll a child in an early intervention program may seem at odds with the familys decision to care for the child at home; enrolling a baby in a structured educational and therapeutic program seems age-inappropriate, and the childs health and safety or the equilibrium of the family might be endangered. Once an enrollment decision is made, however, families perceive clear benefits, including the ability to lead a more normal life. Implications for professional practice include flexibility in programmatic offerings and the importance of an up-to-date referral network.

The Charlotte Circle Project: A Program for Infants and Toddlers with Severe/Profound Disabilities

The Charlotte Circle Project was an early intervention Model Demonstration project providing center-based and home-based instruction to children (birth to 3 years) with severe/profound handicaps and their parents. The project adopted the social reciprocity model, in which the behavior of the child and the parent interact to either encourage or discourage interactive responses. This article describes the projects model, the participating children, the projects daily activities, and evaluative findings regarding its implementation and outcome.

Life beyond the Large City: A Distance Education Program in Learning Disabilities at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Continuing shortages of qualified personnel in special education is a relatively well-known phenomenon, and delivery of teacher education in rural areas is especially problematic. First, students live a far distance from the university campus. Second, they may be “learning on the run,” that is, beginning their career in special education with little preparation for their job. Finally, these students may have family responsibilities that make attending classes that much more difficult. The distance education program at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Charlotte serves rural areas around the metropolitan area of Charlotte, NC. UNC-Charlotte offers a series of courses through the interactive fiber optic North Carolina Information Highway (NCIH). Because of this program, students from the Charlotte area and surrounding counties have access to professional preservice preparation that will improve their teaching skills and the quality of services provided by teachers who are teaching “out of field.” This paper describes the distance education project at UNC-Charlotte in terms of background of the project, technology used, and faculty and student training for using the distance education technology. Initial evaluation data also are presented. Implications for program development are discussed.

Assigning Grades in the High School Mainstream: Perceptions of Teachers and Students

High school progams for mildly handicapped individuals usually provide the opportunity for handicapped students to attend regular classes for at least part of the school day. Thus, students with identified learning problems are placed in classrooms with non handicapped peers, and teachers are confronted with new dilemmas regarding what constitutes acceptable classroom performance. Special education professionals have suggested that traditional grading practices may victimize handicapped students and that handicapped students should not be compared with regular students for grading purposes. This study investigated actual grading practices by academic and vocational teachers in the mainstream and the perception of grades by exception at students. An emergent naturalistic design was employed and individual interviews were conducted with 41 teachers and 15 students. An analysis of the qualitative data indicated that teachers use a different set of criteria for assigning grades to handicapped students effort and attendance are heavily weighed, and some teachers make a systematic effort to establish performance standards for exceptional students. The students themselves indicate an awareness that good behavior and good effort are essential criteria for passing. Teachers expressed an awareness and concern for the special needs of exceptional students and a sense of discomfort with current grading practices.

Reviewing and Refining: A Professional Education Unit's Journey Toward Accreditation

This manuscript seeks to share the continuous improvement endeavors by the College of Education faculty and administration at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte from initial preparation and planning through their successful national and state accreditation achieved in November 2005. Beginning with the units revision of their conceptual framework and alignment of their professional educator preparation programs to the revised National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education standards, the authors hope to provide concrete illustrations of how very basic elements of collaboration, shared decision making, open communication, and purposeful engagement among all constituents led to successful achievement of national and state accreditation, and may be accomplished by other universities and colleges as they pursue this milestone achievement toward excellence in teacher education.

Interpreting Report Card Grades in Secondary Schools: Perceptions of Handicapped and Nonhandicapped Students

Assigning grades to exceptional students in regular high school classes has been described as a dilemma for teachers. The studies presented in this article investigated the meanings of report card grades to handicapped and nonhandicapped students in the high school mainstream. Study 1 found significant differences in the interpretation of report card grades between these two groups. Nonhandicapped students gave stronger endorsements to statements indicating that grades tell how much has been learned and how much effort has been expended than did handicapped students. Individual interviews with 10 special education students and 10 nonhandicapped peers in Study 2 found acceptance of differentiated requirements for passing grades based on student ability. These studies support the need for systematic modifications of grading practices to communicate progress more effectively to exceptional students.

Parents as Experts: An Assessment Approach for Hard-to-Test Children.

How best to make use of parental input in multidisciplinary assessment is a question that faces professionals involved in evaluating hard-to-test children. An integrated parent-professional approach to assessment has been used at the Child Development Research Unit, Nottingham University. This approach uses parents as expert information gatherers and verifiers in an ongoing process of evaluating the child and establishing treatment goals. The Nottingham assessment model is described here, and suggestions for implementing parent-professional collaboration are discussed.

INCREASING SOCIAL SMILES OF YOUNG CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES

Play activities associated with eliciting smiles in typically developing infants were used with three young children with severe disabilities whose smiling behaviors were substantially delayed. Two children showed increased social smiles in response to auditory (high pitched human voice) or tactile (gently blowing air at childs face, hands or body) stimuli but none smiled in response to rattles or pop-up toys.

Interrater Reliability and Test-Retest Stability of the Developmental Activities Screening Inventory-II:

Problems using norm-referenced instruments to assess very young children with severe handicaps are significant. One alternative is to use criterion-referenced assessment instruments. While many psychometric characteristics common to norm-referenced tests are not appropriate for criterion-referenced assessment instruments, interrater reliability and test-retest stability (reliability) are appropriate, due to the formative, as well as summative, uses of these instruments. The Developmental Activities Screening Inventory II (DASI-II) was administered to a group of young (M age = 24.1 months) children with severe handicaps. Results indicated that interrater reliability was statistically significant across raters for all scores reported by the DASI-II and that test-retest stability was statistically significant across administrations and raters.

Strategies for Managing and Comforting Infant Crying in Early Intervention Programs.

Prolonged, frequent, or intense crying, particularly when soothing is ineffective, can be detrimental both to the baby and to the persons who provide care. Because handicapped babies may cry more frequently than their nonhandicapped age-peers and in different ways, there is a strong need to develop strategies for dealing with crying in early intervention settings. This paper reviews the literature on the crying of handicapped babies, describes environmental considerations, techniques for providing comfort, and observational and data-collection techniques, and makes suggestions for coping strategies for caregivers.